Lenten roses, reminder or gift and good joke

- I only became aware of Lenten roses a couple of years ago, when friend Alice pointed them in out in her garden.  Now I notice them around - here at the Greenway Park last Sunday.  There's another clump of them in front of someone's home on my afternoon commute.  So much beauty around.

- Neighbor dog Cali (who is my buddy), happily carries sticks around in her mouth and always carefully leaves them around her front door when she goes inside.  So yesterday, when I found one in my pot of dirt that is waiting for something to be planted, it seems like a nice reminder or a gift - either way, it made me smile.

- Friend Mary, who had her daughter Isabella rather late in life, is the most fun mom I know.  Yesterday her April Fools joke on her six-year-old was this:  "Her bowl of cereal looked like every other bowl of cereal until she tried to dig in. Frozen solid. She tried not to laugh but ..."