Catch Up with This and That

The irises are in bloom now.

 Well, I did it! I made it to the end of the Blogging from A to Z Challenge without hating the whole thing. I have done the A-Z challenge seven times over the last eleven years and have found it a struggle to post six days a week, as required. Actually, nothing is required. It's not like I won't eat or something if I miss a day, but I am stubborn and like to finish what I start. 

The next obvious question is: why do I keep doing the challenge if it stresses me out so much?  Because with the desperation of coming up with six posts a week comes some of my more creative postings. Much of the time, I don't feel like I have anything to talk about, and the A-Z forces me to think outside the box of my routine life. 

This year, I revisited posts from the past. That made the task much easier, and it also made things interesting for me as I read through past posts. Thanks to all of you who read along with me.

Now, it's back to the everyday, and I'm drawing blanks again. Also, it seems that I didn't take many pictures in April to jog my memory, but here are a few.

Last weekend, we went to West Virginia for a memorial service for my cousin. We also visited three different cemeteries where my parents and grandparents are buried. In one of the cemeteries, we were trying to locate the unmarked grave of my found-grandfather. (It's a long DNA story.)
Also, at this cemetery was this Lewis family marker. They were early settlers of the Northwest Territory, and it was interesting to see something tangible that I had only read about in history books. 

Ward continues to work on puzzles. This one, called Literary Dogs and was quite interesting with its whimsy pieces. (Enlarge the picture if you want to see the details.) As it turns out, the puzzle was based on a 40-foot mural in a library that was only about an hour from us.

So we had to go visit it. It was hard to get a picture because it was so long, but it was a really fun mural.

And speaking of Ward, he had a birthday yesterday.
 Note: He is not quite 100 years old yet. 😀

This bluebird has been flying into our living room window many times a day. He then goes to the gutter to keep watch. Apparently, he is trying to defend his territory from his reflection. Some sources this could go on for weeks. 

We recently visited the Brighton Dam Azalea Garden. We try to go each spring when the 22,000 azaleas are in bloom. However, we kept up our trend of being about a week late for peak blooms, but it was still pretty. It is a popular place for photo shoots, and we saw several. If you look closely, you can see one here.

And true to form, Ward was just as interested in the structure of the dam as he was in the flowers.

That's all I've got for now.

Until next time...