Jess

Jessica 15 and a half years ago.
She is a classy lady!
Grandpa is very proud of her.

Happy Happy Jessica

Today is Jessica’s 16th birthday.

For me it has been a short/long time since she was born, to her it has been forever.

Jess is the oldest of our granddaughters. We had 4 grandsons in a row and we were ready to have an all boy grandlist, but along comes Jessica and changes it all.

I am very proud of Jessica. She is tall and beautiful. She works very hard and has her head properly screwed on.

In reality I don’t mind Jess having birthdays, except for one small matter: Whenever she has one, I have one seven months and two days later, but, as they say who is counting!

Happy birthday Jessica.

sisters

My maternal grandmother and her sisters about 1910.
Grandma is the 2nd from the right.
Both of their parents had emigrated to the US from Denmark, as adults.
Grandpa came to avoid going into the army!

my neighbor the squirrel

I was sitting in a lawn chair on the back lawn, thinking and writing in my garden journal.

Each year I hope that the next garden will be better in a host of ways, and I was deep into thinking and writing.

Then I noticed movement. A squirrel came down the grape arbor (a row of grapes vines a hundred and some feet long). She (can’t prove that one) had a big walnut in her mouth.

The closest producing walnut tree is 75 or 100 yards away. There was a tree closer but it was cut down earlier. Where did this nut come from? I can only guess.

The squirrel stopped and ran up a grape vine trunk and stared at me for a long time. I was 20 or 30 feet away.

Then she made a beeline to my garden and the soft dirt where I grew peppers this year. She looked at me briefly, then dug a hole, buried the nut, back filled the hole and tamped it down. Then she scurried away.

Just for fun I’ll mark the spot to check and see if she comes back and gets the nut or whether I have another seedling walnut tree! I don’t need another and have no real place to put one.

But this is how the little lady stores her food and spreads the bounty for later. That nut might be dinner some cold winter day, and it might be a seedling come spring.

I share with the critters but they can be greedy too. More on that tomorrow.