Happy 232 USA!!

I got up this morning and read the Decalration of Independence online at the National Archives, hung out my new flag, then dragged myself down to the grocery, then came home and cleaned house, napped, and woke to help a friend finish my new garden path.

I came home from work Monday to find this friend mowing my lawn (wow, who knew you could use a mower like a bush hog??)

I came home Tuesday to find this friend hacking away at the area in front of the tin shack with a pickax and laying construction bricks in the trough.

I came home Wednesday to find this friend spreading landscaping plastic, then pavers, then marble chips between the two rows of up-ended construction bricks he'd laid Tuesday.

I came home Thursday to find him installing solar path lights on my beautiful new path.

Today he told me why he'd done this (while I am trying to figure out how to pay him back).

He's a great guy. He's been through some tough times and is trying to get back together with his ex-wife, a woman with whom he has raised a beautiful young woman, and is now helping to raise their grand-daughter.

She is a great person who has put up with some pretty tough times caused by his drinking.

He wanted to say thank-you for talklng with him while he was sober, and refusing to do so when he wasn't, and for telling him to his face while sober why I won't talk to him sometimes. For telling him a few other truths he wasn't ready to hear until I'd said those truths calmly and repeatedly over the past year and a half.

He celebrated another sober day today. Tonight he took his ex, their daughter and grand-daughter to the town firework show. He drove, for the first time in years his family will get in the car with him behind the wheel.

This morning when I checked the news online I saw a bit asking for Joe and Jean Average American to upload their photos of the most beautiful place in the country, and all day I have been racking my brain trying to decide which sight I've seen in this country that is the absolute best.

I set off my little sack of fountains in my driveway around 9:30pm, and as I used BBQ tongs to dump the burned up fireworks into a deep bucket of water I turned around and looked at the front of my house with it's beautiful new path, flowering lilies, and solar path lights; I looked at the spot-lit American flag hanging from my front porch, and it hit me that I was looking at the most beautiful place in America.

Home.

Think about it, and I think you will agree that your home is the most beautiful place in America, too.

So, thank-you Mr Jefferson, Mr. Franklin, Mr. Adams (both of you), Mr. Witherspoon, Mr. Gwinnet, and certainly, Mr. Hancock.

Thank-you to all 56 signers of The Declaration of Independence, to the lads (and a few lass') of the Continental Army; thank-you General Washington, and Mrs. Washington, too for being so good as to share her husband with our people. Thank-you Mr. Revere and friends; thank-you all, our brave first Americans who decided that Home is worth standing up for.

Thank-you to all those who have served this nation with their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honour so that I could call a tin shack on a North Georgia mountainside home, so that I could live free.

I've been to other countries and trust me, with all her faults, America is still free thanks to them.

Then, now, always, Home is worth fighting for.