Monday, January 27, 2014

Let's Walk In The Garden

Come with me. Grab a cup of coffee and take a walk with me to the garden. I'm tired of the cold and wintry wilderness. Here is an offer for perfect escapism. I didn't plan ahead for this moment back last summer when I was playing with my camera. But I am grateful. 

 These poppies are from some seed that I gathered from Mom's Gardens in Idaho. I was there in September 2012 and walked in her gardens alone. She was convalescing from hip surgery or she would have been showing me around. Mom sees her gardens as a whole landscape  and shows you in that manner, as well. That's fun, too. But on my own I could take my time and gather seeds and dream of my own little garden. Mom is a landscaper/parks as a result gardener. I'm a piddly little granny gardener. With a camera! 

 Zinnia are probably the most rewarding flower for me. They grow and produce a variety of color and many different renditions of the ordinary composite flowers. Surprises abound every new day. And you can cut and gather them for vases. And find bees to grab macros of, as well.

         This one is fuzzy, I think. The bee and the picture. 



 Feasting my eyes on these pictures helps me to forget how cold it is outside. Here it is warm and sunny. The drowsy bees buzz.  I move my bare feet under the shade of the wide leaves because the soil is too hot to stand there for very long. 

 A sketch book and a pencil would be nice. If that's what you like to do, here are some to copy. Pencils sketches of these in your journal in January would be interesting for your grandchildren reading them later.








What are these? Mallow? Holly hock?
 We save the seed for these from year to year. Plant a short row. They grow high and wide creating a happy backdrop for the rest of the flowers. Great for bouquet filler, and camera play.


 Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.






Saturday, January 25, 2014

Random Stuff

   Blah! said Toad. -Taken from Charlotte's chat status this week. I totally agree. The cold is getting to me, maybe.
    Suddenly my house feels like it is just crawling with crawlies.  Maybe it's the dog or the wood stove dirt or all this being trapped indoors.  Whatever it is, It Has  To Go! Amy stops and peers into my face and asks, "Do you hear music in the distance?" Then laughs like SHE is the one hearing music in the distance.
    It helped momentarily when I unloaded the bookshelves this week, and gave them two fresh coats of WHITE paint.


   Now everyone is worried that I'm going to paint everything in sight, white. Watch out. I just might!  Spring cleaning is coming soon.
    The girls aren't far behind me.  They're cleaning and putting stuff away.  Ruger has been exiled to the porch. He is obedient and patient about that so far...guileless animal.
     We dumped all of our coin stashes out on the table and counted it. We want flowers and candles, so we're gonna have them without snitching other money.
     Elv has been working ALL of the daylight hours and into the dark evening hours this week.  He grumbled longingly last night when he finally came to bed about needing a weekend to get to know his wife and family again.

   I have three pairs of foot wear I depend on, that are getting old. A pair of Clarks brand boots should last longer than four years, right? But my feet have been getting wet. Francis had the same problem, so she decided to fix it. We got a can of shoe and tent silicon.  She lined up all six pairs, hers and mine, and gave them several coats. Perfect distraction against the winter blahs.
   To top the winter off, LP doubled in price in a day's time. Our hot water was "dear" in the first place.  I fight back by filling our largest cooking kettles with water and letting the wood stove keep us in free hot water. But it is a big pain!
  This week, I read a book, A Captain's Duty by Stephan Talty, knitted on my learning to knit project, and listened to a new music, (Joy Brand New by Ordinary Time recommended by Dru and Lisl), over and over until I could replay the nicest parts inside my head. Besides painting the bookshelves, that is.
    The children brought a couple of armloads of library books home including old comic books and Mrs. Polifax. I have never read Mrs. Polifax, not because I am virtuous, but because I prefer other things. 

    While I wrote these scribbles the girls did up the Saturday cleaning and the nuthatches worked on emptying the feeder. Now the girls are headed off to town to get those flowers and candles and I'm gonna "sip coffee" Jenny, and listen to music and scrub the stairs. I'm a rotten scullery maid. 

    There are tulips and daffodils under all that snow just waiting to get the signal that they can pop up and tell us that spring is here. Come to think of it, I believe I DO hear music in the distance.

Tuesday, January 21, 2014

Winter Candles



   

   It is a cold day today. It is one of those days where you step out of the car at Wal-mart and hold in against it as you would against an unwelcome hug only more tightly somehow. And walk  quickly, not running, because running is too much like getting the hug after-all.
   The fires at home in the stove burn hot with all the drafts wide open, the glasses clean and clear, because the creosote doesn't have a chance to build up due to the heat. We nurse the fires into deep beds of coals under the stack of wood we will not allow to be depleted.
   It is only January and already the ranks of dry hardwood we stockpiled last fall are shrinking alarmingly. It is a real winter for once, we say to each other, more like what we used to have twenty years ago. Which is just an old school way of saying we remember all kinds of winters including this kind and when all you youngsters have lived as long as we have, this winter will be one to refer to later. "In the winter of 2013-14 it was so cold that the smoke froze solid in the air above the chimney...honestly, if you threw boiling water out the door into the morning it would freeze instantly and tinkle as it fell."


...Or some such nonsense. Ok, it IS pretty cold; but not unendurable. In fact, some of us get a kick out of it. Makes me feel hardy in a way. There is nothing quite like stepping out on the front step in the still, starry morning when it is thirty below zero and take a deep breathe of it. No, silly, it won't burn your lungs that fast. It might clear your foggy brain first thing in the morning, though.
    How cold is it, anyway? It is so cold that.... Let's hear your earnest or nonsensical renditions in the comments.



Tuesday, January 14, 2014

Cold Weather Industries


What do ten people do all day in a small house when it is too cold to go outside for play or even work? No problem. We can sew, craft for decor for a future wedding, build things like children's step stools (I'll show you sometime),  arrange flowers, play dough, design a new pattern with the husband's handy math tool and brain, hand sew doll dresses, learn to sit alone if you're five months old, read to the children, make cookies, take pictures, quilt, play table games, adopt a new dog, etc.

Two pairs of hands promised to one another. They are planning a wedding in June, the traditional wedding month. A church wedding with congregational singing, vows, and a special group of "stand-ups". The reception will also be traditional: flowers, candles and pretty tables to sit around after we've all had a chance to wish them God's blessings in a "receiving line".

Observing the new couple and their delight in shared secrets, plans, as well as the usual stresses and pleasures of courtship reminds me to think about our relationship after 30 plus years. How "in love" are we now? Francis is constantly looking for ways to please Josh. She is just popping with new ideas for their wedding or their house and life after the wedding. It is another reminder to me, just what it is that gives life to a happy marriage: decision to please,  ideas to contribute, and to be happy to bless one another.

Friday, January 10, 2014

Saturday Evening Blues

I found this as a draft. It belongs back there in July somewhere last summer. I'll post it here as a back flash. We are glad that it really was not quite this bad over all to be "empty nesters" for a few weeks.

     

    Just like that, it has hit again, a crushing weight that hardly allows me to breathe. We sailed along busy enough to keep from thinking about it all week.  But tonight, alone, I can't escape the waves. Nights like tonight, I think I cannot do this one more week...I won't. I'll simply make a few phone calls and end it.
    Was this our fifth or sixth week?  Are we over half done? Yes, maybe only four weeks left of this frantic effort to keep up with the work here at home and spend the quota of hours of our week in the woods, just the two of us. Plunging on in our work to not have time to think. The projects melt away done and over too quickly.
     What I miss most tonight is having everyone gathering in the living room to discuss everything.  We solve the world's problems together here, just by talking about them. We count accomplishment.  We tell the funny stories of the day, laughing at ourselves and others without malice. We read scripture and discuss it and get totally off the subject on a labyrinth of rabbit trails.  We pray together, and plan tomorrow and next week or next year.
   I promise us that when everyone who belongs here gets home again, we are going to do EVERYTHING together. I vow, we will not let them out of our sight for this long again, ever! You might say that I indulge in a veritable wallow of self pity and lonesomeness. But then we buck up by morning and push down the whimpers and SMILE and get back to work. And I know that if we would "wimp out" now, four short weeks from the finish line, I'd never forgive myself.                                                                   
   
 
     Besides, it is just me. The children are enjoying their summer in Nebraska.  And I am happy for them!



   

Christmas Past And Other Pieces of Our Lives




 Sometimes I post pictures like this strictly because I want them to be in the book I hope to print of this blog someday. Perhaps I ought to have two separate blogspots: one for the family memories and another for scribblings.

         It was the Christmas that:

* It was cold. We had -25 degrees night after night. 
* Gabes and Josh were here for ten days.
* It was too cold to skate or go sledding for little children.
* But we made a snowman on the first Saturday before it got so cold. Gwen quit worrying that he was going to melt during her nap.  
* We sewed for Gwen and Jenny and quilted on Francis' quilt.
* Gabe made a rustic little step stool with pallet boards and the children used it ever after. 
* Lance had my name and bought shelf brackets for me for the kitchen project coming up. He put them all in a box and wrapped it into one heavy package. Lovely gift. 
*Elv stayed at home from work because it was too cold. 
* The guys played so many games, they tired of them: Monopoly, Rook, Chess, Settlers, and that maddening Twixt game. 
* Ruger came to live with us. 
* Francis and Josh created center pieces for their upcoming wedding.
* We had a pizza party at Lances house.
* James learned to sit up alone while they were here. 
* When Clark's were here for meals we were 16. Too many to sit around our little farm house table. 



                    






 Breakfast by the fire on our cold winter mornings. Cozy times.


It is January now. Here is a letter I scribbled off this morning that proves same. 

Good morning,
  No, I am not particularly worried about the bump on my nose. Of course, we will have it removed. What it really does, is to remind me of Grandpa Skrivseth who had skin cancers removed at different times over the years. He was 83 when he was killed in a bad car crash. At that time he had skin cancer again and prostate cancer, as well. He had stopped fretting his old age cancers. So to my mind it is just an age thing and we'll let modern medicine have a go at it when needed and I will probably live to a great age and die ordinary.
So it's ok. I am much more concerned about maintaining a proper sense of well-being in my mind and heart than I am of having a ditch on my nose. Nobody truly cares one way or other how I look anyway. I think you'll find that most people are quite self absorbed when it comes to appearance... so much so, that mine will register only momentarily on anyone else's radar.
It is 29 below this morning here. But when I took Ruger out it didn't feel as cold as yesterday. The stars were bright and close in a still, still morning. Wonderful. Thermometers are ridiculously inept at saying just how the morning really feels.
  I don't know what is in my day yet. I want to plane boards. I want all the extra trashy in-the-way- stuff removed from my house. I want that horrid, dead recliner out of here. Take away the full and messy desk. I want to paint the bookshelves. Let's order up a dumpster.
                                                                              Have a good day, amg


We found out today just what the new health care plans can do for and against us. What a fiasco! It will not cover the health care costs that the likes of us incurs each year. We'll be legal, but we will still be paying the clinic bills out of pocket. Moreover, the gal on the phone gave up getting us signed up for any of it after the website gave us an error message, not once, but twice, and truncated. Why am I not impressed!

The new year commences with plenty of work to do: jobs, daily chores and projects. Besides, we have events to anticipate: a wedding, camping, and another whole round of seasons. There is "something to get out of bed for every morning"  while we wait His return when all our earthy anticipations will become obsolete in the glorious delights of His presence. 


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