Goodbye and Hello

We had a short memorial service this morning for our petunias. Earlier in the spring, we bought two hanging baskets, each as big as a Toyota sedan. We hung them out by the bird feeders and each had hundreds of blooms that added a very nice touch to the front of out house.

Apparently there was a communication issue when we went on vacation because our niece came over daily and fed the dogs, got our mail, fed the birds and stacked our newspapers on our couch. But, she didn't water our plants. We thought we had that base covered, but alas, that chore went undone.
If we'd had rolling papers when we returned, we could have smoked the petunias.
I hated to see them go but our niece was doing us a huge favor and there's no way we could be upset with her so we took them down this morning and put them in the compost. In their place, we bought two mandavillas the color of red lipstick.
I think I like the mandavillas better. I hope we can store them inside this winter so we can enjoy them again next year.
Tonight we had a few of our songwriter buddies over for dinner. Fred Miller, Skip Cochran and our old pickin' buddy Steve Norris came by.  Jilda whipped up a batch of her world famous spaghetti and we ate till we almost spewed.  
We have a gig on the 24th and it will be a songwriter in the round at Berkeley Bob's Coffee House in Cullman. We love that place because the clientèle is great!
These folks support local singer/songwriters. Bob himself (owner of Berkeley Bob's) , is a gifted folk musician.
So all in all, it's been a great day.