Today was the first day in forever that I did not leave Lloyd. 

It was heavenly. 

Russell went home, which was hard, but Jessie will be here tomorrow. With Vergil. I am so happy about that. 

I had a lot to be happy about today. The weather, the beginning blooms of redbud

and Japanese Magnolia,

the roses opening which Lily brought over on Sunday, 

the orchid I brought home from Mother's which Lily gave her over a year ago and which seems to bloom continuously, 

the 'coon tracks I saw on my walk, 

the clothes I hung on the line, including The Black Dress,

 the clean sheets on my bed for tonight. 

And then, as if the universe were conspiring to make all my dreams come true, this ad from Publix. 

Eight O'Clock coffee is BOGO this week, y'all.

I will be buying at least ten to twenty bags of it. I am not even kidding. 

I feel just completely rich. 

My mother's remains are in a startlingly large and heavy box in a dresser drawer. She had good bones, that woman. She took a lot of Fosamax. Which did not prevent those ribs from breaking but she was eighty-five. 

I got a call today from a woman who had known Mother when she was a hospice volunteer but I had known the woman before that when she was a professor of mine at the FSU school of nursing. That was a beautiful thing, to talk to her. She can't believe I'm a grandmother now. We traded grandbaby stories.  

People have been so kind. Cards and calls and our friend Tom even brought over some banana bread that he actually baked himself with bananas from a tree he has in St. Augustine, as well as two tiny palm trees in pots that I can plant in this yard. 

It's been a very good day and I am grateful for each and every blessing, even the tiny one of being able to release a bee which was trapped in a screen door on the porch and the sighting of a blue-tailed skink, back in the yard to take the sun which shone down like honey all day and which dried my sheets, my towels, my dress as the breeze blew through like the loving breath of the earth.