Stories and other stuff

What I wanted to do was to put on some comfy clothes and go eat ice cream with the folks from my church.  I like these folks and I enjoyed myself last year.  I wanted to go. But what I wanted to do was interrupted by what I needed to do.  Have I mentioned I can grow a weed like nobody's business?  Have I also mentioned that I have this garden? My house was a train wreck.  I have pets, so at any given time, my house is in any varying stage of clean.  It needed some attention and it got some.  The lawn is freshly shorn.  Now I'm watering it.  I weeded about fifty feet of carrots today, too.  The onions with the tops fallen over have been dug up and are on top of the ground.  I picked about a hundred feet of green beans.  I picked a peck of peppers.  OK, I'm sure eight anaheim chiles do not make a peck, but it sounded good. I weeded the beans as I went.  I don't mind the weeds as much as I do the grass.  The g...

I like the various stages of vegetable gardening. First you start out all excited in the planning stage.  You get busy prepping the plot.  It's fun because there are no weeds.  It's all brand new and then there's the anticipation of what you're going to plant and you imagine this huge bumper crop of vegetables.  You promise yourself you're really going to get after those weeds this year and it's gonna be grand.  In your mind, you can just taste the freshness of the things you'll plant and there's just nothing like noshing on a fresh vine ripened tomato. The planting is all done and you commence to watering.  You hope it won't get too hot, or too cold.  you hope for rain, but not too much.  You promise you're really going to fertilize this year, too.  And you do.  Twice. June comes and the peas you planted are doing OK.  You know though, that if this heat lasts your peas wont.  You pick, and pick.  You pick a five gal...

I spent a bit of time in the garden today, pulling and cutting down weeds.  I haven't done much up there in the last week or so and it was starting to show.  Today I made up for it. I'm pleased I did.  And, I had some unexpected help today, too.  June came over and we worked on the garden for a couple of hours together. We've planted and watered.  We've weeded, too.  And today, we started to reap the benefits of the hard work.  June took a couple of sacks of goodies from the garden.  She likes swiss chard, turnip greens, and spinach.  Not all together (at least I think not) but she harvested a couple of sacks of greens.  I accidentally dug up two red potatoes and gave them to her.  We dug up one of our yukon gold plants and she took a handful of potatoes to add to the two red ones.  She picked two nice sized anaheim chile peppers, too. My onions are deciding they want to be done much earlier than they should be.  I h...

Every now and again, I have to toss out a blog post or re-write it.  Today is hot and sticky and I just don't feel like tossing out the old one.  Too much effort.  So, instead I'll just rewrite the darn thing. I wanted to go to Jellystone today.  I didn't because I misread a text the wife sent me.  I'm kinda glad I didn't go this week, though, because if I hadn't gone to wal-mart the shiny thing on the counter wouldn't be getting hot. That's the long and short of it.  I was in a hurry and I misread the text that kept me at home instead of on the road.  No biggie. I did wind up letting her borrow Bucket.  I ain't happy about it but I can share.  It's like having joint custody of your kids, I suppose.  I even saw the mother-in-law person today.  She couldn't save me any money on my thingie because they don't get discounts on closeouts. Anyway, I am the proud owner of a Butterball electric turkey fryer.  I stopped at the W...

At eight this morning, I was on my way to Yellowstone.  Well, after coffee anyway.  I thought it would be a good weekend to run up.  I had a couple of extra dollars and three days off.  Overtime is looming next week which means twelve hour days for four days starting Monday.  No biggie.  I'm used to it and the money will certainly come in handy. At nine-thirty, I had other plans.  Probably a good thing.  I'm where I need to be and I'm getting some things done that need to be. I really love this house.  I told you the story of how the appraiser told me it sucks and maybe it does, but I'm comfortable here.  But there are things I can do to make it better and that's what I'm working on today.  I'm cutting down volunteer trees, mowing, picking things up.  Or I was, anyway.  I'm on a break because it's muggy out. Heat I can handle, but being a desert dweller, you throw in higher than normal humidity and it just sucks the ...

If you search the ol' archives, last year on July 15 you will see I posted a link to Psalm 51.  This year, I', going to copy, from the NIV version, Psalm 51 in its entirety in the hope that you, dear reader, will read it.  Nobody should ever have the hurtful memory on their birthday as someone I love very much does and on this day, every year, I will post this in acknowledgment before God and to y'all that the sorrow for causing that hurt lives on. I imagine it always will. Psalm 51: Psalm 51[a] For the director of music. A psalm of David. When the prophet Nathan came to him after David had committed adultery with Bathsheba. 1 Have mercy on me, O God,     according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion     blot out my transgressions. 2 Wash away all my iniquity     and cleanse me from my sin. 3 For I know my transgressions,     and my sin is always before me. 4 Against you, you only, have I sinned ...

I had an interesting, but short conversation last night with one of the guys I worked with.  I didn't start the conversation but it's the first time I had to come face to face with what I see is the start of a rift between Mormons and Christians. I was very careful about what I said and me, being me, told him the story of how a good Christian woman in Colorado had the courage and conviction of her faith to rebuke me for something in the most loving way.  I told the man that it wasn't my intent to insult him or his religion or to hurt his feeling after that and went into my remarks. I told him that from my perspective, the reason Christians don't consider Mormons to be Christians is that, for us, the last page of Revelation is where Scripture ends.  I then just made it personal for me by telling him that as the way I see it, the Bible talks of false prophets and therein starts the divide.  His point though, and I agree, is that if we could just accept grace withou...