Days like this . . . . . . . .

I am truly thankful for my home today.

I admit I moan about it at times, the small size, lack of a pantry, concern about stairs

 as we age, the now pressing need to replace the entire HVAC system, the never

 ending garden chores, the biting bugs and rascally wildlife visitors in the garden,

 and so forth.

 Of course there are lots of good things too, enough for another story some day!

A bright, new, easy to maintain, turnkey condo on one level, just ready to furnish

 and relax in as we age, with a patio ready for pots of plants and kitchen herbs

 fills my dreams.

But, as I said, today I'm happy and extremely grateful for the cottage home I do have.

Earlier this week I started a post to share here about a special new woman who

 has shown up in my life. Thanks to other family members doing the 23andMe DNA

 testing, and being on Ancestry.com, I now have a second cousin in California. 

She has been sharing so much info, and lovely photos of the family (my mother's

 side) which I'd never seen. I have been able to assist her with names, dates and

 stories to enable her to do more work on the family tree. 

Over the past two weeks we've chatted on the phone and exchanged dozens

 of emails. Our Canadian-born grandfathers were brothers and she inherited

 several steamer trunks full of photos and history from her late grandmother. 

Now she's going through them and finding such treasures. . . . . . . . . but, and this

 is the very sad part, yesterday she and her husband lost their home in the huge,

 horrific, Carr wildfire which swept through a section of Redding in northern California!

 They and their pets are safe, however I'm not sure yet what, if anything else, they

 were able to save.

Life can be so sad. Linda and her neighbors must be in shock over 

losing their much-loved homes and my heart goes out to them all.

Cottage garden with Sunflowers - Summer 2018

Gazebo - Spring 2018

Potting Shed - Summer 2018

At some other time I hope to share more about the family treasures 

Linda found in the trunks. Meanwhile, I hope you, like me, will pray

for an end to this devastating wildfire which brave firefighters on the

 ground, and in the air, are trying to stop, and that there will be no

 further loss of lives or properties. 

This is really a bad one, in fact being named perhaps the worst ever in

 northern California. Even more worrisome is the that the weather forecast

 is not sounding kind at all for the coming week, and halting the spread of

 this massive fire will take an unbelievable effort by many, many

 brave people!