Green and Growning

Due to recent rains, the grass is green and growing,
so even though it's August--Guess who's still mowing.
The dusty Deadwood Forest has turned into a jungle
And Tomato Garden Tangle is a topsy-turvy tumble
There's dew-drops on the crabgrass that lines the Eastern Heights
And the Southern Slopes resemble those slippery water slides.
I bogged down briefly in the mud on the level Cedar Flats
And the Western Front was deadly due to run-off ruts and tracks
But I sang my way through mowing as I chopped each grassy lane
It's a small price to pay for a summer full of rain!



p.s. No, that is not my yard. That's somebody's farm. My yard only FEELS that big when I'm mowing. I did name all the sections of my real lawn which looks more like this.

The Prettiest Little Doll in the World....

When I was a child in elementary school, I had two favorite toys. Every day, they sat on my perfectly made bed, (Lest you think I was a freakishly tidy child, the daily making of my bed was strictly enforced by my older sister who was a freakishly tidy child.) and at night they slept in the doll crib--with mosquito netting made from an old window sheer.
One was a stuffed Cocker Spaniel named Dandy, a Christmas present from my maternal grandparents, and the other was this little baby doll. He had been salvaged and pieced together by an elderly woman in the church. I loved him from the first, and named him Timothy William.

Years later my daughter, Carina, played with him, re-naming him Melissa and dressing him all in pink and ruffles.  During this time, at least once, he was submerged in a bathtub or a pool. I'm not sure who the culprit was, but, unbeknownst to me, the metal mechanisms that operated the eyes began to rust and the doll began to go blind. He was relegated to the attic, where his condition worsened by the year. When I re-discovered him, he was in no shape for bequeathing to any heirs. 

I removed the eyes in pieces with a hemostat, hoping I could buy new eyes and pop them into the front. That proving impossible, I cut open the back of the eye-pouches inside the head, took out the rusted mechanisms and glued the new eyes in with a glue gun. Then I cleaned the skin as well as I could and offered him to my grand-daughter.

Mimsy decided he was a girl--at least that was the "closest anatomically". She named him Nancy and smothered him with kisses. I think he's in good hands. Now I just have to find Dandy.

Repainting

I can't believe it has been five years since I painted the cabin. Well, since I painted three fourths of the cabin. The west wall--this one--was deemed too awful to paint. The siding was wavy where a year of rain--unheard of in this part of Oklahoma--coincided with a vacant, un-mown lot next door. Anyway, two things happened at the beginning of the week that made me want to paint again: the weatherman announced cool temperatures for the entire week (highs in the eighties and low nineties), and a friend gave me four gallons of paint that were too red for her tastes once she got them home. Paint is expensive.

I decided the time had come for me to finish the cabin. Of course, Turtle had to be involved, especially since the well pump had expired last summer and we were waterless. (That's a long story...but it involves a long string of less than competent people we hired to drill and set up a well, and one very good Samaritan neighbor who helped Turtle put everything right again and restore an abundance of good well-water).

Here's that offensive wall when we started: Only the little white eaves have been painted.

We had to replace about half the siding, and it took a full morning of looking to find a match, but Turtle persevered and was able to replace the worst part of the wavy and deteriorated wall.

 We had to scrape away all the loose paint, then prime all the bare spots and the new siding. Then came the fun part--blue.











The results were so drastic, it gave me an incentive to keep painting. 


 I began to look around the cabin for more touch-up jobs and discovered that I had neglected to finish the south wall as well. Twenty eaves. Yes. It took all morning.

 Wherever I saw a faded or chipped spot, I touched up, knowing, but not really caring, that this would lead to painting the entire wall.

 I kept painting on the cabin, while the guys worked on the well.

 The next day I bought a couple more gallons of blue and white so I could touch up the front.











Somehow...the well took a long time to fix. I ended up re-painting almost all the cabin, before I turned to my original plan, which had been to paint the shed out back. 








It needed a little scraping and a lot of washing. Turtle was through with the big water project, so thankfully, just in time for the celebration of independence, with fireworks in the background, we began to add red to our blue and white paint- speckled work clothes...and hair...and faces.

Sadly neglected, used as storage, the little building deserved something cheery...or cherry as the case may be.

 Roshelle's four-gallon gift was perfect. Thanks.

 What might have been too bright for a house looked amazing on the drab little shed.

Only one building remained: the well house. 











We scraped and primed and primed and primed. In fact I think the paint is what's holding this little shack together.











Unfortunately the red, white and blue week ran out before we could paint it. I'm reserving one more day of this busy summer to finish it as well...what do you think? Mary Ann blue, soaring blue (white really), cherry red like the shed, or imaginary day--a deep blue? I wonder?

Attacked by a Bird!

 This morning was pleasantly gray, fine for a walk until...ta da...a bird suddenly flew into my head. I don't know why. I don't look like a glass door, do I? I'm hardly tall enough to resemble an eagle's aerie. I just stood there, stunned by the blow and watched as two birds--one small and one large--kept flying over to rest in a tree near the elevator.

 It was odd. Maybe the smaller bird was being chased by the larger and wasn't watching where he was going. I began to take a few shots of the grain elevator against the gray sky while my scalp recovered, and suddenly that bird flew straight toward me again. I snapped his picture as he approached, then ducked and he sailed right over my head.





Once again, as he turned away, I saw that he was chasing a smaller bird. I don't know if they were playing tag, and the tree was base, but the big, bad, bird was definitely "IT". Leaving the area, I snapped a few more pictures and hurried home, eager to see if I had managed to get a picture of the bird before I ducked. Sure enough. There he is. He's a little camouflaged by the tree behind him, but you can see the approach.





If he had looked over my shoulder, he would have seen this old railroad track---a much better landing strip than my head!






UPDATE: Since I wrote this, I talked with some friends and also did a little research. The bird is a "Mississippi Kite" a bird of prey like a falcon. It does chase smaller birds and it also attacks humans if it perceives them as a threat. I was probably within twenty feet of his nest, hence the attack. Here is a link that discusses the Kite as a bird that does, in fact, live in Oklahoma:  http://oklahomabirdsandbutterflies.com/cat/3/20

Deadwood Forest and the Eastern Heights

I made a marvelous discovery today while mowing in the Deadwood Forest. Under the swooping branches of Grand ole Pecan, uncomfortably near the beached whale, (Please, don't ask me what a beached whale was doing in a forest; it's a mystery. Leave it at that.) I spotted a fragment of old parchment. The runes and diagrams were difficult to decipher, but I managed to read "...how to tie a rapala knot'. Thinking this might refer to a magic rope, I switched on the rope-detecting antennae. Sure enough, hanging from one of the lowest branches, was a knotted rope. Someone had been practicing. Upon turning the parchment over, however, I was able to decipher another phrase, "How to tune a rapala." Could it be that a rapala is a musical instrument, maybe the same one that lured the poor whale to his death here under the overhanging branches in Deadwood Forest?

The crude fish-shaped diagram on the paper fragment seemed to bear that out.

It was all too dark and drastic--an early morning mystery shrouded in a riddle cloaked in a puzzle under the shadow of an enigma.

I decided it was time for that second cup of coffee.

All is Never Quiet on the Western Front

I wish I could say that everything was quiet out on the Western Wilds this morning, but alas, things are never quiet on the Western Front. (Not even historically.)*
My lawn ship kept bumping into a steady barrage of asteroids and trash excreted by the messy Sycamore planets, not the least of which were puffball mines.
Being near the skylane, I had to watch for large transport vessels with solitary, sleepy pilots at the wheels. It was a clattering chore.

Cedar Flats, on the other hand, was very calm--deceptively calm, it turned out. They came at me with the little-understood sinus attack and I was forced to retreat to the fortress for supplies. Since I had no white flag to raise (I had used it already at the onset of the sneeze barrage) I was pursued and pelted with cedar histamines. Whew. What a morning!





*Yes, that's a thinly-veiled allusion to California.
Go ahead and protest, Californians, because in doing so, you will only prove my point.

Adventures in Mowing the Lawn

I've given official titles to all the sections of my lawn: The Northern Steppes; The Southern Slopes, The Eastern Heights, The Western Wilds, Deadwood Forests, Tomato Garden, Cedar Flats, and The Back Forty. 
(Lest you farmers give me more credit than is due, that's forty feet--not acres.)
 
If I don't safely navigate my star ship through each level of lawn, I'm not a worthy "Narnian Ninja" and will not be allowed to travel with "The Nine". 

This morning was adventurous: On the Southern Slopes, my starship was nearly enmeshed in the web of an untidy Dish spider. Fortunately, I was able to disentangle the vehicle and dump the web fragments into the Blue Abyss just before the Abyss Scavenger came roaring by to slurp it away. I know this means I may meet the angry steel Dish Spider someday...got to be very cautious on the Southern Slopes next week.


...and yes, I was that child who sank battleship cookie sheets in the dishwater and rescued poor, drowning spoons.

Castles in the Sand

 I think all children love going to the park, playing outdoors on equipment that's different from that in their own back yards. Slides, swings, see-saws and merry-go-arounds: the stuff of dreams!

Zaya and Mim ran first to the old equipment:  a brief spin on the merry-go-around and one climb on the monkey bars.



They bemoaned the fact that the "exciting" slides were gone, the same steep slides that had been there forever.. (Their uncle tumbled over the side of one and bashed his face at the bottom of the other when he was three. Well I tried to be a good mother, but I was never able to keep up with him.)

However, their disappointment didn't last too long. There, in the distance, on the other side of the park, stood the amazing, new playground recently installed by the Lions' club.

It was meant to be a child's dream world, creative, and safe. My grandchildren soon introduced themselves to other children and began to rush from one activity to another:

 Swaying drawbridges

Scaling walls and--rather anachronistically--a courthouse dome, and horseless carriages in the fiefdom.

A peep-hole and a portcullis, 
stepping stones across the moat.








Great attractions for all the little children in town, and comfortable benches for parents and grandparents to sit and visit at the entrance. Perfect.

But the children soon saw something even better outside the new park: A wide expanse of damp sand over under the volleyball net.

Where they played...














happily...













for...the rest of the morning.

 Ah...

 Bliss.

Not Really Alone

The worst part of being pastors in a small town for years on end, is that eventually you have to bury your closest friends. A month ago, to be exact, we lost one of our deacons, and I'm just now feeling up to writing anything about it.

He was a farmer. He loved land...and wheat...and cows, driving a tractor for hours alone under the burning sun and the unrelenting wind of Western Oklahoma, and it was a farming accident that finally took him, alone, beside a green field--seventy nine years old and still working as if the whole Western bread supply depended on his faithfulness.

He knew every thing about this part of the country, where to buy the best convenience store pizza, who to call when you needed an antiquated part for the combine or the drill. He spoke his mind and didn't really mind when other people spoke theirs. In fact, just about the time you thought he didn't hear your opinion, he would reach out his hand and invite you to discuss  it over a snack.

He was the superintendent and teacher of the adult Sunday School class, served on the Mennonite Disaster Service board, sang bass in the choir, and held a position on the school board for years and years. Last summer he noticed broken tile in the corner of my classroom and a baseboard that came unglued from the outside wall every time it rained. That fall I had a newly tiled corner, and the board was properly attached for the year. He had installed it with his own hands. It mattered to him and it mattered to me. He was passionate about supporting missions, praying for peace in Israel, a land he was proud to have visited, and serving Christ like an honest disciple. More like Peter than Thomas, he was open, honest, and eager to charge right into the fray.

He was Turtle's special friend. Every pastor needs someone like this man, someone who will drop in for coffee, speak his mind, brainstorm solutions, give advice, and be a sounding board for crazy ideas and an ally for good ones. Whenever there was a conference, he insisted that the pastor be sent there, even accompanied him and sat through the inspirational meetings and the boring ones. He drove Turtle into the city for hospital calls sometimes, and traveled eight hours to be at Turtle's father's funeral in another state. Turtle, even yet, pulls into his shell in shock some days and says he misses the man.

He didn't trust the internet, especially facebook, and would never have wanted me to mention his name for all the world to admire, so I'm not. God's admiration was enough for him and woe to the well-meaning soul who tried to give him open praise for his gifts and labors. Many a student who attended school on his scholarship never knew. Many a church family was helped financially, even at a time when there was little or no money left in his own bank account. He lived simply--no extravagance, no flashy, new equipment; the old would serve just as well for him. So he was able to give. Magnanimously. With great love he gave.

To his children and grandchildren and church family he left a fine example:  How to live. How to die. His heart was right with God above; There was nothing to confess, nothing to amend. He died alone out under the Oklahoma spring sky--but as with all God's true children--
he was never really alone.

Land of Wedding Enchantment

We finally arrived at Albuquerque to accomplish our foremost purpose for the trip--witnessing a family wedding. My cousin had invited us to visit many times, and we felt the wedding of her daughter would be a great reason to finally take a trip in that direction, and we were glad we made that decision...for lots of reasons. Seeing family that you haven't seen in years, affirming a couple's choice to sanctify their marriage before God and witnesses, enjoying meals together and catching up on the whereabouts and whatabouts of each other's lives: It's all worth the travel.

This sanctuary was a beautiful setting for the wedding, with light pouring in from outside and soft lamps filling in the shadows.










It had been the intention of the church staff to change to banners to red ones--to commemorate Pentecost, rather than Easter--but they waited until after the wedding, making the bride happy since her main color was peach..Here are the bridesmaids and the maid of honor--twin sister to the bride. .









The greenery of the foyer made a great backdrop for pictures. Here, two very lovely ladies take a moment to be photographed together--the bride and her grandmother, my mother's only sister.

Here's the couple, all smiles, as their minister signs the all important document in the background.

 And here, again, at their reception, which was held in the ballroom of the balloon museum. It was a clever idea to hold it there, really, because the guests were given access to the museum and were allowed to roam throughout, looking at exhibits and visiting the gift shop while the wedding party was being photographed.

The museum was constructed to look like a hot air balloon on its side (at the entrance) and later  upright (in the ballroom).











Standing on the balcony gave one the feeling of riding in a basket far above the city.

Inside were fascinating balloon displays and interesting facts about their history. Several varieties were on display. 

It was light enough for my camera to capture a few of the shots from the grand staircase that bore us aloft. Of course the food tasted wonderful, especially since I had stopped counting calories for vacation excuses. We were treated to a variety of foods--from brisket to enchiladas--with all the trimmings.












The next morning was Sunday. Turtle and I found a church near the hotel and enjoyed being anonymous worshipers. Later, we joined my cousin's family for lunch where we got a rare chance to sit and visit for the afternoon. We chatted with the newly married couple, watched the wedding video and posed for a picture in the kitchen.

Turtle and I both admired the neighborhood park--which looks bleak in this picture, but is actually a wonderful maze of hiking trails which ascend and wind around this mountain.

It looks a little more to scale here. We were tempted to take the afternoon climbing, even though the wind was whipping steadily around us, but our time in the Land of Enchantment was running out, so we abandoned the idea. Now I'm wishing we had stayed over another day. I could have clambered all over these rocks with my cousin and her little dog Bailey, and we could have had a good visit before she settled down to putting everything back together from moving her daughter out to an apartment.



I think this is my favorite picture of her neighborhood in Albuquerque. The ground is dry, but just look at that sky--all clouds and shade and fresh-smelling breeze!









We saw rain in the distant hills as we drove out of town, but never felt a drop ourselves.

We ate at this little restaurant along the way home on old Route 66. Across from us sat an odd trio of foreigners who had arrived in this vintage car. One was dressed in what looked like the uniform of a Confederate soldier, another like a cowboy, and the third like a Western rancher.. They spoke English, but their accents were very different from everyone else, and they seemed to be role-playing a part, like actors getting into character before a shooting.





In fact, I questioned my assumption that they were from abroad until I saw the "cowboy" surreptitiously sniff the bottle of Heinz 57 that was on his table, wondering what kind of sauce it was.

Anyway, I'm sure they found New Mexico a great adventure...unless they were from Australia, in which case they probably thought it looked a little like "The Outback"