This is a periodic blog feature I call “grace notes.” It occasionally captures my jottings of incidental gratitude. My hope is that this practice will make me and you more aware of the constant flow of amazing good we are perpetually steeped in, which we are surrounded by all the time. It is here only asking to be noticed and amplified.

So now I am furthering my ongoing goal of appreciating such a continuous, overflowing abundance of random good. I’ve taken photographs of some of them with my iPhone, which you can see in this post.

It’s been a while! Let’s start this gratitude list with:

• It’s spring! Yay for flowers, leaves, green grass, longer light, and warmer temperatures.
• I am so grateful we got our bathroom, side porch, and flagpole painted! These were serious upgrades. We’re getting one of the side porch chairs reupholstered, and when it is done I’ll post before and after shots of the room. Meanwhile, you can see the bathroom in process of being repainted below, and now I no longer have to avoid taking photos of the flowers around the formerly rusted flagpole; it is pristinely white now.
• I’m grateful my husband has made some amazing sourdough bread recently, hitting it way out of the park, and totally spoiling me for anything else. I think he’s enjoying the process and results, but I know he’s doing it to please me, which is so kind, generous, and sweet. I’m absolutely loving this development, and I hope he keeps it up.
• I’m so grateful I learned to cook, so that now it is second nature, and I really appreciate my good sources for food, particularly Community Shellfish and Bethel Organics. I’ve recently discovered steelhead trout and wow, do I love it. So tasty!
• I’m grateful we’ve had a stream of dear visitors this spring; they have brought so much love and joy through this place. I also love it when it is quiet with just the two of us doing our thing, both separately and together.
• I’m grateful to be finally walking again after a sedentary winter buried under snow. I’m loving being back at Huntington State Park again, and got 11,000 steps there yesterday. I’m grateful to be getting in shape again.
• I’m grateful for wonderful plans this year to look forward to. I’m headed to Maine three or four times this year, and then have an international trip planned in the fall with our older daughter. I’m looking forward to all these things, but I’m also enjoying a whole spring right here.
• I’m grateful I am poised to begin soon serious work on my New Year’s resolution. It feels good to show up for yourself and do what you told yourself you would do.
• I’m grateful I’m rebelling against decline and limitation; it feels good not to prophesy negatively about my future health or abilities. I am grateful I am rising to resist all that is unlike good.
• I’m grateful for all my journals and pens which keep me on track, with lists and trackers, calendars and notes.
• I’m grateful for all my books and for my book groups. I’m also grateful for all my art materials, and my various art groups. I have a lot of both. I’m grateful for both the inspiration and learning, as well as the community. I am also grateful for the inspiration and community at our church.
• I am grateful we sponsored a free piano and cello Chopin concert in our church and that it was well attended and appreciated by the public. I’m grateful for our amazing music, as well as everyone’s sincerity and consecration.
• I’m grateful for my office/studio where I spend the bulk of my time; it is such a sanctuary for me.
• I am grateful for a dear husband and amazing daughters, a well as sisters, in-laws, and extended family. We are now up to 3 grand-nieces and 3 grand-nephews– three on my side and three on my husband’s side–with a new one just born this week, who we are so very delighted to welcome.
• I am grateful my husband’s podcast (The Bible Speaks to You) is going well, and my own 5 minute weekly podcast (A Cup of Cold Water) is still chugging along in its second year. I’m grateful for all the technology that makes that possible, for all of our listeners, and for everyone that spreads the word about them or shares them.
• I’m grateful for doors, for sunrises, prisms, rainbows, and refraction; for shadows and light, buttermilk biscuits with homemade jam, tulips, amaryllis, orchids, for our lilacs shown above and the vase I made for them, as well as our forsythia (shown last below) and the vase I make for them.  I’m grateful for hopeful people everywhere. I’m grateful that my husband and I play cribbage in the evening after dinner, for our new flowering quince in the yard, for my little red stick shift car, for recycling and composting, for antique trucks refurbished in fun colors, for walking in the rain, for Costco, for my new green silk scarf from Turkey given to me by our older daughter from our trip there last year, for photos of our physics professor daughter photographed on Colgate University’s instagram (see photos below; she’s in the green shirt), for the internet, for interlibrary loan, for sleeping with the windows open again, for salt, for discovery, for big cost dogs, for singing, running water, indoor plumbing, for General Bakeshop after church, for feathers, birdsong, and poems.
• I’m grateful for each of you blog readers who make this blog possible. I’m grateful to have posted everyday for 18 years, and that you read or look at it, share and/or financially support it. I am so grateful to be amplifying good with you in this world.

Put some of your grace notes in the comments!