The Pruning of the Butterfly Bush

I am half done pruning my butterfly bush. I still have alot of cutting to do. Butterfly Bush had gotten so very large and plumulous, {if that is a word}. I was cutting and cutting and imagining myself, had I the time to make baskets out of the precious many stalks that delighted me so, in the summertime. I want to keep them for ever, for the many butterfly and moth visitors that they attracted. It is Autumn, now. Time to bring it down so that it can grow more attractive in the next season. I had intentions of moving it to the backyard, but that would be too large a chore. I'll be happy, if I can take it down another half before snow fall. I may need a stronger pruning instrument. We'll see.

Now the leaves are off of Ginger and snap is half mast.

The okra is growing its last few beautiful veggies and my beets and beans are just popping their heads above the ground. Not really a garden, or a fruitful garden, but I learned alot and loved looking at my few plants in my veggie patch. Certain plants do very well and eggplants are not one of them. I didn't get one eggplant. I got a bunch of okra, but no eggplants. I will try again next season on my patch. The temperatures are still medium and I keep thinking that I can just throw the seeds out there and they'll do alright. But it is freezing at night and that is a problem. Well, Next year I may try broccoli.

I do fall so short of my mentor for gardening-- Rabbit, from the 100 Acre Woods.

Although he is a figment of AA Milne's imagination he is always calculating and always growing something. I keep getting distracted by the calculations of things when it comes to gardening. I have so much else to distract me. The other day I was admiring the handiwork of God in the persperation glands. The coiling and imaginitive way that those glands sit under the surface of the skin and do what they are intended to do. Were they always intended to look so confusing?









Sweat, persperation was a result of the fall. The sweat glands seem to look like that, {a confused afterthought of the fall}. As I was walking through Lowes, some brown eyed susans looked exactly like the sweat glands to me. They were coiling. I said I must have them. They are just what the sweatglands look like under the skin. I must see why they came up that way. The expensive flowers were straight and nice, these were in the bargain bin because they were, coiled up. I didn't get to put them into the ground until today and they were nearly dead, once I got them into the ground.
My hypothesis is that our bodies were cooler, before the fall and heated up as a result of the eating of the forbidden fruit. There was something about those brown eyed susans that made me look again at my pictures of the sweat glands. I plant flowers and God planted sweat glands. That is my small contribution to beating my swords to PLOWSHEARS.

Ginger and Snap, both have baby pears.

I do love my pear trees. I love the little fruit that they are both touting with pride today. The birdies love them too. This morning was about getting the weeds out of the front yard and cooking for the using of stuff that was going bad. I found 2 maple trees trying to bogard my red fern. I will not have it! I pulled them out and will pot them, until I find the right place for them. I really don't get over to spend time with my lamb's ears, like I wanted to this season. This evening will be time for the lamb's ears and Diva and Prima, who are crying for want of attention. For now it is time to clean the inside of the house in the heat of the day. Thank God for Central Air!

The Beauty of Family is knowing something special that can make someone else laugh or cry.

It is amazing, in a large family, how we learn to defer or intimidate one another. When we are cleaning up, what we discard and what we carry to its rightful posessor(if not owner). Nothing is owned, but everybody has something that is special to them. I found a coloring book under the oven, while cleaning. Yuck! I was about to toss it, it wasn't too skuzzy. It wasn't greasy or anything. Ezra yanked that book from me and held it close, figuring what pages were still left to complete. "One man's junk...", I said to myself. I never would have thought that the book would mean so much to him. But, glasses, when they are lost are valuable to the posessor and to the family. Our season of entering into one person's loss and joy, is the tie that binds our hearts in Christian love. Halleluia for glasses found and for the ability to go to church with one praise report, for our whole family. The glasses were found and Ethan can see again. whew!

Summer Breeze!

I was flying down the highway here in NC, doing 45 mph(that is fast down here) Freedom from sound and silly laughing voices, makes me a little melancholic for the days when my entire being was consumed with the infantile thoughts of my younguns. I do miss it. Now that they are all grown or trying to act grown. The last months of my 6 year old are melting into oblivion. My dreams of writing the when we were six for my Christopher Robin sons is now a real missed opportunity. I have slips of poems and funny thoughts around the house to dart the efforts. I have AA Milne's book laying around assisting my mental motivation and 7 is running up on me like a prowler.
I will get to compile the thoughts for my precious boys. I do admire AA Milne and EB White and CS Lewis for condescending their thoughts to the miniscule, for our entertainment.
I gave my Ezra a job to do. I told him, in my thought it was a clear command. "Go outside and pull the weeds out of my garden. I only have a 2'x2' Okra and Eggplant patch. He said "no!" and the hair on the back of my neck stood up. Self control not to knock him down. I controlled myself and said Sweetiepie, You will do what Mommy said, right now. He slowly understood my eye glare and quickly got his sneakers on. "There is too much grass in the yard to pull it all out." He, thought I was telling him to pull the grass out of the front yard, for some reason. These generation communication gaps happen all of the time now. They didn't happen as often when I was a 30 year old mother or a 35 year old mother, but now that I am "pushing 50", It happens every day. When we were 6 helps me remember that I am no longer 6, or 16 or 26 or 36 or...well, you know. I will finish it and I will figure out how to communicate with my children, even the "baby". Thank God for numerous "translators".

My Crepe Myrtle is blooming!

Hooray!
She has become so beautiful. Her blooms are fuschia colored and bountiful. I think that I will bring some inside to beautify our home. The table would look nice with a bunch of Crepe Myrtle alive and decorating it at dinner. The butterflies and bees are enjoying my butterfly bush and Sunday afternoon I found a very large cricket sitting in the center of my dying sunflower. She took shade and some food in my delightful flower. I tried to take her picture and she posed beautifully, but her expressions of enjoyment could not be caught by a photo.


After this I found a red buzzing visitor. I don't know what it was. I did catch it on photo, after fighting it and chasing it. She didn't like having her photo taken, so she lunged at me first, as though I was the butterfly bush. I had to play hide and seek with her on Sunday, before catching her buzzing around my blooms. I need a sign on my butterfly bush for the visiting butterflies, that says Expect to get your photo taken, if you are enjoying the flora here. This big red insect, that looked somewhat like a hummingbird, made Ethy and I chase her for her photo. It was like an Easter egg hunt for us and we had fun.:)

Father's Day is coming SHHHHH!

What will we do? We have put coupons away to buy our daddy a special gift, for Father's day. The family organizer has the coupons in her files. She has the day picked out to go shopping and we are chomping at the bit to do what we can to make it a special day.
The meal is my responsibility. For some reason, I thought we would have home grown eggplant by this time. But, not yet, is there a bloom on our little eggplant. We do hope that he is pleased and excited by our planned celebrations. We will see!

My daddy played memory games with me, from my earliest memory of him

He told me, that he started with telling me little things to fetch for him. He started with single items and then a list of 5 or ten things when I was too young to remember him doing this. Then, it was phone numbers. I was his phone book. He would offer a prize to the person who could remember Aunt Iva's phone number from home to Brooklyn, where she lived. He never, ever carried a phone book, wherever we were, he would say Jayne, what is Aunt Iva's phone number. I can't remember anything now. I am old. But at that age, I had them all in my mind. The only problem is that, I think that because he force fed all that informational stuff into my mind, like a computer, it forced out memory for regular stuff, like shutting off of the water in the tub and shutting off the iron. Those memory items, forgotten, had most serious consequenses, usually a bop in the head, or something like that. The other were a game. I gravitated to remember the phone numbers and my timestables and stuff like that.
"Jayne, what is Aunt Iva's phone number?"

Beauty is as beauty does?

You girls are always designing shirts, cartoons, cards and other creative things, dollies and such. I am always amazed that there are so many ways to design a room or put it together. Clean is better than, well designed, I say. Clean first and then pick up your pen. Clean first and then pull out the sewing machine. Clean first and then entertain your friends and family.
A beautiful raincoat and what did God send us? RAIN! Thank you Lord!