Eleven

Tomorrow I have to shop for a present for a boy who's turning eleven. I know he also likes to get as many dollars as he is years old. I know that because he quite openly says so. Kid knows the value of a dollar.

Sort of. He found a way to print monopoly money on his printer at home and was quite excited that he could generate more money at will. When his grandma and I tried to explain why printing more money decreases the value of the money, he was puzzled and somewhat annoyed.

Of course, the rule doesn't apply in Monopoly anyway.

Great nature's second course

Last night, I read an article (via Instapundit) about how important it is to get enough sleep, and I was so convicted I went straight to bed.

Liturgy

I'm not a Roman Catholic, but I like to watch Catholic services on EWTN. One reason is that I like liturgy. I like that they say things every week and have these responsive parts of the service. Another reason is because there are not many other church services on TV that I care to watch because it's not always done with integrity. A lot of church services on TV are at best highly schmaltzy, even cheesy, and at worst manipulative attempts to get money. Finally, it's handy that EWTN shows a church service every day, not just Sunday.

Regarding the authenticity of the daily mass on EWTN, it's a worship service held every day by a Franciscan community of brothers in Alabama. So the purpose is not to make a TV show but for a monastic community to have a worship service, and they also film and broadcast it. It seems to be a small sanctuary with about six rows of pews, and people from the outside the monastery attend.

And it's great that they worship every day. I can only go to church on Sunday, but I can watch this service any day, if I happen to be available to have my TV on at one of the broadcast times.

Then, the liturgy. The priests and helpers process in, there are incense and candles. I've started to know some of the responses. I know when to say, "Amen," or "And also with you." I like that, giving the blessing back to the the clergyman when he blesses the congregation: "You, too. Back at you."

I partially know the prayer of confession, but not fully. I searched it on the web and this is how it goes:

I confess to almighty God,
and to you, my brothers and sisters,
that I have sinned through my own fault,
in my thoughts and in my words,
in what I have done,
and in what I have failed to do;
and I ask blessed Mary, ever virgin,
all the angels and saints,
and you, my brothers and sisters,
to pray for me to the Lord, our God.

I like that the congregants ask each other to pray for them in their struggle with sin.

I also know the responses to the priest's words before communion:

Priest: The Lord be with you.
All: And also with you.
Priest: Lift up your hearts.
All: We lift them up to the Lord.
Priest: Let us give thanks to the Lord, our God.
All: It is right to give him thanks and praise.

When I was a little girl, attending Protestant chapel on Air Force bases, I knew the Lord's Prayer, the Doxology, and the Gloria Patri by heart even before I could read, because we said or sang them every week. And if not before I could read, at least very close to it, I also knew the Apostles' Creed by heart.

I still know them all because anything you learn by heart when you are a little child you remember all your life. But I don't know what the next generation will know by heart. I can't imagine the looks of astonishment if I went to my church's worship community and suggested we use certain worship elements every week. Well, I do them an injustice. When the children go to children's worship, they exchange blessings with the congregation every week, although there are at least two different blessings they use, depending on the season. And when the pastor finishes reading the Scripture passage on which he is going to preach, he says, "The very words of God," and the congregation repeats, "The very words of God." When I was at Regent College I grew accustomed to a form used often in Presbyterian churches (and perhaps others) after the Scripture reading, where the reader says, "This is the word of the Lord," and the congregation responds, "Thanks be to God."

In my church's worship services we follow a certain pattern every week, but we vary the specific words and songs. Perhaps this really does help keep it from becoming words without meaning, which I suppose could happen if you did always use the same words. But like I say, I wish there were ancient elements that we share with many Christian traditions that we used often enough for children to absorb them into their hearts.

Whoever said "orange is the new pink"

In the movie Legally Blonde, starring Reese Witherspoon, the main character says (if I recall correctly), "Whoever said 'orange is the new pink' was seriously twisted."

Tonight when I got home from work, the sky was full of the sunset. Pink clouds and orange glow. I thought that, while in fashion orange and pink don't go well together, in sunsets they do.

Something to ponder.

I didn't take a picture, so for visual interest I must include an Amazon link to Legally Blonde instead of a picture of a sunset.

Or, close your eyes and imagine a sunset.

Sunday night

Still cloudy and cool, but not cold, today. Still working my way through Wolf Hall.

Since I have nothing much to mention, here's the Old Testament reading from today's lectionary, in which I have emphasized the part that seems most beautiful to me, although I have no special application for it:

Hab 1:2-3; 2:2-4

How long, O LORD? I cry for help
but you do not listen!
I cry out to you, "Violence!"
but you do not intervene.
Why do you let me see ruin;
why must I look at misery?
Destruction and violence are before me;
there is strife, and clamorous discord.
Then the LORD answered me and said:
Write down the vision clearly upon the tablets,
so that one can read it readily.
For the vision still has its time,
presses on to fulfillment, and will not disappoint;
if it delays, wait for it,
it will surely come, it will not be late.
The rash one has no integrity;
but the just one, because of his faith, shall live.

Unmentionable

Another theme of Wolf Hall is incest, especially as defined by canonical law. Henry VIII became convinced that his lack of a son with Katherine of Aragon was a sign of divine displeasure at his having married his brother's widow. This was a forbidden marriage by Roman Catholic canonical law at that time (I don't know about today), and therefore a pope had to grant a dispensation for it. When a later pope would not annul the marriage, Henry VIII took the stand that the pope had had no right to overrule canonical law in the first place, and furthermore that the pope had no authority in England, being merely the "Bishop of Rome," while (Henry and his legislators alleged) the papacy was a later corruption of an earlier tradition in which the sovereign also was the religious leader of his people.

Anyway, Henry thought marrying his brother's widow was incest. Later, one more of many reasons he found to discard Anne Boleyn was that their marriage had also been incestuous because Henry had previously had an affair with her sister, Mary Boleyn (their affair is a known historical fact; there were also rumors that, earlier yet, Henry had had an affair with the Boleyn sisters' mother, but Henry himself denied that).

Then, Anne was accused of incest with her brother when the king wanted reasons to execute and defame her. Also the novel's plot gives credence to a rumor that has survived (the truth of which is unknown) that Jane Seymour's father had an affair with the wife of his son, Edward Seymour. Finally, in the fictional world of the novel, Thomas Cromwell has an affair with his deceased wife's sister, which I don't think has ever been speculated by historians to have occurred.

A Man for All Seasons

I do think Wolf Hall portrays Sir Thomas More unjustly, as some kind of priggish hypocrite who got a sadistic pleasure out of torturing Protestants. More held office in an age when no country practiced religious toleration. He was a devout Catholic who did not want to draw persecution on himself when Henry VIII took England out of the Roman Catholic Church but who would not deny his faith when he was put on the spot. He did not seek martyrdom, but he was willing to die for his faith, and I respect that.

He also started the Tudor fashion for educating one's daughters, which was carried out to such stellar effect in the case of Henry VIII's daughter, Elizabeth. It is perhaps ironic that Anne Boleyn, whose rise caused More's downfall, had the daughter who benefitted from More's trailblazing in women's education.

I know where is an hind

I'm reading Wolf Hall on my Kindle. Both my siblings have read it, and I realized from their conversation about it that it is about Henry Tudor's advisor Thomas Cromwell. I have read a fair amount about the Tudor monarchs, but not that much about their counsellors as separate people from them. I thought this would be sort of a biographical novel, so I was surprised at how slowly it moved--Are we still on the downfall of Cardinal Wolsey, and how long will the courtship of Anne Boleyn drag on? Poor Anne Boleyn--Henry VIII's passion for her changed England forever, but her role on the stage of history was a short one, especially her term as his queen, not for nothing is she called Anne of the Thousand Days. Later, examining the table of contents, I realized it deals just with a few years, which at first I thought must cover Anne's rise and fall, but on looking up the date of her death I realize must end prior to her downfall. It must be that the main theme of the novel is England's break with Rome.

Well into the story, you discover that Wolf Hall is the residence of the Seymour family, whose member Jane Seymour succeeded Anne Boleyn as Henry's wife. And Henry was involved with her before Anne's death. She was one of Anne's ladies in waiting, as Anne was a lady in waiting to Henry's first wife, Katherine of Aragon. I recall reading that on the day Anne was executed, Henry waited on a hill outside London for the signal she was dead (bells or cannons, I can't remember), and when he heard it he mounted his horse and rode off to marry Jane, who, incidentally, gave him the son he had tried and failed to conceive in his first two marriages (although at the cost of her own life).

Wolf Hall introduces as early, and credible, rumors about Anne that she was promiscuous and that she committed adultery with her brother, accusations that were brought against her when Henry VIII wanted to get rid of her. From the non-fiction I've read, it's hard for biographers to get a grasp of Anne's actual personality. She was the center and cause of so much intrigue and controversy, and all her contemporaries had opinions about her, but there are not many, if any, unbiased sources of information. Catholics viewed her as the whore who seduced King Henry from the true faith. Some Protestants viewed her as the virtuous queen who led England out of the cesspit of papacy. She seems to have been quite unpopular at court; only the king was enamoured of her, and when he turned on her, then she had no friends. Was she an ambitious, power-hungry, calculating shrew, the innocent victim of the king's lust, the powerless tool of her ambitious relatives, or the Protestant heroine? No one knows for sure.

My eye was caught early in the novel by the description of her "hard, impersonal touch-me-not smile." That is an allusion, I presume, to Thomas Wyatt's poem beginning, "Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind" which many believe is about his unfulfilled passion for Anne Boleyn. (A "hind" is a "doe--a deer, a female deer.") He uses the Latin phrase "Noli me tangere," which means "Touch me not." He was one of those later accused of committing adultery with her. His son revolted against "Bloody" Mary Tudor, when she became queen and briefly restored Catholicism, attempting to put Anne Boleyn's daughter Elizabeth on the throne instead. "Wyatt's Rebellion" failed, but despised Anne Boleyn's daughter, Elizabeth I, became arguably the greatest monarch in England's history.

The Lover Despairing to Attain Unto His Lady's Grace Relinquisheth the Pursuit

Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542)
Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind,
But, as for me: helas, I may no more.
The vain travail hath wearied me so sore,
I am of them, that farthest cometh behind.
Yet may I by no means my wearied mind
Draw from the deer; but as she fleeth afore
Fainting I follow. I leave off therefore,
Since in a net I seek to hold the wind.
Who list her hunt, I put him out of doubt,
As well as I, may spend his time in vain.
And, graven with Diamonds, in letters plain,
There is written, her fair neck round about:
Noli me tangere, for Caesar's I am,
And wild for to hold - though I seem tame.

Step into my parlor . . .

This spider looks like he's floating in mid-air. I could see his web--just barely--from some angles, but mostly it was invisible. That's how spiders catch insects. He's sitting right in the center of his web.

Sometimes on misty mornings you can see webs in detail because water is clinging to every strand, making the web look white.

Saturday morning

Oops. I went to bed last night and didn't post. I thought of it after I was under the covers, all cuddled up with my puppy, and I decided it would have to slide. Sometimes I'm just so tired at night. The nice thing about Friday night is that I don't have an appointed time I have to wake up on Saturday morning, so I can sleep out my full sleep. Work day mornings I have to force myself awake when I don't want to wake up. What I should do, I suppose, is go to bed earlier, but then I feel like all I do is work and sleep. I like a little time to myself in the evenings, so I steal it from my sleep.

This morning when I got up the sky was cloudy, but with breaks of blue.

I like cloudy, cool weather, mist, light rain. No rain today, and the clouds have cleared off, but still cool. It is Fall, now. My dad is mowing the lawn.

I sat on my deck a little while this morning. The 1/2-barrels on the other side of the pond have double impatiens in the middle, with creeping jenny (lysimachia nummularia) around the edges. Some of it did grow up and cascade over the sides as was my intent. Next year I think I'll buy more creeping jenny plants, hoping to utterly hide the barrels with vegetation.

A chill in the air

Yesterday and today we have had heavy fog in the morning that suddenly dissipates in the early afternoon, after which the sun shines beautifully. Today felt autumnal to me. More trees are getting color, the sun was almost down by the time I got home from work, and the air felt chilly -- autumnally chilly -- for my evening walk with the dog.

So it goes. Summer and winter and springtime and harvest, sun, moon, and stars in their courses above join with all nature in manifold witness to his great faithfulness, mercy, and love.

What a character

I was browsing through the Kindle store and accidentally ended up in the book category "Biographies and Memoirs." Among the actual biographies and memoirs, I was surprised to come across Glinda of Oz, by L. Frank Baum. Later I saw Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte. Good books, wrong cyber-shelf.

Back when I taught home-schooled students online, my local paper did an article about my job, and the reporter quoted me as saying that Jane Eyre was one of my favorite novelists.

Let's just get this straight. Jane Eyre, italicized, is a novel. Jane Eyre, not italicized, is a character in the novel Jane Eyre. Charlotte Bronte is the novelist who wrote Jane Eyre about Jane Eyre. Jane Eyre is fiction; Jane Eyre is a fictional character.

Ditto Glinda of Oz, Glinda of Oz, and L. Frank Baum.

Puppy dog eyes

Insert topic here

Oh,  no. Another night where by the time I think to blog, the only topic on my brain is how tired I am. So, what I would ask my readers to do is think of something funny, clever, witty, and/or profound, and then imagine that you read it here. Better yet, write it in the comments.

And here's a picture.

Actually, looking at a picture of the sky does remind me of that topic that never fails to be of interest: the weather. The last couple days it looks like fall out, cloudy, windy, rainy, but then when you actually step outside the temperature is extremely mild, like summer.

Lighter Fare

I finished the Bonhoeffer book, and it was good. Now I'm in the mood for something light and relaxing, so my second Kindle purchase was a Georgette Heyer book, The Reluctant Widow.

Let there be light

This afternoon, I went on a light bulb changing spree. I had a total of five burned out bulbs around the house, and I replaced them all. Fall equinox has come and gone, the days are getting shorter, and I need more light indoors.

Early autumn pleasures

I accidentally went two days without posting. It's because I've been so involved in reading this book about Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I'm up to the part where he's just been transferred to the second-to-last prison he was in before his death in the final days of WWII. What a tragedy that such a brilliant theologian, who also was such a devout Christian with so much integrity to his faith, died so young at the hands of the Nazis. But his suffering and death are a witness, as he had hoped. The word martyr actually means witness in Greek. A willingness to die for a faith or principle bears witness to it.

Yesterday, I managed to combine reading this book with another favorite activity (if you can call it activity): sitting out on my deck. We had a sunny, pleasant fall day.

I sat out reading my book on my Kindle. Here's a picture of the Kindle when you send it to sleep--a random picture comes up:

And here it is with the book displayed. I have set it to a slightly larger type face than the default.

Here is the view to my right hand, where I have my coffee, glass of water, and Kindle all sitting on the hose caddy next to my chair.

Notice the dog in the background. He's standing by the door, which is his way of saying, "Why are we out here on hard surfaces, when we could be indoors on cushy ones?" Here he is yawning with ennui.

I enjoy what time I can on the deck now, as I know the days of that pleasure are numbered for this season. It is raining more frequently (this very morning, in fact), and it is usually sometime in October that I concede it has become too cold to sit outside, and I put the lawn chairs away, cut back the plants, and place all the pots and containers near the wall of the house, in hopes that they will stay a little more warm and sheltered there and possibly make it through the winter. Last year was a mild winter, and many plants did survive. When we have had more severe winters, then fewer do and I have to replace more of them in the spring. And, of course, some are annuals.

So yesterday afternoon it was a gift to be able to sit outside in the pleasant sunshine.

More Bonhoeffer

To them [the "German Christians" who accepted Reich rulership of the church], all that business about doctrine was folderol that didn’t matter to the man in the street. Bonhoeffer’s attitude was that it must be made real to the man in the street, and that was where the church was failing.

“A truly evangelical sermon must be like offering a child a fine red apple or offering a thirsty man a cool glass of water and then saying: Do you want it?”

"Do not try to make the Bible relevant. Its relevance is axiomatic. . . . Do not defend God’s Word, but testify to it. . . ."

Thoughts

In the biography I am reading of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, I have highlighted these thoughts so far:

"[T]here is always only one really significant hour—the present"

“The religion of Christ,” he said, “is not a tidbit after one’s bread; on the contrary, it is the bread or it is nothing."

“Christianity preaches the infinite worth of that which is seemingly worthless and the infinite worthlessness of that which is seemingly so valued.”

[H]e believed communicating what he knew theologically—whether to indifferent businessmen, teenagers, or younger children—was as important as the theology itself.

"God is free not from human beings but for them. Christ is the word of God’s freedom."

And the following, he reported to a friend, he said to a little boy who sobbed out his heart-break because his dog ("Herr Wolf") had died and then asked Bonhoeffer if he would see his dog again in heaven:

“Look, God created human beings and also animals, and I’m sure he also loves animals. And I believe that with God it is such that all who loved each other on earth—genuinely loved each other— will remain together with God, for to love is part of God. Just how that happens, though, we admittedly don’t know.”

Glowlessness

The remarks about my Kindle screen not glowing are not complaints. I'm sure that it's because the screen doesn't glow that the Kindle doesn't cause eye fatigue the way a computer screen does.

Well said

I think this is a good article:

Crusade Against the Pope: An Inquisition in Reverse

I'm unfamiliar with the author (apparently he's British, as the Pope just visited the UK last week) and the publication, but I agree that anti-Catholicism and anti-religiousness are bigoted and intolerant attitudes.

Too tired to justify my views further.

No glow

About my Kindle again. The screen does not glow, which means you need a light to read it by. That would be why one cover comes with a light. I hadn't really thought about it. A computer screen you can read in a dark room. In fact it lights the room up. When I wake up in the middle of the night and think that I might as well check my e-mail and Facebook accounts, the light that springs from the screen when I jiggle the mouse makes me wince. (I have sensitive eyes. I am a delicate flower.) Last night, I wondered if I could take my Kindle to bed and read, even though my headboard light has a burned-out bulb. But when I turned off the light, no glow from the Kindle screen. So I guess I should replace that light bulb. Meanwhile, Amazon does seem to sell a separate light for the Kindle as well. But I'm not in a big hurry for it. I'm not one to read in bed a lot anyway. I'm more comfortable on the couch and will read there until I get so sleepy that I must stagger off to bed. In fact, I think I'll go do that now.

Kindling

Yesterday my Kindle arrived. I charged it up and starting getting acquainted with it. You can use it while it's charging, so I didn't have to wait hours before using it. I had also bought a cover, which arrived several days before the Kindle. The Kindle has a user's manual installed, plus two dictionaries: the Oxford Dictionary of English and the New Oxford American Dictionary.

I bought a book and it downloaded. It is Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy, by Eric Metaxas. My dad read that for the book club he and my mom go to. He kept talking about what a good book it was, and I was going to borrow it when he finished, but next thing I knew he loaned it to a friend of his who happened to drop in. So I bought it on Kindle.

I read the first few pages of it last night, but really got into it during my lunch hour today. I'm still in Bonhoeffer's childhood and youth. He had two or three older brothers in World War I. So far, one has died. I think maybe another one did too, but I'm not that far yet.

I'm interested to see how he moved from what seemed like pacifistic views prior to World War II to being involved in a plot to assassinate Hitler during the war. I feel that I've moved from a tendency to pacifism, but that I can't justify my change in terms of Christian growth. I was going to say I can't explain the change, but I sort of can. The Readers Digest version of the reason is: 9/11. But are my increase in patriotism and decrease in pacifism in opposition to my Christianity? Possibly, yet there they are. So I'm interested to try to understand how Bonhoeffer worked through some similar issues.

Thank you for sharing

I was driving home from work this evening, and I had the radio on when a lady in a commercial said:

"I've been in cat rescue for x number of years, and Brand X cat litter handles urine and feces odors."

"Urine and feces?" I exclaimed. "Tell me more!"

Sure enough, the announcer came on and reiterated, "Brand X takes care of urine and feces odors!"

It's so touching when after a long and tiring workday, you hear just the right words to lift your mind and spirit.

Poetry book recommendations

These are two poetry book recommendations for my sister and anyone else. First, The Classic Hundred Poems has good, well-known poems, with good commentary.

 Second, Bartlett's Poems for Occasions. If you are in a particular mood or thinking about a particular theme, or even a holiday, you can find some related poetry by paging through the table of contents, and it's pretty much all classic, good poetry.

Just because

And, just because they keep being so beautiful, here are the hanging pots with begonias and bacopa.

Fuchsia blooms

Last spring when I planted my fuchsias, I mis-remembered how many I had bought for the four hanging pots. I thought I had 16, but I really had 12. I was on the third pot--planting four to a pot--when I realized my mistake. So the fourth pot has different-colored fuchsias from the other three.

These are blooms from the different pot:

These are the blooms of the pots that are alike:

The fuchsias took a long time to bloom this year, I guess because we had such a cool, rainy June. They grew as plants but didn't bloom until the beginning of August.

So I'm trying to enjoy them as much as I can in the limited time we'll have together. ("To love that well which thou must leave ere long," I guess.)

The beginning of fall

There has been a feeling of fall in the air since September started. Today I took photos of the first fall color in our yard.

At approximately the middle of each photo are yellow leaves, the visible sign of autumn.

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves or few or none ...

I'm trying to quote from memory the opening lines of a sonnet by Shakespeare. Now, I'll google it and have the full text in no time.

Here it is:

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see'st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west;
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the deathbed whereon it must expire,
Consumed with that which it was nourished by.
This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

The poet here speaks of himself, really, more than the season; he is in the autumn of his life, but autumn is that time of year when yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang upon those boughs which shake against the cold, bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
 
This autumn is not as advanced. There are more than a few leaves hanging on the boughs, and the choirs are not yet bare and ruined. The sweet birds still sing. But yellow leaves are here.

Weird weather

This evening when I got home from work, it was exceptionally warm outside. Not just not cold, but warm. And the wind was blowing, and it was cloudy. Sort of strange-feeling weather. Made me thinka storm must be coming. Later in the evening, at 9:30, it was cooler and raining.

It's a mystery

I've been reading The Scarpetta Factor, by Patricia Cornwall.

It was an impulse purchase in the grocery store the other day. I think the mysteries featuring Kay Scarpetta are ones my niece the nurse likes because Scarpetta is a medical examiner -- that is, one who performs autopsies to figure out why a dead person died. In this novel, Scarpetta does an autopsy in the early pages of the book, but not since then. In her defense, I am almost done with the book and I don't think 24 hours have passed in plot time. It feels a bit slow to me.

I'm only so-so interested. Maybe I should have started with the first Scarpetta book and gotten to know the characters from day one. This book has lots of looking back at past events that are the reason the characters are the way they are now. On the other hand, if all the past events described in this book are plots of earlier books, that would make this book quite tedious to someone who had read all those stories already.

Anyway, nothing against the book or anything, but I don't think I'll invest the energy to go back and read the earlier novels. In the words of Freddie Arbuthnot, a supporting character in mystery novels I like better (the Lord Peter Wimsey novels by Dorothy Sayers), "This show's a bit lacking in pep, what?"

Hats

Today in downtown Bellingham I saw two young men, early 20's probably, both wearing backwards baseball caps. I thought, Dude, what are you guys? Beaver Cleaver? Dennis the Menace? If you're old enough to drive, you're too old to look adorable in backwards baseball caps.

Later I modified it to, If you're too old for training wheels on your bike, you're too old for a backwards baseball cap.

I understand guys' urge to wear a hat. The brim shades your eyes (but not if it's a backwards baseball cap) and the hat covers your possibly unattractive hair. I knew a guy in seminary who seriously said he wore a baseball cap to cover up that his hair was dirty. But shade your eyes and cover your hair with a fedora or something classy. Baseball caps just don't improve a guy's looks.

So then I started wishing I lived in a time where adults were more grownup. Men didn't dress like boys. Except, on the other side, I don't want to return to the time of girdles, stockings held up by garters, heeled pumps for almost every occasion, and hair curlers made of metal that poked your scalp. On the other hand, comfortable pretty clothes with classy hats would be cool. Can you wear a veiled pillbox hat with slacks?

Anyway, if more men looked like Indiana Jones instead of Theodore Cleaver, I wouldn't complain.

The Beave: No.

Indie: Yes.



Oh, yes.

Although to be perfectly honest, Indie needs to shave. But in the hat department, he's #1.

Information

I have to apologize for yesterday's post. Nothing is more boring than a late-night post that says, "Boy am I tired." But I was.

I was following at least one piece of advice from Pioneer Woman's post, "Ten Important Things I've Learned About Blogging." Number 2 was "Blog Often." Whether long or short, blog often. So I decided to try to blog every day, even if not long. Last night, I was feeling ready for bed, just dead tired, but I hadn't blogged, and the only topic on my brain was how tired I was.

I seem to blog a lot about the weather. It was misty this morning and became sunny in the late afternoon. It was another beautiful drive home.

In other news, tonight I got a message from Amazon that the Kindle I ordered should arrive sometime from September 20-24.  That's exciting.

I tend to try to carry a novel in my purse so that if I end up in a waiting room (whether of a car repair place or doctor's office) or any other situation that requires sitting around I can pull out the book and read. Lately, I've tried to keep a book in my car to read while eating my sack lunch on my lunch hour from work. But of course I always finish the book at some point and may forget to replace it. With a Kindle, I can finish the book and replace it immediately, and never have to remember to switch a new one into my purse.

I'm set for life, I guess.

Just a tad bit more sleep

Tonight I feel like I'm dozing off in front of my computer. I am going to go to bed just a little, little bit earlier and see if that makes me a lot, a whole lot less sleepy tomorrow..

Rain, rain

Fairly typical Sunday. Dinner with my sister-in-law and her household. Grocery shopping. Home in time to see some aunts and an uncle who were visiting with my parents. Walked the dog in a real Washington rain -- small drops, no downpour -- like a cross between light rain and heavy mist. It gets the job done.

Last night, my dad was saying he thought that rain seemed to be better for the plants than watering. I said that as for my flowers, rain washes the leaves in addition to providing water for the roots. The same would be true for trees and shrubs in the yard. The main thing needed for rain with container plants, though, is that there should be enough of it to really saturate the soil in the pot. The potted plants can't seek water with their roots, like plants in the ground can. And I think soil in pots dries out faster than the ground. So they need lots of water.

Today's rain was good. Steady, mild, and prolonged.

Autumn in the Garden

Autumn in the Garden
by Henry Van Dyke

When the frosty kiss of Autumn in the dark
Makes its mark
On the flowers, and the misty morning grieves
Over fallen leaves;
Then my olden garden, where the golden soil
Through the toil
Of a hundred years is mellow, rich, and deep,
Whispers in its sleep.

'Mid the crumpled beds of marigold and phlox,
Where the box
Borders with its glossy green the ancient walks,
There's a voice that talks
Of the human hopes that bloomed and withered here
Year by year,--
And the dreams that brightened all the labouring hours.
Fading as the flowers.

Yet the whispered story does not deepen grief;
But relief
For the loneliness of sorrow seems to flow
From the Long-Ago,
When I think of other lives that learned, like mine,
To resign,
And remember that the sadness of the fall
Comes alike to all.

What regrets, what longings for the lost were theirs!
And what prayers
For the silent strength that nerves us to endure
Things we cannot cure!
Pacing up and down the garden where they paced,
I have traced
All their well-worn paths of patience, till I find
Comfort in my mind.

Faint and far away their ancient griefs appear:
Yet how near
Is the tender voice, the careworn, kindly face,
Of the human race!
Let us walk together in the garden, dearest heart,--
Not apart!
They who know the sorrows other lives have known
Never walk alone.

October, 1903.

All our love

It was a beautiful fall day today. I went to Bellingham to participate in the Walk to Defeat ALS organized by the Evergreen Chapter of the ALS association. ALS is amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, often known as Lou Gehrig's Disease. My oldest brother, Dan, dies of ALS in November 2006.

The first time I took part in the Walk was in 2006, and Dan was still there.

Less than two months later, he was gone. I have participated in the Walk in 2007, 2008, 2009, and now 2010 in his memory. Here I am there today with my dad and mom.

I wish we could send this as a greeting card to Dan, saying, "We miss you Dan! We love you! We'll see you someday, but it sure is a long wait. Till then, all our love."

Corn like heaven

This evening I went out to where my sister-in-law and my niece's family live. We had vegetables from their garden with supper. My great-nephew said the corn  (which he helped harvest) tasted like heaven.

Good commute

Tonight when I was driving home from work, the light and scenery were just magnificent. I work in Bellingham and live in Lynden, so I was driving north on the Hannegan Road. The sun was low in the western sky on my left. I put my windshield visor down over the window on that side. I drive through farm country between the two cities, pastures with horses, sometimes cows, occasionally llamas, fields with blueberries or corn, houses and barns. While driving to Lynden, Mt. Baker to the east would require me to look through the window of the back door (I get a good look at Baker and the Twin Sisters on clear mornings, driving south), so I don't look for it; however, some magnificent mountains are in the far distance up in British Columbia, Canada. Only a few trees are touched with color yet; mostly they are still green.

I always see the very first color already in August. Somewhere in the area there will be just one branch of one tree that turns red in August. Now it is a few more branches. Here in the Pacific Northwest, we don't get the spectacular fall colors for which New England is famous, but we get some. I am glad we are the Evergreen State, though, so that even when all the leaves have changed and then fallen, we still have green trees. Snow comes only occasionally in our winters, and doesn't stay long-term, so mostly the pastures and grasses are quite green all winter.

On my drive this evening, the westering sun made the all the colors--green, yellow, and the rest--vivid. The air was clear.

Here's a picture I took in February of this year of the Canadian mountains:

This picture was not taken from the Hannegan, and it's at a different season and time of day than I saw these mountains this evening, but it gives some idea. They were not as snow-covered today as in this picture. I realize I always look at and my eye is drawn to that sort of snaggle-toothed peak, but I have no idea what the mountain's name is.

Now, here's a picture I took last December on my morning commute of the sun coming up behind the Twin Sisters, and if you click on the picture to enlarge it (use your "back" button to come back), you will more clearly see snow-capped Baker glowing to the left of the Sisters:

This picture encourages me by demonstrating that even close to winter solstice, the sun is still coming up while I drive to work--it's not dark all the way. Also, I now go to work a half hour later than I used to (I start at 9:00 instead of 8:30), so that's all the more time for the light to grow.

Beauty matters.

Falling

I got home a little late tonight, so I walked the dog around 8:00 p.m. It was dark already, a sign of Fall. But it was just delightful outside. The air was cool--sweatshirt weather--but still, no freezing wind, just refreshing. My deck looked great in the gloaming. I swept and trimmed things this weekend, then we had several days of rain. Today it dried off and everything looked beautiful. I didn't sit out, though. I needed to get dinner for myself.

I like Fall, and I know that it will be followed by Thanksgiving and Christmas, which are great. The hard part about the shortening of the days is knowing that ahead lies the heart of darkness--January and February. I have to take as my "verse" Shelley's line in Ode to the West Wind: "If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?"

Methodical Madness

For some strange reason, I like this article:

Structured Procrastination

Cascading fuchsias

Last May I planted these fuchsias with the autumnal-colored leaves with a calla lily in the center of the pot. I hoped that the fuchsias would grow and cascade over the edges of the pot and the calla lily would grow lush and magnificent, as some have for me in the past in this same location.

Well, below is a picture of the pot this morning. For some reason my calla lily this year did not thrive and neither did the one I had last year. I think it's because they were some different "variety" instead of just the plain "calla lily." Next year I'll go to a nursery for exactly what I want in calla lily instead of buying from in front of a grocery store. However, I am very pleased with the way the fuchsia has grown. It is a bit longer on one side than the other because that's where the morning sun hits, but still it's beautiful 

Notice the sunlight. It was such a pretty day today, sunny and mild, just perfect.

Again

Perhaps I have posted pictures of my begonias pretty frequently over the years, and maybe it seems repetitive. But the blooms keep appearing and being so beautiful! The red petals so stunning and the bright yellow stamens in the middle standing out so brightly and distinctly against the red, even though they're so tiny.

Beauty is not repetitive, is it? You can't look at a gorgeous blossom like this and think, Oh, beautiful again--yawn. You have to think, Wow! Beautiful! Again!

Ladybug update

Well, it's been two weeks since I released ladybugs into my honeysuckle, and when I examined it this weekend, I still saw some significantly infested areas. I also saw some aphids on one of my fuchsias. So I bought some insecticidal soap in a spray bottle and doused all my fuchsias and the honeysuckle. So the result of my experiment was that the ladybug approach was ineffective.

Sunday afternoon enjoyment

It was a beautiful, sunny Sunday here in northwest Washington. After church, my dad, mom, sister-in-law, nephew, and I went to  CJ's Beach House in Birch Bay for lunch. I forgot to bring my camera, so took a few pictures with my phone. Here is one looking out toward the ocean. The tide is out but coming in.

Here are my sister-in-law and nephew. My nephew enjoys the sun; my sister-in-law is in the shade of our table umbrella, by her preference.

My mom asked me not to take her picture. I think she may have feared that the ocean breeze, which was refreshing, had messed up her hair. My dad did not object to having his picture taken. You can see that the cell phone camera is not a good enough camera to capture the background; that all whited out. And the picture doesn't do my dad justice. It looks like I caught him when he was just starting to laugh or talk.

Here's a better picture of my dad, from his most recent birthday, just to establish what he really looks like.

We had a most pleasant meal by the Bay, then drove to my sister-in-law's house for some ice cream for dessert, then came home. Then I took a little nap. All in all, an excellent Sunday afternoon.