Monthly Archives: July 2016

Halcyon Days and Sock Love

David and I celebrated our forty-eight wedding anniversary this past week.  We decided to take a whole week from weekend to weekend to celebrate.   It’s been a long week.  We wanted to go antiquing, but most of the antique stores we went to were either closed or more like junk sales than antiques.   We wanted to go to a Daylily farm and it rained cats and dogs on us.  In fact, it rained almost the entire week.  We did manage to get to Olive Garden for dinner which was very good.   But it was still all good.  When you have been married to the same man for almost your entire life, you don’t expect fireworks all the time, but we did do fireworks one night in our driveway with some old firecrackers and bottle rockets.  There were people shooting off fireworks all around us.  Some people don’t like this time of year because of all the fireworks, but I love it.  We have had a lot of fireworks in our marriage.  Some good.  Some bad.  As we looked back on our life together, we both feel it’s been a pretty good life.  When I said, “I do,”  I meant it and still do.

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We did get to Streamcliff Farm again and had lunch with our older son and his friend.  I managed not to buy any flowers this time, but I was tempted.  I don’t know what they feed their plants, but all the flowers are huge.

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We couldn’t get over how big these begonias were.

After lunch, we went back to the daylily farm, it wasn’t raining, and yes, I bought some daylilies.

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It’s called New Creation Day Lilies and do they ever have a lot of daylilies.  You picked the ones you wanted and they dug them for you right then.

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The first day we went there, it was raining, as I said. This lady was out in a garden picking off the dead blooms.  She had a bucket full.

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This handsome fellow strutted around crowing and keeping his hens in a row.

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There were several roosters and they were all crowing up a storm.  I love hearing roosters crow.  When we went to the Virgin Islands, chickens roamed all over and you could hear the roosters crowing.  It was such a pleasant sound to me.  It sounds like country.

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The day lilies were gorgeous.

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I brought one of these home with me.  Along with four others.

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We drove through storms during our drives.

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We laugh because we have driven through so many storms in our lives and made it out alive to tell about it.

What’s life without a few storms along the way?

It wasn’t all play however.  Our rhubarb just keeps on growing and we keep on picking it.  I have made two batches of strawberry rhubarb jam.

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The first batch was eaten up almost instantly.  We had company and there was a teen-age boy who really, really liked this.  We went through a couple of jars at that meal.

We have been trying to trap a groundhog that has made its home under our front porch.  This is what we have caught thus far.

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Several bunnies that we let loose back into the yard.

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And this.

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He/she was not a happy camper.  Don’t know whether it’s a male or female and I’m not going to check.

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His/her day was not going as planned. David took it over to the woods across the street from us. Hope it doesn’t find its way back.

Still haven’t caught a groundhog though.

But we do have a lot of these and this one is becoming a sort of pet.  Coming to eat under our bird feeders every evening.

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Peter Rabbit and Farmer MacGregor is no where to be seen.   You’re safe with us, Peter.

Remember when I went to see Susan Branch at a book signing in Cincinnati?  Her husband was handing out seeds from their wisteria vine that grows at their house.  I planted the seeds and now I have two of these.

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I am hoping they will grow and produce flowers one day.

Okay, I can’t get away without writing about socks.  My fingers have been flying and socks have been coming off the needles in record speeds!

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All different sizes. That little sock.  That’s my daughter’s size. She has very tiny feet.  In fact, her next pair I have to make a little bit smaller.  She wears children’s socks.  She certainly doesn’t take after me in that respect.

I peruse yarn webpages like I use to fabric pages. My quilting has been laid by the wayside for a time.   I cannot stop knitting socks.

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I keep buying yarn.

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I really, really like these yarns I got the other day.  All variegated and different shades of color.

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I have knit one sock from this and I absolutely love it.

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I’ve got me a lot of sock loving happening in my future.    Yippee!  I never thought I would ever get the hang of knitting socks, but now that I have, it’s really very simple.  Of course, anything is once you know how to do it!

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Speaking of gardens.  My garden is not doing too shabby.  These are some daylilies I have had for years and divided and planted all over the yard.   I got the first ones at a grocery store.

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I love my Summer garden.   Every year it surprises me.  When Winter gets here, I will think I will never see this again and then, it happens like a miracle every single year.

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I wish my mother could see my garden.  She loved her garden too.  Perhaps she can see it, but then, she’s in the most beautiful garden imaginable as I type.

I will leave you with a picture of what I call the “Screaming Tree.”  When the doctor’s house next door to us was torn down, they also took out deadwood out of an old tree and just left its carcass.

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Every time we pass it I think it looks like it’s screaming.  As if it cannot believe they tore down that beautiful, old house.

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What do you think?  Bye.

 

 

 

Freedom

I’m sitting here this fourth of July weekend thinking about my country and where it is headed. I don’t like to talk politics on my blog, but today I am going to, so if you hate politics, you may not want to read today.   I am very interested in politics and have always been proud to vote ever since I was able and have not missed a presidential election.  I don’t intend to miss this one either.

If you live in the states or not, you know we are going to elect a new president this November. We have two contenders.  One is a businessman who has never been involved in politics other than donating to various candidates through the years.  He inherited money from his father which he turned into billions with his business acumen. Along the way there has been a few bankruptcies of which he’s admitted were due to poor decisions.  It’s not as if he is the first person to ever go into bankruptcy, but you would think it by what his opponents have said.  Anyway, he looks at politics as something that gets in the way of running a country and wants to bring back the good economy we have had in the past until the politicians started making deals against their very country.  He also wants to protect our borders which have been left wide open for whomever wanted to come in.  In the past, the United States has stopped immigration for a time until people became assimilated to our country and our culture.  Learn the language and become American citizens. That doesn’t happen so much now.  People come from other countries and want our country to change for them, not the other way around.   We welcome immigrants with open arms when they come in legally and obey our laws and accept our culture.

The other candidate has been in politics almost her entire adult life.  Marrying a man who became senator from Arkansas and then became president of the United States.  He had his troubles in office and she did many devious things like having people’s tax returns in her possession.   Together, they helped run up the deficit, supported NAFTA and sent the country into turmoil with his behavior toward an intern and other women.  She ran a “bimbo eruption” action to stop any women from being heard or saying they were all lying.   She tried to write a healthcare bill that failed miserably in congress because she wanted to put people and doctors in jail for not following its edicts.   A book is now out about her telling how she treated underlings and others she thought were beneath her.   She has been under investigation for months about E-mails on her private server that should have not been there since they were government E-mails.  Now some countries have those E-mails to use as blackmail should she become president.

Neither candidate has high likeability polls. But one is more widely known than the other.

I picked my candidate long ago and intend to help him as much as I can to get into office.

The other thing I wanted to talk about was Brexit.  When England left the EU, I cheered.  I find it strange that people are against a country having borders and its own laws and it own leaders.  With the EU, many European countries were taking orders from bureaucrats in Brussels, Belgium, far away from the people they were ordering. No representation.  No ability to vote the bureaucrats out.   I found that rather odd and disturbing.  It would be like someone in Venezuela making laws for we the people in the United States.  Most of us would not like that one bit.  I am heartily hopeful that other European countries under the thumb of the EU will get out also.  Many do not know that the EU was thought up originally by Adolph Hitler.  He planned for one central government(Germany) to be over the states(other European countries.)  All the countries were to take orders from the government(Germany).  I find it astounding that so many European countries bought the EU idea after fighting a war to be free from an overbearing government.  Many of the young people who have grown up under the EU don’t know what real freedom is.  Maybe now they will learn and find it was a wonderful thing those who voted for Brexit did.

There is something about people inside them that yearns to be free. Free from overbearing, over regulating governments who stop our pursuit of happiness.   This November, we will vote for a candidate who wants to cut the chains of an oppressive government and the other candidate who wants to be more repressive. One believes our rights come from God and are mentioned in the Constitution.  The other wants to take away our guns. A right clearly mentioned in our Constitution.  We the people have a very clear choice. I pray we make the right one.

I hope all my fellow citizens of the United States have a wonderful holiday.  While you are at it, say a prayer for our country and our next president.  Bye.