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- Retrospective gratitude

I have been pondering a recent post by Dee Mallon about gratitude realized in hindsight. It's a liberating concept and reminds me that I should be loath to push away memories of challenges when those are what make me who I am.

The theme was echoed in Cheryl Strayed's memoir Wild, which I just finished. There are things in my life I would have thought I could never handle, but in hindsight, I did and I'm truly grateful that there have been more happy endings than not.

And so, as I contemplated the blank patches from yesterday and today, it seemed right to stitch the title of the Jody Alexander book KEEP that I just received ...

Patch #15 and Patch #16
You can read more about the book KEEP in this post

Keep all the memories ... keep looking for the silver linings ... keep being grateful in all things ... keep going. 

By the way, the white in today's patch was inspired by the white lantana blooming beside the breezeway ...



just as it was one year ago (with thanks to Don for pointing that out).

One last thing for today ...

My weather calendar with no dates
except for the first day of each month ... at least for now

I stitched on the next row of patches for the past week in weather, which has been mostly sunny and dry save for three drops in the bottom of the rain gauge this morning. I'm grateful for the sun, having thought the El Niño would be bringing gray skies ... although we can (almost) always use a little rain.

Nota Bene: I am in the process of editing my family blog with the result that I've moved some gardening posts from 2012 and 2013 over to this blog. The entries are headed with the statement "Originally posted by Don in On the Trail."