We’ve been hanging out with some very nice people down here in SC, and it has made me think about where we find our friends and how long we get to keep them.
Life has a way of getting in the way sometimes. The friends we made while our children were young have since raised their families and retired around the country. There were special friends we made when we were working, but they’re in the Midwest and we’re in the Northeast.
Master Gardener friends are a large part of my summer months, and we have a few very special NH couples we are friends with year round.
Then there are the SC friends we’ve made over the two years we’ve spent here. Who knew we’d meet a wonderful friend on a trip to Ireland who could introduce us to so many nice folks.
When we head home in a week, I need to keep in touch with my NH friend, even though she is the busiest woman I have ever met, and a good friend from northern ME. There’s also a lady from New Brunswick who loves gardening and repurposing as much as I do, a highly skilled crafty woman from neighboring Massachusetts, and a Michigan woman who relishes reading a good mystery and finding new authors like I do.
Another group of friends that has enriched my daily life for the past six years are my blogging friends – bloggers, readers, and people who take time out of their busy day to chat. I know how much effort that takes, and I want to say thank you because I look forward to those exchanges.
Here’s a bouquet of SC flowers for my good friends, past and present, because the reality is that friends are the family we get to choose.
NewEnglandGardenAndThread 
Thanks for the bright colors and warm views. Friendships can pop up at any point. Some of the best friends I have are people I met much later in life. I, too, embrace the friendships I’ve made in this community.
We can use a little of of that warmth and those bright colors around here. I hope you hitch spring to your bumper and drag it up to New England as you return. I hope you have a safe trip.
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I will try to capture every spring moment I can to bring back with me. Our Master Gardener group has a potting party planned for mid April. In order to find plants to pot, I think we’re going to have to shovel the snow off our gardens first and then pray for bright, warm sunshine. 🙂
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I’m up in Burlington, MA today. It looks like winter here.
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And, I saw a yard full of lush purple Iris today.
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Lucky. Looks like a yard full of snow on Wednesday again here.
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Thank you for the beautiful bouquet and thank you for being a blogging friend.
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You are so welcome. My life is enriched every time I read about all the wonderful donations you make to so many worthwhile causes. You spread friendship all around the country. ❤️
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Ah, that is a lovely post. It is great to interact with fellow gardeners through blogging. No one rolls their eyes at our obsession here! I love your selection of flowers – that anemone looks like the ‘Mr Fokker’ one used in another vase – it is beautiful!
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You make a very interesting point. The blogging community, in general, seems to be fairly open minded to other’s thoughts and ideas. Maybe that is one of the reasons we enjoy it so much. 🙂
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Beautiful flowers! I love that you included blogging friends in your list of friends! I’ve started many conversations with my husband with “my blogging friend….” The blogging world is a unique community, isn’t it? One of the reasons I keep blogging.
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It is a wonderful community and checking our devices, however we receive new posts, is kind of like going to the mail box in the old days and looking for letters from our friends. It always amazes me how much I learn from all of you too. Yes, that is why we are stay current so we don’t lose out on our connections. Have a great week. 🙂
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You too, Judy!
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Beautiful bunch of flowers – thank you. I agree with Wandering Dawgs and you about the blogging community who really do become friends across the ether. 🙂
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Blogging is such a wonderful opportunity to meet people from all over the globe. How else would we be acquainted? I would hate to lose that connection. Here’s hoping your temps warm up and you continue to enjoy those good recipes. 🙂
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“Friends are the family we get to choose.” Beautifully said my friend. Those gorgeous flowers are a real pick-me-up this morning ’cause it sure doesn’t feel like spring will be here tomorrow.
Wishing you and Dennis a safe trip home and that these last few days of the “great get-away’ are the highlight of your stay in SC.
•••Ginger•••
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Thank you! If not for blogging, we wouldn’t have met and that would be a real shame because I certainly enjoy our friendship. Happy Monday and stay warm. I’ll try to bring some sun and warmer temps back with me, but don’t hold me to it. 🙂
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I am so glad Terri made me aware of your blog. I treasure our friendship……the laughs, the venting, the information sharing. You are absolutely right, receiving a blog is as much fun as receiving a letter from someone special.
I love reading the comments from fellow followers. Those comments led me to check out some of those bloggers that I now also follow. It’s been a win/win for me.
🔹Ginger🔹
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Sounds like you have a lot of lovely friends! Love the flowers although I can’t recognize what they are.
I have recently met some lovely friends from my local gardening forum. It’s awesome how the Internet allows us to connect with like-minded people.
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A gardening forum is definitely a place to interact with like minded folks. The blue flower is an anemone, and the white and pink ones on the right are camellias. The beautiful ivory blooms on the left were not marked at Brookgreen Gardens, but I was smitten by their grace. 🙂
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It is amazing how we find connections today. I think one of the best things we can do for ourselves at this stage of life is to join groups and activity clubs that support a common interest. Love the flowers and so happy to have found your blog.
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Thank you, and you are right about joining groups of people who share interests. We made a cross country move about fifteen years ago, and it is hard to establish new friendships at that age. It takes effort, but it is always worth it. 🙂
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beautiful flowers, my good friends are in GA and also family scattered to.
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Life would certainly be richer if we had those we love close by. 🙂
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I’m glad to hear your winter visit to SC has been a happy one! Safe travels home.
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I love that gallery of flowers. I also appreciate all my blogging friends, it’s a community that means a lot to me.
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Lovely taste of Spring, Judy! Enjoy it because N.Y./New England are still getting nor-Easter’s every 5 days… Totally agree on the wonder of friendship – the glue that holds us together at times. We have many from 50+ years of marriage, three countries, four states, but the blogging ones from the past five years are a wonderful addition. As you commented, blogs are like letters in the mailbox in “the old days.” So thanks for being a part of our NH past that continues now. The internet does make distance smaller, and I love the trips I take in my imagination with blogging friends. And this particular blogging cluster is full of nice people – maybe gardening and nature have something to do with that!
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What an amazing friendship ring you have to surround you and yours. I love – ‘the glue that holds us together at times.’ That is so true. 🙂 I do feel very fortunate to have the nice group of people who gather here to chat. Maybe gardening and nature do play a part in people understanding the circle of life and how it is so much more satisfying with good friends. 🙂 I’ll be looking forward to more of your beach shots as soon as the snow goes away. It is going away, right? 🙂
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Hah! The last storm dropped 21in in the Lakes region. We got away with 6-8,which is what we are forecast for Wed this week. Thu we drive up to Rochester NY for a wedding where I am officiating – should be clear. We plan to return on Sun, when the next storm is forecast. That will be 5 in 4 weeks. We do have many friends from our church connections. Pastoring on LI for 16 years cemented some friendships for ever, which is why Marian said “let’s go home” when we contemplated leaving NH! I think your garden will still be buried when you get back. Hope you enjoyed SC, we certainly enjoyed your blogs from there! Blessings, Peter
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Mentioning my plants being buried, which I’m sure they are, made me think about the ‘planned’ MG potting party on April 22 to divide and pot up plants for the annual plant sale. I’m not quite sure how we’re going to do that this year. Even if we shovel the snow off the beds, the plants will still be hibernating. Should be interesting. 🙂 Safe travels, I hope the wedding is wonderful, and the bride and groom have a wonderful life together.
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Thank you for being one of my blogging friends Judy and sharing the flowers with us. Sometimes we take our friendships a little too much for granted. When we moved from New Hampshire, we found that life can be very boring without having friends to share it with. Thankfully, in the last two years we have made friends here in Florida. What was a nice surprise was that six of our New Hampshire friends flew down to visit us last weekend “just because they missed us”. 😀
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I am so happy to hear you have made new friends but are able to stay in personal contact with your NH friends. Talk about a win-win for everyone. And, just to be clear, those NH friends probably flew down because they were also missing your fantastic cooking. 🙂
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You are so sweet…I consider you are one of my NH friends even though we never had an opportunity to meet.
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A reminder that 3 very special blogging friends came into my life a few years back when we just clicked over grandchildren – (you know who you are!) That’s the group I feel most comfortable with when I need to vent or get an opinion on some oddball thing that only these lovely ladies will understand and thoughtfully reply to! Some day we’ll sit together in heaven on a porch (like Debra’s), surrounded by flowers (like Judy’s) and laugh along with KCs cute sense of humor….I just know it!
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Well, now, that is a given. 🙂 I saw a movie today, I think you would like – I Can Only Imagine. If it’s near you, go see it but take tissues. The theatre was packed today, and all four of us ladies had our tissues out for most of the time. When the move ended, no one moved. Since it was a real life story, they showed some photos and told what the real life people were doing. Then the entire theatre broke out in applause. 🙂
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Friends are where you find them. I’m glad that I connected with you here in the blogosphere. Your photos of flowers give me hope that spring will soon be here.
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Thank you. 🙂 We passed a house today, and there were two beds full of purple Iris. We couldn’t stop or I would have walked up the driveway to capture a photo.
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I really enjoyed this post, Judy, and agree with you. I’ve been bad about keeping in touch with some of my friends from years and years ago, something I plan to rectify very soon. Keeping friends takes time and effort, but it’s well worth it. Despite the cost of postage, I like to send cards and postcards. Talking on the phone is also good in this era of texts, although texting certainly has its place. Email is also good, but in-person contact is the very best whenever possible.
Blogging has brought me, as it has you, a number of people I would call friends, those I’m quite certain I would see regularly if we lived near each other. Those people I hope to meet in person one day, but if not, I’ll still cherish the virtual friendships and thank the internet, whatever its problems, for bringing them into my lives.
Happy Monday to one of those friends,
janet
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You’ve bypassed the worst of the year’s weather. Tomorrow is the first official day of spring, though given the cold, it doesn’t feel springlike. We aren’t as buried in snow as we were last week, but there’s still a lot of it and more to come. At least the sun is stronger, so even with the cold temps, things melt faster.
We really should get together. It’s the driving that’s a problem. Garry really doesn’t want to and neither do it. We find many — most? — of the people we know are reluctant to do more than local driving. Maybe we are just burnt out? Too much commuting, too many long drives up, down and around the coast. And maybe — we are just getting old.
I think you are my friend and I hope you feel the same about me! Thank you for all the beautiful colors and flowers. If I can’t manage them in my garden, at least I get to love yours!!
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Friends and neighbors. 🙂 Driving is an issue when you get older. Let’s face it, we’ve been there, done that, threw the darn t-shirt out the door. I do not like driving long distances like I use to. We do this one long trip but take about two and half days to do it so we aren’t rushed. I remember years ago, we’d get in the car and we’d drive round the clock. Today, those are just memories. 🙂
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Your post made me think of the sweet girl scout song, “Make new friends but keep the old. One is silver and the other gold…” I’ve lived in different parts of the country and find that folks are much the same no matter where you live. Drive safely!
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Sometimes a friend is a person you meet and it’s like you’ve always known them. And some friends come and go, but when you get together again the time slips away. Thanks for this lovely post Judy and the gorgeous flowers.
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That’s a lovely selection, thank you. I find it interesting how close we can be and how slowly it can dissolve over time until it’s like a person we used to know. We surely can’t keep them all, but the ones we do keep for decades are special.
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I agree with your thoughts on friends and I think blogging friends are extra special. It is like having really lovely neighbours that you get to know gradually over time, a little slice of life with every blog post. Having the common interest of gardening is a good start to any friendship… Gardeners (mostly) are such nice people. I’ve always enjoyed your warmth and humour …….. No wonder you have so many friends!🌞😀👏
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Thank you. 🙂
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Lovely pictures and sentiment Judy. Great we can keep making friends and even better, realize how much they add to one’s life.
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What a wonderful reflection! I agree with everything, and I thank you for the bouquet. I am among those grateful for and inspired by your blog friendship; it’s a grand thing that sometimes a young friendship can feel old. Your blog has brought together an amazing group; I always feel that I’m kibitzing around a lively conversation among good friends when I read the comments. Thanks!
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I don’t know how I got so lucky with this wonderful group of folks, but I’m truly grateful for each one of you. 🙂
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It’s not mere luck: it’s offering something thoughtful to the world.
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Such nice sentiments here! I have been amazed to find friends through blogging–I didn’t expect that to happen but, now, it’s the thing that keeps me writing and reading!
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Who else but a blogging friend would share a toffee recipe to die for? 🙂
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Hi Judy! I read this yesterday and thought I would come back to comment and of course forgot! As I have told my friends several times, i am really glad that my head is attached to my body or I would probably lose it! LOL!
Anyway I always love posts about friendships, they are priceless and the quote about them being family that we get to choose is so true!
Thanks for the lovely flowers as we await snow on this first day of Spring! Something is wrong.
Most of all thanks for your blogging friendship. Enjoy your posts and always appreciate your comments on mine. Have a great day! 🙂
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Yes, spring is saying hello, but I think we need to nudge winter into saying goodbye. 🙂
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Thanks for the flowers. I love my friends; old and new.
Sent from my iPhone
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Oh, how I loved your post and the lovely flowers. Both brought some warmth into our 4th snowstorm of March (unheard of here in South Jersey).
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Friends keep us happy and healthy. It’s said that it can be hard to meet new people as we get older but often it’s just a matter of putting ourselves out there. No one is going to walk up to our house and knock on our door looking for a friend. Because you are active, involved, and open, you will always have a lot of friends. Happy spring!
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Blogging buddies do enrich our lives, as much as face-to-face friends. I love the exchange.
Have a safe journey home – I hope your weather is perfect!
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I just hope that when you head home that these non stop weather events are over when you get there! 🙂
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