Bright spots in the day

What is so special about this photo you ask? Why, our daughter is having dinner with us! Ashton has been glimpsed very little around here the past few weeks. She is very busy with doing CNA shifts for 12 hours at a time at the local hospital, working as needed at the nursing home as well as in the Alzheimers Unit at night. She also recently completed training to be an ER tech at night in the hospital. She worked a 12 hour shift at the hospital today, came home and actually had a meal with us and now is off with Eric. Tomorrow she works a shift in the ER and then various shifts all weekend. For a 17 year old, she is very mature and hard-working! She also helped put on a cheering overnight camp for girls in grade 1-3 to raise money to go to the Lobster Bowl. The Lobster Bowl is a big football game between this year's senior football players from all over the state as well as cheerleaders, attending a week's camp before the big game. The monies raised from the nominated football players/cheerleaders (a minimum of $350 each) go to the Shriners, who in turn support childrens hospitals. It is an honor to be nominated by your high school coach and to participate in the week and the game. Ashton was chosen to go but has decided not to after much thought. She has orientation/class sign-up for college on the day before the game and has to have her wisdom teeth extracted asap. I wished she could take part in the event but respect her decision. I want her to have some summer!

What a bright spot in an otherwise gloomy day. Two of my lilies blossomed today!

With all of the rain we have had (something like 23 out of the last 26 days) the grass is certainly green and very lush. This view is of the marsh behind the house and where we normally snowshoe. Even with the gray sky it was still pretty.

This is a photo of a momma porcupine and her little one. Momma is near the top of the tree on the right and the little one is below her on the lower left. We were walking in the woods behind the house this afternoon and Buddy started pulling on this leash towards the underbrush. He was getting quite persistent and I stepped off the trail to see what he was so anxious about. There were the porcupines, trying to climb the big tree as quickly as they could. We didn't get near them of course but I was able to get a photo with the zoom. This is why we keep the dog on his leash when in the woods! We hurried away so the little family could get on with whatever they were doing.

Mark has a few days of vacation time. We are doing a "stay-cation", meaning we aren't traveling too far from home. Yesterday we hiked one of our favorite trails, the Porter Preserve, which follows the shoreline of one of the several islands in our area.

This dainty little flower was growing up along the shoreline, near the seaweed.

A delight to behold, these flowers were eye-catching, reminding me of a fancy jewelry setting.

I used the zoom for this shot of Hendrick's Head Light, located on Southport Island. The bell in the bell tower actually came from my property. When I first moved to our property in 1977 a huge bell was sitting on the lawn. The former owner said we could have it. Now what the heck would we do with that?? A short while later the gentleman who lived on the lighthouse property asked if he could purchase it for the bell tower. It was nice knowing the bell would serve a useful purpose.

The purple of this wildflower was so colorful and as luck would have it, two colorful additions posed for me!
Here are the boys on the trail. One can climb right up over these rocks or take the safer route around them. We usually climb over the rocks, a little extra exercise!

I found this little saucer the other day. It reminds me of my mom's "good" china only used for Thanksgiving and Christmas meals.

Is this not the sweetest little pitcher? I found it while browsing through a friend's collectibles shop. I just had to have it for my windowsill.