The prospect of a rainy week ahead is one that Champions embrace. Rain on a tin roof is a particular kind of sweet music after such a long dry spell. Gardens drink it up. The lunar eclipse due on Tuesday morning will be the first total lunar eclipse visible in North America in years, with the next one not expected until June 2029 for the U.S. We will be pleased to witness it if the rain clouds allow it, but we would just as soon have the rain. While many gardeners already have potatoes in the ground, others figure they have until St. Patrick’s Day and will be hustling to get the ground ready. Sue’s Greenhouse is ready already. She has had her grand opening featuring various types of seed potatoes and onion sets and starts. Her Champion friends will see her often as Spring approaches.

Wednesday’s Champion Jam featured the Whetstone Kid, 1976 Guiness Book of World Records holder as Pickathon Champion. He has come a long way from Scratch Ankle, Kentucky and has fallen in with a good crowd. Gina Hollingshad brought her bass guitar, her amazing repertory, and her beautiful voice. The fair Carissa joined The General harmonizing sweetly on a high-lonesome cowboy song. They reprised that haunting melody at the Vanzant Jam Thursday evening. Young Jeff Dutton, who may be around two years old, brought rounds of smiles and giggles from the crowd that night. He was in fine voice and having fun. He came in the company of his parents and his musical sisters, Margo and Mena. Hopes are this music loving family will be regulars at the local jams. They will get acquainted with the nicest people.

A glorious seventy-seven degree Saturday had townsfolk meandering out on country lanes visiting great grandmothers and old neighbors. Others were out on a nostalgic tour of ancestral birthplaces and stomping grounds. Whether our ties to this part of the world are deep and ancestral or just a few decades old or only a few years or less, we count ourselves truly blessed to live amid such natural beauty and among genuinely good neighbors—Champions—Looking on the Bright Side!

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