Tasty, Tasty...

Mmmmmm....

Tasty appetizer bar...

My brother Carl, youngest in the clan, recently hosted the annual summer barbecue beginning with his favourite appys...we all enjoyed it tremendously.

This is also the season for incredibly juicy and vitamin-packed fresh fruit:

Oh those bing cherries..."Cherry ripe, cherry ripe, ripe, I cry, full and fair ones come and buy..."  lyrics to a song my sister Herta sang at a school music festival many years ago...

Raspberries always evoke emotions...years of picking them as a reluctant teenager, then growing them ourselves and marketing them, while our own kids were now picking them for us...I love the tartness of this wonderful fruit.  Coupled with hearty toast and some aged cheese and a strong cup of coffee seems the perfect breakfast for me.  I freeze lots of them and enjoy them throughout the winter.

Strawberries... the first of the seasonal berries - so good on cake and vanilla yogurt...

"Who satisfies your mouth with good things 

so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's."

Psalm 103:5

Pre Birthday Celebration

Today, June 15, was wonderful.  It was a beautiful sunny day and a few days before my birthday.  My friends Lorna and Lyle came laden with gifts of love:

...flowers

...a picnic lunch

...dear friends Lorna and Lyle

....all the right touches

...a special coffee out to cap off a beautiful day.  Thank you dear friends.

"A friend loves at all times..."  Proverbs 17:17

Father's Day

Here it is July already and I had a number of posts ready on the back burner last month which I will now post.  The sentiments ring true  today non the less, even as they did when I first typed them weeks ago and chose the pictures for them.

We never made very much of Father's Day it seems and yet it's so important and wonderful to remember to honour those special men in our lives.  I am reminded of my own dear Dad who has been gone for ten years now.  He loved flowers and often brought flowers home for my Mom when he did the shopping.  I thank God for Al's Dad.  He nurtured Al through tough economic times on the family farm and taught him important life lessons.  Although he was already gone when Al and I married, I can see from his photos and listening to stories of the past that he was a wonderful, kind and gentle man, like Al.

 Then there is Al, the father of our three wonderful children.  I want to honour him today with this photo of our prolific carpet rose in our former garden.
And though Al enjoyed the beauty of the flowers he loved and enjoyed his children and grandchildren much more deeply and was proud of them.

With this strong orange flower, the tiger lily faithfully coming up each year, I honour my two wonderful sons and my equally wonderful son-in-law.  I thank God for them, am proud of them and pray God's blessing on them.  They are wonderful Dad's. God bless them...God bless all Dad's today in a very special way.

"Honor your father and your mother 

that your days may be long upon the land

 which the LORD your God is giving you."  

Exodus 20:12