Just a Quick Update

Comment count for April and May stand at 317, which has paid for the famous goat---- with enough right now for a couple flocks of ducks, geese, or chicks. Thanks to all of you for helping out

You can check on all the good these gifts will do by checking for yourself at Heifer International.

To celebrate my blogging anniversary in mid June I'll have a give-away. I have been quoting author Gretchen Rubin's book, The Happiness Project, so often that I'd like to share the fun with someone else. Comment between June 1 and June 16th and have a chance to own your own copy, complete with Gretchen's signature.

The next charity we'll take on will be Doctors Without Borders, I think.

And last but not least, take my advice and don't leave your digital camera out in the rain.

And the picture is the progress report of our lilacs. (Unless you are allergic, and don't want to sneeze.)

Memorial Day

Memorial Day---parades, solemn tributes to the fallen soldiers, band uniforms, flowers and plants taken to the cemetery.

Are those your memories of Memorial Day weekend? When I was a little kid I was pretty sure that they had all these special events in honor of my grandfather. Only my grandfather.

Now even my mother had scarcely any memory of him since he died of tuberculosis when she was but a toddler. He lived to be only thirty years old, and through the years, with the time spent decorating his grave, his dear wife probably spent more time doing that than she ever spent married to him.

When he left her a widow with three small children, it was before the days of any social safety nets to help her financially but she knew how to work. And work she did. Back when she had to heat her wash water on the wood stove in the kitchen, and heat her iron the same way, she did the white shirts of a great many of the professional men in our little town.

Mom and her younger brother were responsible for delivering these starched white shirts after they came home from school. They used sleds in the winter, and a wagon in the summer, and woe unto them if anything got dirty!

So in addition to honoring our servicemen and women who have sacrificed so that we can live in such a society, I'll give a nod to my own tough forebears and the legacy they left for us. Hail Lisa Anderson, Feisty Immigrant of the First Order! Thanks for being who you were!

You Get What You Pay For

I suppose I should be thankful that Google provides this free platform upon which we can shout out to one another. I shouldn't mind that somehow my friends can't leave comments, and sometimes my Followers gadget disappears.

I suppose I also read yesterday that somebody was so disgruntled with Word press that they were going to find another way to post their entries----another aggravation, if you want to transfer your history somewhere else. It gives me a headache to even think about that.

If I keep this up, I'll talk myself out of this funk and be happy that I have gotten to "meet"so many of you and enjoy keeping up with your lives.

Do you feel like Lucy VanPelt, sitting in her psychiatrist booth, charging 5 cents for listening? Leave a comment---send me your address----and I'll send you nickel. (Thanks! I feel much better now.)

Friday Fragments

End of May fragments that will hook up with Mrs 4444 at Halfpastkissintime, at her usual dumping ground of trivia and bits we find floating about at the end of the week. You may check this out for yourself my clicking her link, above.

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I surrender. I can not regain healthy eating habits on my own. I am once again a Weight Watchers member. I will try (hand held up, as in the Girl Scout pledge) not to let this fight take over my life. I hate obsessing over food.

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One of the kids in our family packed up his chain saw and headed for Joplin MO, to help in whatever way he could. He rounded up a couple more to help with him. Good job, Tom!

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Another is heading for the Big Apple to meet her BFF from Colorado. The weather map looks like heavy weather on the east coast. Happy landings, kids.

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Our lilacs are on the verge of blossoming. The temperature when I got up was 27 degrees F. I wonder how that's going to work out. Needless to say, the tomato plants will be languishing in the kitchen for another few days.

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When I got home from a meeting at church last night, I discovered that I'd left my purse there. I hate when I do that! (I hate carrying a purse in the first place, and when I leave it behind, I'm really annoyed.) For a few minutes, anyway.

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I've had a box of dishes sitting in the living room all week, waiting to be cushioned with something to protect from breakage and be put in a box small enough to get through the door without releasing the Fuzzies into the yard. Today's the day. I'm sick of looking at the box.

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Exit, stage left.

Have a great holiday weekend and remember that freedom isn't free.

PS---I goofed up on my linking so UP North had a typo and wouldn't connect. Something's not working quite right. Hands or head, take your pick. Sorry about that, Mrs. 4444.

First things First

Well, I skipped my day with my quilter friends today to get some seeds put into my garden space. Thanks to my Granny Wagon, I can stay out there longer and accomplish more. Thanks to the internet, I now have the attention span of a gnat, but if I can't stick to planting I trundle somewhere else to grub out some crabgrass or weeds.

There is some weed growing in there that puts the taproot on a dandelion to shame. That puppy is LONG, and of course there are plenty of dandelions and other weeds that protect bare ground from erosion----under other conditions. Last spring we dumped a whole load of manure on our garden and some of those weed seeds that survive bovine digestion, and a season of snow are sprouting out there too.

This part, the grubbing around in the dirt, spading and pulling weeds is my favorite part of a garden. The sprouting seeds are pretty cool, too. This year we are resolved to leave plenty of space for rows and plants, since our yard became a disorganized jumble last year. Live and learn. GoodGuy is a novice gardener, but he's in charge of the salsa plants. As Dad used to say, "He isn't going to learn any younger."

And neither am I. It is so hard for me to picture what that tiny seed can become with the addition of sun and rain

Let's walk in the Woods

It takes sharp eyes to spot the earliest wildflowers, even in my photographs. There are only a few varieties in the woods where we walked. Yellow violets, hepatica, and a few trilliums grow there. In the woods behind my parents' house there were more varieties; in fact, it was hard to take a step without crushing some.

Our walk was really pleasant because the access road to the fields beyond the woods is free of long grass and wood ticks. They are more of a concern when dogs go walking with you in the woods in the spring, but I'm no big fan of getting them on me either. And once you find one------you're pretty sure you can feel them everywhere.

I planted blue violets under my lilacs hoping they would spread. There aren't many under the lilacs, but they are growing between all the cracks in the cement to the west of them. Pretty, but not quite my plan. LOL It amazes me how plants can "move around". I have a bleeding heart that has spread in the most unexpected ways. I need to find another and plant it in a shadier spot where it can thrive properly.

Have a great Tuesday. Plant something and watch it grow. It'll do your heart good----even you Ms. BlackThumb.

The Spirit of Adventure

Oh, yeah, that's me. My Indian name would translate to "Sits on the Couch". But we do have in our midst The Rearranger.

We have three cats, for those of you who don't know this already, and two are just normally curious. The black and white domestic longhair, Bella, is full of prunes. She tears paper, and knocks stuff on the floor and into the waste baskets. She requires a keeper.

Yesterday we opened a window in our bedroom which is on the second story of our little house. And during the afternoon we took a little drive to check on the trillium crop in the woods. When we returned, GoodGuy saw a streak of black head for the back porch.

We assumed she had sneaked out when we left, even though we always watch. She's really fast and sneaky.

Later, we were watching the golf competition on TV and when I glanced up I saw a cat on the roof of the porch! What in the world? Bella exited by way of the open upstairs window. When we went up to close the window she gratefully came back indoors. I think she gets herself into some situations that she can't handle.

This morning she sat on this computer and got things so messed up that it wouldn't recognize my password. I had to take the battery out and have a short prayer vigil before I could boot back up.

Never a dull moment!