Jeanne and Joan

In less than a day I lost two of my women friends -- to cancer.

Joan was the smiling member of my bible study group. She was kind and considerate, and loved by all.

Jeanne was my assistant in the Deacon/Deaconess department at the church. When Jeanne saw something that needed to be done she did it with all of her might.

They were both good women and I will miss them.

confession

Much to my friends aggravation, I am an environmentalist.

It would be easier to be a communist in this state, and many consider them one and the same.

My favorite America conservative politician was an avid environmentalist. He was also a really great photographer. But that was a long time ago.

It is easy to push each other into big uncomfortable categories. Unless we are unduly shaped by an outside sources, most of our values and life limits are a mix, some of us have a real blender mix of ideas. But we still find ourselves pushed into these big generalizing categories.

At the least it would seem that it is our duty as citizens (not to mention christian citizens) to treat God’s creation with a modicum of respect. Nature was intended to be used, but not abused. Unfortunately it is easier to destroy than to nurture.

Christians who are sure that the 2nd coming is so soon that caring for our surrounding is a waste of time, might want to remember that every generation since the christian era began has had more than a few who were sure that their generation would be the last.

And as the old curmudgeon Edward Abbey once advised: "One final paragraph of advice: Do not burn yourself out. Be as I am-a reluctant enthusiast... a part time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it is still there. So get out there and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, encounter the grizz, climb the mountains. Run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, that lovely, mysterious and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to your body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much: I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk bound people with their hearts in a safe deposit box and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this: you will outlive the bastards."”

I didn’t say that word, I just quoted the man!

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.

winter

Grandpa's version of winter.
He painted it in January 50 years ago.

gardening season

Gardening season is about over for another year.

That is both bad and good. A big garden can be a lot of work, but the goodies are more than reward. For me gardening is as much therapy as food. I still have Kale that will be eatable all winter and the cold frame has some salad greens, but mostly it is over.


Yesterday I backed the big flat bed trailer up to the garden and began loading debris that does not compost easily. I cut the tops off all of the asparagus, pulled out the tomato and pepper plants, stacked the tomato supports and got ready to attack the corn patch.

This morning I am going to make some peach crisp. Never heard of such a thing but as daughter said: why not? I was going to make a peach cobbler but the recipe called for an egg. We are out and grocery shopping day / pay day is later this week.

The freezer is full of the bounty, the fruit jars will be full after the grapes. Grandsons are anxious that I bring some grape juice Thanksgiving.

I wil miss grabbing a knife and heading out to the garden to get fresh veggies for dinner.

We gardeners dream of “next year,” the rows will all be straight, the strawberries red and the weeds will magically disappear. Already my garden journal already has pages of notes for next year.

Pilots “hanger fly.” When they can’t be flying they sit and talk about it. I “paper garden.” Soon seed catalogs will begin to arrive!

I have told Miriam how good she would look in a nice convertible.
She always had other thoughts!
Romantic as can be and as impractical, I'd still like to see her in one!

cars

Spendy little critters, on a good day, but important to our life out here I the rugged west.

Today I get Miriam’s little car. It has been in the shop all week. The repair price is about half the “book” value of the car, but that number is skewed, I fear. My back up account will take a hit on that one.

I like to buy as nice a car as I can afford and then drive it the rest of it’s reliable life. At 17 this car is still an acceptable ride. Miriam gave her good care. Mile wise, it is about at it’s half life now.

GM never made the best cars I the world, and this is not an example of their best work, but it is a solid little buzzer. It is noisy and it rides hard. But in the years we have owned it, we have put remarkably small amounts of money into maintenance. Not a great car for sure, but a pretty solid one.

Maintenance is crucial for a long term keeper car. I am not a mechanic, so when there was a problem I found a good mechanic and paid them to repair it. I have used the same shop for a decade. They know me by my name or by my cars! “This is Dave with the Blue Cavalier” and they know exactly who they are talking to!

Once again the guys with the chrome plated tools have done their magic. The shop foreman, a man named “Sparky,” tells me that it is solid now, that this model has a weakness with the head gasket and that yes, they have replaced a good number of them.

This little blue critter is not overly afflicted with creature comforts, but it has a good AC, that is wonderful in summer, and in winter the heater works well.

Compared to my father’s brand new 1940 Ford, this car is pure luxury!

Brianna May. Self portrait, and a very clever one.

yes we can, i think

“I am a nurse, we can do it.”

That from my child bride.

My dear friend David is here with his wife and aged mother in law. Mom is about 90 and while she can get around OK she needs someone to be with her all the time. David and his wife do it well.

But they really need to go out of town for three days. Would Miriam and I be willing to look after mom? I am not good at looking after other people’s people. I am scared of all sorts of things, so I tried to wiggle out.

But when I got home I mentioned it to Miriam and got that response.

So, we will be hanging out at David’s house for a few days soon. Miriam can look after grandma mostly, and I will cook and wonder (and wander too?).

There are not many people in this world who would ask me to do that and there are even fewer that would get a positive answer from me, but good friends are not that easy to find.

I know we will be OK.

yukon golds

'taters'

I planted a fair sized hunk of garden to potatoes: yellows, reds, whites.

This week it was time to dig and sort potatoes. And I did!

As much care as I had put into growing them my gopher friend put into eating them. Half of what I planted were Idaho Russets. Boy did Gopher like those. He ate, or ate at most of the crop!

He liked the Reds pretty well too, and ate a fair hunk of those too, but he did not like Yukon Golds at all, or didn’t get that far.


So now we have potatoes. The ironic part is that the whites keep the longest, and I have the fewest of those. So for now we are going to eat a LOT of yellow and red potatoes. That is not bad, they are very tasty.

Even then I got over a hundred pounds of good potatoes. Good thing we like to eat them!

But next year (gardeners live by next year) I have got to find a better location for friend gopher, maybe even gopher heaven.