Thursday, October 24, 2013

The Table At Home

 Because Lisl showed us her pretty table on her post , I decided to show her/you, ours, as well.
   I love the colors of fall decor. Warm and cozy, earthy colors.
  The birds are enjoying the deer tallow hung there in the window. It's a yucky, butcher-y looking thing and I don't know why I allow us to hang it there right outside the window...except that the birds like it.
 Our house is bursting with projects just now.
    1. Carolyn's monogrammed cookies are spread in rows covering her work area. (Bev's table, Jenny.)
    2. Wedding sewing. Three machines, completed dresses and piles of incomplete dresses. Scissors and pins.
   3. Four freshly built window boxes made of very old, weathered (don't think rotten even if Elv says it out loud) stand on end huddled together in the corner by the china cabinet. When they're all dry I shall sand and seal them. Oh yes, we are having fun planning for these. I can picture them, full and overflowing with flowers, already.


 4. Frank is gluing glitter to the back of her Otter Box. Don't ask, I don't know.
 5. Brad is reading Josephus.  Mom, does he get fifty dollars for reading it through? That is what you told Clark. Save your money, Mom. Buy us a new copy, this one is falling apart.

6. Crocheting.
7. Frances's quilt is in. It takes up half the room and should be quilted asap depending on you ask. But I really like having it there even though I can't work on it every day. Lovely winter, indoor work. You'll be seeing more of it as we go along.
8. Ivy to root and pot.
9. Geranium same.
10. Firewood to work up.
11. Sidewalk! Still!
12. Pumpkins to can.
13. Apple butter. We have so many lovely quarts of sauce downstairs standing in rows in the pantry that we can cook a few into spicy butter. This will be a snowy, cold day adventure.
14. Basement wall to insulate and decorate with wood.
15. Hunting season coming right up.

Yes, we are richly blessed. Stop in for coffee and chat as soon as you can.

Monday, October 21, 2013

Mid-October Garden


 



  

Autumn in Wisconsin has been beautiful again this year. Warm days and plenty of color. The flowers and crops in the garden held on without a killing frost till the middle of October. Bouquets kept coming in for our table.

So the girls and I spent some time enjoying the garden  one afternoon. I went out with the camera and called for them to come as well. They wandered out looking like I was nuts, as usual but caught on nicely. They get tired of my camera.

 The cats came, too. Nimrod is growing by leaps and bounds on mice and chipmunk. He will be quite a panther of a cat full grown. We're glad for his help around here keeping the rodents down.




 The zinnia took many weeks to begin to flower for us due to greedy little rabbits. Lance eliminated one of them for me one evening when he was out and about with his not-so-little pistol. No place to target practice here in the village until the little rabbit showed up. I walked down the bean row and herded it toward Lance and then when he said, "Get out of the way," I fled and he shot it. Did I say all this before?
But I was so happy to be rid of it, that it bears mentioning again mostly because the flowers were lovely afterward.






 This picture to the right is tweaked with one of my favorite things on the photo editing program. It is a good picture without the edit, but I like the texture that shows up.                                            
 

There is no editing on the above picture. Looks like we could have taken the laundry in and cut the sewer pipes down a bit though.



   Beans on the trellis and leaves in the background. At least half of the leaves are still in the trees. My children have this joke that goes like this: Q. Do you know how mom broke her leg while raking? A. She fell out of the tree.  Laugh here. Ok, I suppose I deserve this. I rake leaves fall and spring around the year. This year might be an exception since the leaves aren't going to fall before snow does, I guess.






We have been richly blessed with a wonderful harvest this year.



Saturday, October 12, 2013

Sailing


    (I wrote this on a potential posting on FB and it wouldn't post. FB is such a loser!) Blogger! Yeah Blogger!

    Our fall picnic by the lake finally materialized yesterday. Almost! It was a windy day so while we loaded our food and paraphernalia( this word is such a lark...parafERnalia! Ha!) I advised Brad to load his canoe and contraption and try out for sailing if he still wanted to do so. He wanted to.
     He has BEEN wanting to for over a year. Nobody had time, ahem, to take him out last year.  There it sat in the leaves back by the canoes. The mast held out, but this summer while he was in Nebraska, I found the sail, rotted and yucky half buried, in the leaves. I burned it. Elv had a use for the mast. Brad came home undaunted by these things and made another set. This second set was much more impressive to me...neater lashings and such like.
      We left here with the picnic loaded into baskets: flowers, food, candles, dishes, props, etc. and the canoe strapped onto the van.  All the way to the lake the straps set up a hideous roar from the wind in the van. The canoe shifted once just a little to the side so that we pulled off at the end of Joe's lane to check. We were glad to arrive at the lake everything on board, intact.
     First we got acquainted with our lake shore. The water was too cold for wading. Nice weeds to pick, clean shore for sitting. And picture taking.
    Next, us girls arranged the table while Brad prepared to try his sail. The wind wasn't dying down, though.  So we were glad for real dishes as opposed to paper. Brad had his life jacket and canoe and contraption already to go only to discover he had forgotten to bring oars. So, he spent the next hour creating an oar. You can see it on the picture.
    Off he went. Our table was set so us girls sat on the beach to watch him rowing that silly canoe into the wind. His plan was to sail back from the other side. Good plan.  Only thing was that paddle. We sat and watched and played with the babies while he grew smaller and smaller rowing(more like tacking) into the distance. Suddenly, Amy noticed, "He's tipped."
    Now I didn't panic, mind you. I just hopped up and tried to remember that he had a life jacket, but the water is pretty cold in October, and all my wisdom about letting boys be boys and not be a chicken about it... Anyway, I told Frank to stay and watch which she promptly interpreted to mean to run frantically around the lake on the shore toward which a tipped and submerged canoe and a lonely little head were bobbing, way out there. Amy and I jumped in the van and drove on the road around trying to get to the same place.  Parked the van in some lake owners yard, ran past his van and outbuildings, through the woods, and down to the dock toward which he was still trolling his canoe. By now he was answering our calls. Thank you Jesus, so he wasn't drowning and didn't seem overly upset, either.  Frank and Amy arrived at the same time at a dock further down and he came to them. "I still have all my equipment." he announced.  They helped him empty his canoe and he soggily climbed back in and headed back to the picnic shore. Us girls got in the van and drove back still sort of shaky-like.
     His first words to me when he walked up afterward, "I STILL didn't get to try my sail."
     And our picnic was too windy for a fire OR the candles so we ate our cold supper in the glare of a pickup light and quickly gathered everything up, threw it back in the van, came home and ate our apple crisp and ice cream in the warm, dry and well lit living room.






Thursday, October 10, 2013

Zinnia N Bee


The perfect distraction.  It was chilly, so Mr. Bumble was not moving, literally. He clung motionless during the picking and photographing of the flower.  Pick your own moral to the story. I haven't one yet.


Tuesday, October 8, 2013

Cabin Life


Just a bit of scrap booking here for the record.  We were here and did this: sewing and firewood. That's all.
At the end of the week the church youth came up for a day of hiking. Ha! It rained! So after our shortened hike, we hunted for The Prince of Paris's Hat who had lost it. And they played that "game" called Psychiatrist calculated to make the victim feel like a loser. That's my humble opinion and according to Frank is not shared by the general populace.


Just one more picture. The lovely, little cook stove that Elv installed for me. Cooking and baking with my Happy Meal is satisfaction! It even has a water reservoir that supplies hot water for washing dishes. Happy stuff for me.



Monday, October 7, 2013

Monday


               


                Tribulation – Perseverance – Character – Hope 
                                         (Romans 5:1-5)

          What really is tribulation? For me, it has been the conflict between church men. Worry, tension, distrust and frustration have thrown us into despair and prayer and frank discussion. There have been times of peace, yes, like the ebb and flow of all things. Always it returned to distract and frustrate.
          I believe that most tribulation is people induced not circumstance induced. Nobody would truly starve or be ill due to neglect in our circles. These inconveniences are overcome among us, for us, and by us. We take care of our own! But we conflict about each others’ motives. We argue a lot. We elbow for a better position in the parade. We create our own tribulation. “In honor preferring one another” is fairly foreign to our human nature even among us Christians. We prefer our own way, often.
          How much of perseverance is sticking to it…OR just being stuck with no escape possible? Maybe most of perseverance is slogging along simply because one does not have the option of running. Maybe it is to understand that “get me out of here” is just a dream to diffuse the current pain of our conflict. I, for one, do not deserve any reward for gallantly persevering. If perseverance is to hate the issues at hand and purposefully refuse to discuss them while others have to, I’m in. If perseverance is flying to prayer, I’m in. If it is burying myself in my own responsibilities and doing them with all of my might to avoid what is going on around me while others have to face it, I get an A+ on it. If scorning conflict as immaterial to the real deal of eternity is perseverance, I win.
          In the end, I have to conclude that perseverance is all of it. God wants each of us: those who engage AND those of us who duck; but we all meet it with prayer and trust in God Who controls everything anyway. To come through and not around is perseverance and lo! It does produce character.
          I am kinder today – a bit beyond the tolerant me of yesterday. I am softer and more generous in my heart with the rest of us because I realize that we all have equal share in failures and in growing up.  Now we know that behind this man’s weakness and that man’s reflexive behaviors are incidents and events that shape him to be who is he is today. He has reasons for what he does. This doesn’t justify him; it explains him. Only Jesus can justify him, or me, for that matter.
          Which brings me straight into the way of hope. All of us hope for an eternity with Him. Not the wishing kind of hope, but the guarantee kind of hope.
         Verse 5: Now hope does not disappoint because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.  

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