Easter Sunday has passed. It was a wet one.

Southwest corner weather has returned to the Southwest corner today.

i have taken up my seat on our patio looking up on our slope and my flag. i will not include another photo as i am sure you have seen enough of those.

Those slope photos remind me of when i was carrying Korean troops to Vietnam and back to Pusan. i had purchased the finest quality and most expensive Nikon cameras and lenses with absolutely no sense of financial responsibility or in defiance of such responsibility to which i had been required to adhere while still living at home. Impressed with my newly found hobby, i took about three thousand photos of sunsets and sent them to my parents back in Tennessee, along with a few others of new friends and sights. When i returned to Lebanon, my father commented he didn’t know anyone could take that many photos of sunsets.

i will have to ascend and descend that slope tomorrow and put one of the chairs, which the storm winds blew over, back into its place. But tonight, i rest, waiting for another of Maureen’s gourmet meals and the Padres telecast.

One lone, large leaf blows slowly across the lawn and hardscape, pausing for a while and then moving on to the bushes by the stucco fence separating our side yard from our neighbors. The leaf’s trek was a stately retreat from the wind.

i recall when back home growing up, there were few fences between homes. We had an old one on the back of our property: a wire fence with wood posts and a strand of barbed wire running along the top. A hedge covered most of it and an opening about three feet wide was in the northeast corner where only the top wire, barbless, remained. Jimmy Nokes once told me when in his preteens, he had snuck out one night and was gamboling around town one his one-speed Schwinn bicycle (with a metal basket on the handlebars and likely with baseball cards in the spokes). He decided to cross the Loomis’ yard on Pennsylvania Annex behind our house and take a shortcut to Castle Heights Avenue through our yard. He saw the opening and hit it. His head caught that lone top wire, and he crashed with a scream. My father heard the commotion and went out to see what it was. Jimmy always thought the world of my father because he picked Jimmy up and checked on him, straightened up the bike sending Jimmy on his way and never told Big Jimmy Nokes.

i sit here with the sunlight sliding down behind the slope. It is a lovely time of Southwest corner day but cool enough for a long sleeve top.

Our Easter weekend with our daughter and her man was one of the best of the many wonderful ones i can remember. We didn’t do a lot, went to the botanical garden and museum, ate at some pretty cool places, sat around and watched sports, movies, and comedy serials.

But you see, i was in my daughter’s place. She was happy. She and Aaron (and Scooby, their puppy) have it worked out. They are happy.

And if there is anything that can make me happy, it’s knowing my family members are secure and happy.

Now that’s a good Easter.