A Day to Celebrate!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Big Scott :-) The other item to celebrate today is the receiving of my Yellow Fever Vaccination so that I can go to Bolivia!!! Wahoo!!!! One month from today my sister and I take off! Can't wait!
"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." Mark Twain

Friends, Tea and Roses

"A single rose can be my garden.......a single friend, my world." Leo F. Buscaglia



This morning I sat on the lawn of a good friend, sipping tea and marveling at her roses........... I haven't visited with her for several months. Way too long to let slip by. We toured her cheery gardens, basked in the sunlight, ate the most scrumptious warm-from-the-oven blackberry cobbler and caught up on each others' lives.





My camera was at home. Shoot. No pictures to share with you of the little piece of heaven she has single-handedly created in her yard. Here are a few photos I took after I got home, trying to recreate a taste of our morning.








She gave me three seedling roses from one of the most serene rose bushes I have seen. That's what gardening friends do. They share their favorite plants. I rushed them home and planted them in several spots around the new BBQ pit. In a few years they will be big and beautiful like hers. They will remind me of her.


"Yes'm, old friends is always best, 'less you can catch a new one that's fit to make an old one out of." Sarah Orne Jewett

Long Lost Cousins and Patrick McManus!

What a pleasant surprise to have my cousin Marshall drop into our home and lives once again! Taking a motorcycle camping trip from his base home in Arizona, Marshall is on his way up to Alaska, visiting friends and family along the way! His daughter Breon and her husband Michael live in the Northwest also, and took the long drive out to our house yesterday with Marshall. The last time I saw Breon and Micheal was at their wedding in the mid 1990's, and I can't remember if Marshall and his wife, Deanne (who passed away last fall) were here visiting before that, or shortly afterwards. Either way, it has been far too long! Marshall is the oldest child of my mother's only sibling, Uncle Harmon, and I am the youngest child of my family, and there were 6 kids and 13 years between the two of us. I didn't know him as a child.........what teenage guy wants anything to do with little girl cousins?!?! As a elementary age youth, I was scared of him and his brother Danny. They were old and kept themselves apart from the rest of us cousins............ and is it OK to say they seemed a bit on the wild side to little innocent me? ;-) I have only visited with either of them a handful of times in our entire lives. Marshall brought with him a small flash drive that carries on it hundreds of family photos.........clear from back in the early 1900's! He painstakingly took digital pictures of all these old family photos so that we can now have them on our computers to use and share! This is a big deal to someone such as I, who for the last 3 years have been attempting to create a family history album/book, yet was missing so much information from this strand of our family! Thank you ever so much, Marshall!Since we are at the opposite time ends of the family history while growing up, he knew relatives that were dead and gone (or close to it) when I was born, and perhaps I can fill in some blanks for him at the other end of the spectrum. Marshall on his bike, ready to take off from our house this morning........... pretty nice, eh?
Michael, Breon and Marshall
Michael and Breon are new-found treasures to us! They are both artsy and Michael is very theatrically oriented and a hoot! I hope they come over again and again so we can get to know them! We were treated to some oral readings (around the fire pit) from Patrick McManus books. I don't know if you are familiar with this author or his many books. If not, treat yourself to one of his collections of hilarious stories and get ready for an afternoon of belly laughing! You won't need any of those anti-depressant pills after this, so throw them out and get those endorphins flowing naturally! Michael read with a straight face, without missing a beat! He was awesome!
I had such a good time with these folks..........can't wait for more!

Summer Soltice

It is hard to believe, but before spring really came, summer soltice is already here and the days will now start getting shorter already :-( For now though, I will do my best to put that thought aside and enjoy the long 'summer' days where the first dawn of light is noticible at 4:15 AM and the last ounce of light disappears just about 10:00 PM. The actual times depends on the thickness of the cloud cover (if any, but most usual!). My miniature Lilac opened into full bloom this week, and smells absolutely delicious!
The wild roses that grow rampant in my vegetable garden (go figure), also are at max bloom and have a lovely faint rose scent that permeates the early morning and evening breezes.

I am weary of swords & courts & kings. Let us go into the garden. Mary Johnston

Thyme

Have I told you yet how much I enjoy herbs? I love their smell, their look in the gardens, cooking with them and making medicines and crafts from them. I can't wait to be per diem at work at the end of this month so that I can spend more time with these fragrant friends of mine :-) There are so many new varieties of all types of herbs coming out for the common plant seeker these days. Here are just a few kinds of thyme available that I have invested in: Above is Orange Balsam Thyme. I placed it right next to the new BBQ pit for quick and easy access when BBQing.

This is one of my many Common Garden Thymes around my rock wall gardens. I use them fresh as well as for harvesting and drying for winter use.

Coconut Thyme is a new one I just added to my garden. I need to wait for it to grow bigger before I try using tooo much of it!
This is a kind of Creeping Thyme. It is planted amongst several garden pathways that we created from a concrete form and concrete. It smells wonderful when you walk on it and release its fragrance.
Lavender Thyme is another new one for me this year. I am anxious to see how it will smell and taste........I am thinking on a nice BBQ'd chicken........
Two kinds here are Spicy Orange Thyme and French Thyme. I planted them last year, so hope to get some good growth and use from them this year.

Finally, here are Silver Thyme and another small Common Garden Thyme.

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Herbal Tip: When barbecuing, baste your meat with a brush made from parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme sprigs tied onto a stick or wooden spoon.
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A Momentary Break from Winter.........and Thoughts of Ducklings

I was able to work out in the yard again yesterday afternoon, as the drizzle stopped and eventually some sun broke through the clouds.

The yard is like an artist's paint board to me, but instead of painting, I pull weeds and other over-enthusiastic plants, dig up others to transplant to newly cultivated areas and poke around here and there. I stopped and snapped a few pictures of my oriental poppies that are popping out now that they can breathe plain O2 and not H2O ;-) I also took one of an iceland poppy (I think) that shone so brightly for yesterday. Each bloom only lives for one day.

I also went on-line to look at baby ducklings that I could purchase. I love water fowl; alas, they rarely live for more than a season in our pond, as before the end of fall, some fierce, wild creature has made a dinner of them one by one.......... be it a bobcat, a raccoon, a possum or a coyote. I know this is the way of things as God set it up, but it breaks my heart each and every time I hear the commotion during the nocturnal hours while the dastardly deeds are being committed. Thus, I did not purchase any ducks last year, and our pond became overgrown with grass, weeds and muck. It is a pretty disgusting over-run mess this spring, so I think I have decided to try putting them in again, but without the fence around the pond that was built to protect them from creatures, both wild and domesticated. I think it has acted as a trap for them instead. The animals get in one way or another (usually jumping or climbing over the fence, barbed-wire and all), but the ducks do not have the necessary space to fly up and out. The water serves as no barrier to the animals either.. I am thinking of a pair of mallard ducks, since they are wild birds and more savvy fleeing from predators. Also Indian Runners. They stand up tall and funny, and look as if they will topple over forward when they run. But they are known to be be fast enough runners to elude some of their enemies, too. Any other advice out there in the duck/goose world?

So these pictures are living proof that it only takes a few days of dry to relatively dry weather in order for spring to start bursting forth in the Pacific Northwest. Even if we still have a fire lit in the house to keep the chill at bay.





This one is my favorite............. have a nice day!

Recent Reads........

I love to hear, read or otherwise obtain life stories from just about anyone. I find what makes others' lives what they are, fascinating. These last few evenings I have been reading Stolen Innocence, by Elissa Wall, the story of one of the FLDS Cult young woman's childhood, forced marriage at age 14, and all of the mental brainwashing and abuse that went on. I already know that she escapes out from it, but so far in the book, she is still trapped under the wicked, evil power-hungry, egotistical lustful men in the cult, as well as her own crippled, brainwashed mind, and it has my sense of justice riled beyond comfort! I lay awake most of the nights after setting the book aside and turning the lights out, writhing and fuming. I know there are good, loving men out in the world who truly follow God and not themselves, but this book opens my thoughts a bit more to the power that men wield over women in the societies of the world, INCLUDING the U.S. of A. This book holds clout in my mind, as it is written by an ex-member of the sect itself, and not some outsider who simply gets riled at conservative values. Read it if you wish to discover something more about this cult than what has recently been all over the Media with the Texas scandal involving Warren Jeffs. On the other end of the scale, I recently finished 90 Minutes in Heaven, by Don Piper. Here is an always mind tickling account of one man's 90 minutes spent in heaven after he is declared dead at the site of an accident in which an 18 wheeler truck runs over his car, severing his left arm and leg from his body (dangling by skin), with entire sections of bone never found from his thigh. After he is returned to his body, he then recounts his long journey back to live a 'normal' life for him again, all the daily struggles and pain, what God has and is continually teaching him, and his immense comfort in knowing what awaits him for his final trip home to heaven!

I want to share one more that I finished on the flight to Hawaii with you, but will save it for another day.......... meanwhile, if you are living in the Northwest, crawl up in front of the blazing fire, grab a cup of cocoa and marshmellows and enjoy one of these books :-) (Eat your heart of those of you in the heat wave of California ;-)
(My fire today, June 18)

Father's Day

Happy Fathers Day to two important fathers in my life. First to my own father, without whom of course, my existence would be impossible. This is a picture from his younger years. I see my son, Scott, in him.......tall, lanky and self assured.............
He fought in WWII in the U.S. Army in South Pacific. He was a radar operator, searching for incoming enemy planes.

My fondest memories that my father help create for his family were our summer vacation camping trips. Here we are next to our 'trusty' blue Ford station wagon. It sure took us plenty of cool places, but we spent hours on the side of the road going over mountain passes because of broken fan belts. Bonding times, I believe they are called ;-)
And here are the three of us kids floating on our air mattresses at Blue Lake, I believe. We took 3 week long vacations every summer all over the Western U.S. and Canada. They were wonderful times. Thanks, Dad!

The second important father in my life is my hubby, the father of my children. We celebrated the day with a BBQ in the new BBQ pit the 'kids' made for us. We had dry, mostly sunny days this weekend (finally), and truly enjoyed our BBQ and fire with smores and dough-gobs following a delicious dinner of raspberry chicken, minted rice, vegetable skewers and fresh fruit salad. Most of it was made by the father himself. We are ALL so glad that he likes to cook and does a swell job with it :-) Though our own daughter, Bethany Jean, was not present (remember she and her friend Anja came over earlier this week while they had time off from work), we were so fortunate to have daughters of three other fathers from the Moses Lake area with us........ our lovely daughter-in-law, Bethany Lynn, and two of her wonderful friends, Krystle and Amy. Thanks, Dads, for letting us enjoy them for you. I know it is a sacrifice for you!

Mexico Eating..........

Two cute girls..........

Yummmm!

Ditto.............

Paco's Tacos............

Is there such a thing as a Mexican Hotdog?!?!
How 'bout a hamburger?

This is more like it....this was a free taco lunch by the pool.........
Breakfast in............lots of fresh fruits and Mexican Omelet..........

These were a request of the 'kids'.....

Hacienda Sisal............... our favorite place to eat dinner.........


Xel Ha.......All you can eat included with admission to snorkeling..........
That includes ice cream cones, too ;-)

Hacienda Sisal..........



This was a real declicious Tortilla soup



Luncheon on the day we went to the Chichen Itza Ruins at a fancy restaurant...........

Looks kind of yechy, but was really good!
Beets.............

Mexican Rice........
Vegetables........Garnished Cucumbers.........
Warm Pepsi..............
Bon Appetite!