fall in the Okanagan

What a blessing to live in the land of bounty. After a few days of cloud and sprinkles, yesterday the sun came out and we were still in our shirtsleeves at 9pm. Yesterday was my first day of quilting with my friends so that is always anticipated except I arrived at 9 and the rest 10. Oops. Oh well, the coffee was made and I had read through all of my quilt books twice!!


After an evening of wings at our fav place, we grocery shopped. Now how is that for excitement in a senior's life. We came home, got hooked on a movie on tv and stayed up until 12:30. We are still up at 6 so a nap is already anticipated:)

I LOVE this time of year

Gardening 101

As I have read various emails throughout the summer, I have been listening to the joys of gardening. Flowers, vegetables, canning, freezing, and my mind is drawn back to gardening through the years.
When first married, I thought gardening was the thing to do so I had my husband dig a garden plot for us. Now he must have had high expectations because the plot was large enough to put our entire home of today in!!! I tried but thistles, stray cows, hungry horses, rain and early frost dampened my hopes of domestic bliss.
In later years, I got another wisp of desire and had H. build me a raised garden. You can imagine the magnitude of the size when my niece asked me why I still had a sandbox in our yard!!! As fall came, I got the brainwave that burning the fall leaves on my garden would keep the mess contained. Then it snowed and the leaf cleanup was halted. Two weeks later I noticed what looked like smoke trailing up from my garden. My soil was a high content of peat and even the snow could not quench the fire so I ended up burning up the soil and three layers of logs that raised my garden. Undaunted, I rebuilt only to have the coyotes eat all of my carrotts. ( I am not kidding, I saw them dig them up and eat them!!!!)
I decided, wisely, that the farmer's market was a much more reasonable produce spot.
But I moved to the Okanagan where ANYTHING grows. H., once again built me a raised plot (3x5 does not qualify as a real garden). In that space, I planted 5 potatoes, a 1/2 row of radishes and 1 1/2 rows of carrots. It did not take long to realize that perhaps our soil was a little on the rich side (plus I didn't plant it until mid June) and the garden quickly started to germinate and just kept on. The potatoes were 2 feet high, fell over and killed the radishes and carrots due to no light. They did not bloom. H. wanted to tear them out but I have always been sympathetic to anything willing to live under my care. I left them in their gregarious green splendor.
Today, I dug around under one of the potatoes. There were little potatoes. You cannot imagine my excitement. I dug up the one plant and there were seven potatoes. Well, five were large marble size, one golf ball and one small tennis ball. I cooked them proudly for my mother and I and they were awesome. My hubby listened patiently to my excitement and suggested that I leave the rest of our bounty to grow up a little.
Tomorrow mom and I are going to enjoy one of my four tomatoes that survived on my two plants that I had carefully groomed in pots. hmmmmm....farmer's market is which day?

Professional procrastinator

The sun is shining, the weather perfect ( not sweltering) and I should be sewing drapes. But.... last night equipped with advice from many of my friends, I went on a stairwell picture hanging frenzy, finding myself involved in a very important task that took me away from the drapes (which I fired on my sofa in frustration before the hanging adventure.)

My daugher in law and I had decided, upon her last visit, that I should showcase some quilt art I had done ,in the stairwell, filling up a puzzling space I had in our home. (eek a wall with nothing on it!!!) My other friend told me how it was a piece of cake to vertically line up pictures with the simple aid of a pin, thread and a button. (I reinvented this theory by just keeping the spool attached to the thread! I was amazed how efficient this new plumbline was.

I started with the lowest (the only one I could comfortably reach), found the space on the plumbline, guessed about where the nail should go based on the approx. distance from the picture wire to where I wanted it to hang. I couldn't find the hammer, so I cleverly banged in the nail with a pair of needle nosed plyers. Did I mention this is on a dark red wall?????? I put the picture on my plumbed lineup source. Too low. I carefully pulled out the nail and raised it, grateful that the now white first nail hole would not show.

Picture #2 was a little higher and a little heavier and in just the wrong position. Too high for standing on the landing of the stairwell and too low for leaning over the stairwell. I reached through the railing, found my plumbline and started my nail. However, the plyers did not pound well from this angle and how I had a 1/4 " hole in the wall which would not be so bad except the wall was red, the hole very white!!! I went in search of my hammer in my newly organized quilt studio. I am sure I put it somewhere logical but it illuded me. Digging in my drawer, I found the new substitute, my meat tenderizing mallet!! It is metal and except for the tenderizing uneven portion of the "hammer" it seemed like a doable substitute. Unfortunately, I had left the needle nose plyers between the rails on the stairwell, they slipped and were now sticking straight up out of the carpet below. (Thank you Lord that hubby is in Alberta!!)

Armed with my mallet, I managed to hang #2 with only three holes behind the picture and one teensy tiny white mark just above the picture.

#3 now loomed before me. Grace is not my finest feature and I knew I should search for a suitable ladder but I wasn't sure where to look so a foldup chair perched next to the open stairway seemed like a viable option. My plumbline was now too short for this last picture but I carefully removed my pin and slid it up the wall. That attached spool of thread caught the picture at the bottom making it skew but leaving it attached to the wall. I leaned out into the stairwell just to check about where the now very heavy picture should go. This time I measured just where the nail should go, trial hung it in the air. It looked good so I took my meat tenderizer in hand, leaned out and pounded it in, hitting the pin and sending it, the thread and my plumbline into blissful oblivian! The good thing? This picture was right where it was supposed to be-first try.

As I looked at my handiwork, I was pleased. As I admired my work, the sun shone through my stained glass window and made rainbows on the pictures. I think God was telling me to get on the ark and quit destroying the earth (or in this case my walls). The sun has now gone behind a cloud, my pictures are hung and I think I will go mow the lawn. The drapes will survive a little more procrastination.

Too bad it is not my birthday. I think I need the

little picture hanger tool thingy.

To quote my son from his early highschool essay,

"I know I need to quit procrastinating, but I just never get around to it."

Tomorrow is a new day.

33 years

Wow, 33 years of marriage. We smile because, to be honest, if our children didn't remind us, or the ever faithful facebook, we may have forgotten. It is definitely not because it is not important to us, but just our lives together, not neccesarily the day :)

In fact on this our anniversay day, one is in Alberta and one in BC, one choking on smoke from local fires (actually it is the BC fires that are choking Alberta), and one home for an appointment that she can't keep due to a cough and cold!

Howard is at camp. He is doing what he does best - serving others. Actually it is kind of cool that he is working on a new location for a place that changed our lives.

It is where we met.

It is where Howard, as a little boy accepted Christ.

It is where we served together directing a bunch of teens when I wasn't much older than most of the campers!

It is where we celebrated our oldest's first birthday.

It is where our son found a spring job that would keep sending paychecks for his overtime hours so that he could serve at.............. camp.

It is where he met his wife.

It is where I went kicking and screaming to our first "heritage builder's camp" (I was NOT old enough), only to find a week of celebrating our Lord, our friends, and an awesome camp staff. Taxi!!!

It is where I learned that I loved working in a kitchen and where, for the first and only time, my sis in law was allowed to boss me:) I also learned that you could send chocolate pudding right to the ceiling and over the dish pit when mixed on high and teenage guys will eat pudding whereever it lands!!!

It is where I sat at a picnic table 35 years ago and listened to a dear saint who has now gone home say, "who will carry on after our generation is gone?".

It is where I see the faithfullness of God as now his great grandchildren form some of the faithful, fun staff of our little camp.

We are blessed with 33 years of marriage. We are even more blessed by the people who have come into our lives, the opportunites we have had to serve others and the friendships and family who grow each year.

What stands out from my memories of our wedding day, the only sunny day of the summer of '77, was something our dear friend and pastor, Wes said to us. "Remember, above all others I have chosen you."

This morning, blessed by modern technology (cell phones), we were able to wake up to each other's voices (actually I was just waking up, Howard had eaten and was on his way to work:)

We confirmed that we still felt that way - we had made a good choice.

It is indeed a happy anniversary.

Glasses

To me , one of the greatest mysteries in our home, is the location of glasses. Not the kind you need for a cool drink but the kind you need so you can see which drink you have chosen.

How can it be when I just set them down on the counter because they were too hot, that they could miraculously move and end up on the toilet tank in a bathroom I seldom enter! It cannot be that man I married because he is not here right now.

In the past three days, I have lost three pairs and they keep showing up in random places at random times but never where or when I need them. I just spit polished the family room and there lurking in the aftghan was pair one. Pair two is on my face and pair three? I am sure I put them where I would be sure to remember where they were.

Wait, they are on top of my head!!! Mystery solved........... until next time.

Revolving Door

When you lives in God's country, it only makes sense that others want to share the joy and your home becomes a summer revolving door. I love it.

We had people play in our creek that we had never ventured into (in fact they built an amazing dam that we had to take down for the annual duck race :), I got to relax in the lake, sail with friends who were gracious to my little guests and gave them the helm and let them be the captain, we saw local tourist areas that we probably wouldn't have taken the time to do if we had been alone.

Having one sibling here, brought all the others and that made for a fun day of boating, playing and eating and eating some more. I am grateful for a hubby who is a pancake guru and barbeques up a storm while I swim in the lake. I think he would rather do anything than swim in the lake!!! Too cold, he says.

I have learned how to prepare for the next crew as I have people change their sheets and bring up the towel laundry. It makes it so much easier when you are welcoming the next crew.

The next guest will revolve the door without us as we look forward to blessing our friends with a five star hotel that is not an all inclusive :) in otherwords we won't be here so there is no cook! Hope they have fun.

After mosquitoes, rain, horses, mountains and great friends, we are back to start into the next round.

Wouldn't have it any other way.

de junking

What a joy to free yourself of junk or recycled treasures :) We were going to save our goodies for the local garage sale, but then found out that was another week away, so we loaded it all up and headed for the Sally Ann. We came home with a lighter load and a spring in our step as we had less unused treasures cluttering our home. Now we have no nighttable for the bedroom in the basement, in fact nowhere to rest the antique lamp. Hmmmmmmmmm, maybe I need to go to the garage sale :)