One More Year of a Blogging Challenge

I have signed up for the Blogging from A to Z Challenge once more.  I finally decided to do it to honor the memory of a fellow blogger, Rena, who passed away March 18 at the age of 53.  Rena was a friend and an inspiration to the many bloggers she befriended, and/or did work for.  She lived in South Carolina, which fit right in with my theme (actually, Exploring South Carolina and the Eastern United States.)

How could I not join the challenge after declaring my theme?

I am also trying to expand who can comment on my blog, by allowing those without a Google account to comment. (Blogger gives us only limited tools to deal with spam.)  Unfortunately, most all "anonymous" commenters are spammers, so we'll just have to see what happens.

Also, a lot of legitimate comments are going into spam, so if it takes a while for your comment to appear on my blog, I hope you'll understand.

I haven't pre written as many posts as I would have wanted, but I think I will still have a good time.

Especially because spring has come to my Southern Tier of New York home, and that always lifts my spirits.

The crocus in my front yard are finally in full bloom.

More crocus.

Still more crocus. 

In a way, crocuses and the first of anything are similar.  You take lots of pictures.  By the time the later spring flowers come along, not so much.  So today, I'll stop at three crocus pictures.

Sunday, when I took these pictures, the sun was out.  It was breezy but I even sat outside (in my coat and gloves) for a while.  Yesterday, it drizzled.  Today won't be pleasant.

So I'm thinking spring, come back!

 I hope you will join me in the Blogging from A to Z Challenge, either as a participant or as a reader/commenter.  Reading comments is the chocolate of the blogger.  If you are interested, this is where you can sign up.

And if you read and comment on my posts, I will be so happy.  I am trying, by the way, to make commenting a little easier - I've had my blog comments set to require a Google account, because this blogging platform (owned, who else, by Google) doesn't give users many tools to fight spam.  I have loosened this so you can now comment if you don't have a Google account, but if I start drowning in spam, I will have to go back to previous settings.

Wish me luck!