Commonplace Book

"When we think of the resurrection of our Redeemer, I am reminded that the purpose of his life was to prepare us all, to make a path that we could all walk, that would bring us eternal happiness in his presence as well as in the presence of one another."
(George Albert Smith, Closing Address, April Conference 1950. Emphasis added) 

"The change we need will come less by activism, and more by actively seeking to understand each other."
(Sharon Eubanks, By Union of Feeling We Obtain Power with God, October Conference 2020) 

"There can be no certain protection to the people of the world in the future except by keeping the commandments of God and the counsel He has given to His children through His servants the prophets."
(George Albert Smith, Pres Smith's Leadership Address, Church News, Deseret News, 16 February 1946) 

"Social media is awash with hate. The language of politics has become ad hominem and vile. We seem to have forgotten ... that evil speech is a plague. It destroys relationships, rides roughshod over people’s feelings, debases the public square, turns politics into a jousting match between competing egos and defiles all that is sacred about our common life. It need not be like this." (Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Words That Heal, Tazria-Metzora 5780, April 22, 2020) 

"People have a hard time changing their minds. Once their minds are made up, they are relatively impervious to argument, evidence, and persuasion."
(Robert J Samuelson, Goodbye, readers, and good luck — you’ll need it, Washington Post, September 13, 2020) 

"No generation has ever lived without facing uncertainty. … We must not let the things we can't do keep us from doing the things we can do."
(Elder Richard L Evans, The Power and Privilege of Repentance, April Conference 1950) 

"Thy servant has sought thee earnestly; now I have found thee; ...and I will do well to hearken unto thy voice, therefore let thy servant rise up and depart in peace."
(Abraham 2:12-13) 

"I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not"
(Luke 22:32) 

"Faithfulness is neither foolishness nor fanaticism. It is trusting and placing our confidence in Jesus Christ as our Savior."
(Elder David A Bednar, We Will Prove Them Herewith, October Conference 2020)

"My beloved brethren and sisters and friends: I have in my pocket a wonderful talk; one I have been three months preparing. I find it necessary, however, to deprive you of the great pleasure of hearing it at this time because it has already been given. President McKay gave half of it, and Bishop Wirthlin and Brother Lee used most of my scriptures. I am very happy, however, to be in harmony with them."
(Marion D Romney, The Atonement of the Savior, October Conference 1953. This is how he began his conference address) 

"The only safety we have as members of this church is to do exactly what the Lord said to the Church in that day when the Church was organized. We must learn to give heed to the words and commandments that the Lord shall give through His prophet, ‘as he receiveth them, walking in all holiness before me; … as if from mine own mouth, in all patience and faith’ (D&C 21:4–5). There will be some things that take patience and faith. You may not like what comes from the authority of the Church. It may contradict your political views. It may contradict your social views. It may interfere with some of your social life. But if you listen to these things, as if from the mouth of the Lord Himself, with patience and faith, the promise is that ‘the gates of hell shall not prevail against you; yea, and the Lord God will disperse the powers of darkness from before you, and cause the heavens to shake for your good, and his name’s glory’ (D&C 21:6)” (Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Harold B. Lee [2000], 84–85). 

"I don't know what the Lord's eternal timetable is, but I am sure that He is happy to have it modified by the acts of men in the use of their free agency in bringing themselves to repentance. I feel sure that there is no dire prediction of any of His prophets that He would not be happy to have set aside by the repentance of His people."
(Elder Richard L Evans, The Power and Privilege of Repentance, April Conference 1950) 

"Where there is selfishness, natural differences of men and women often divide. Where there is unselfishness, differences become complementary and provide opportunities to help and build each other. Spouses and family members can lift each other and ascend together if they care more about the interests of the other than their own interests."
(Henry B Eyring, The Complementarity of Man and Woman, An International Interreligious Colloquium Vatican City, November 18, 2014)

 "In this church we ask for faith, not infallibility."
(Jeffrey R Holland, For Times of Trouble, BYU Devotional, March 18, 1980) 

"Those who think they know are at a disadvantage, as their assumptions put up a barrier between themselves and the truth. It's the ones who understand their own ignorance who will learn the most."
(Horoscope, August 8, 2020)

Little Kids and Scissors

You know what they say about helping little kids use scissors under adult supervision?  Yeah, it's something to keep in mind. There's a sweet little girl who has spent her whole life growing her hair out, and had gotten it long enough that she could wear some really cute little styles. 

Pig Tails, pony tails, or just combed out straight, her hair had gotten pretty long and looked really nice.  And, what is sometimes unusual, this little girl was usually willing to leave her hair alone when you put it up nice.  Some kids won't do that.

It wasn't done particularly nice in this shot but it shows how long it had gotten.  But then her brother got a hold of some scissors.  You know one of those moments where you only turn your back for an instant and then you realize it's too quiet?  Yeah, it was one of those moments.

So when that happens you trim and clean it up the best you can and then all you can do is wait for it to grow back out.  As they say, you can either get mad or get your camera.  She's still a little cutie.

How Did Your Garden Grow?

Historically, when we have tried to grow a garden, we don't plant until Memorial Day. Before then there's too much chance of frost rendering your efforts useless.  This year, we decided to give it another shot so when Memorial Day was past, we put in a garden.  That was a bit of effort. But we did it and then during the summer, we'd get out there and try to help it grow.  It was mostly Brombeere that was out there, pulling weeds and moving water. Keeping ahead of the weeds seemed nearly impossible.  Yeah, they're part of the curse, so keeping ahead of the weeds is a pretty big job.  But we worked at it and didn't do too terribly bad, considering this was our first serious effort in several years.  

We only planted a single row of lettuce but got several cuttings from it, cut some off and more grows.  I like that kind of veggie.  A nice supplement to the lettuce we like to have at our house.

We also got a fair amount of beans.  We planted bush beans.  They're also nice in that you harvest some and more grow.  So we got several meals of garden fresh green beans.  They have a flavor that is really nice, actually better than canned or frozen beans.

Brombeere loves fresh tomatoes so she planted several of those, several different kinds.  So got quite a few tomatoes this year.  And she tried some varieties that we'd never had before.  So there were big tomatoes and little tomatoes, red ones, yellow ones, and black ones.  It was interesting.

She also planted cucumbers.  Poor girl, she had to eat those all by herself.  But I don't think she minded at all.  She really likes fresh cucumbers.

More green beans.  Once they came on they kept going for a while.

Brombeere also planted a few garden squash, another vegetable she didn't have to share.

And so it went.  It took a little while for the garden to get started but once it did, it did pretty good.  Especially since we were gone part of the time and pretty busy a lot of the time so we weren't able to get out there and weed as often as we would have liked.

Maybe there were so many weeds because they thought they had free run of the place.  After all, they'd had very little competition in the last few years.  At any rate, by early October the garden was pretty much done, the weather was growing cold again.  We covered a few things before the first predicted frost but pretty soon it was just too cold, stuff quit growing.  While we didn't get enough to can anything, it still did pretty good.  Brombeere did make some pickles out of a few of the cucumbers, just to try something new, but for the most part, everything that we harvested went on the table. In the hope that next summer won't be quite so busy, we might have to plan on trying this again. That could be pretty nice.

She Said Yes

The other day we had something memorable happen at our house, something that I don't think has ever happened at our house before.  In all the years we've lived here, or in any of the houses or apartments we've ever lived at, this has never before happened.  It was pretty fun to see, actually.  And it's not as though it was totally unexpected. 

If fact, it's been coming for some time.  

This couple actually has been approaching this event in what could be described as a "non-traditional" order, which has been entirely okay.

So, knowing that is was coming but just not being entirely sure of when or where it would actually take place, it's been fun being a spectator.

Yeah, Heidelbeere got engaged right in our very own living room.  Good thing we recently cleaned it up!  Pretty slick, if you ask me!

Raking Leaves

We have several trees in our yard and so every fall we rake leaves.  Sometimes that's quite a job.  Last year we had some help from some of the kids and grandkids.  This year we did again.  That's always nice.

We don't have a big yard but we have several trees so there are usually enough leaves to keep us busy for a while.

We got a leaf blower a few years ago.  I think it makes it much easier.

But we also have rakes, which provides opportunity for little helpers to get involved.

That's always lots of fun, if not interesting at times.

This young lady also felt the pumpkins we had out for sale on our front yard needed to be arranged just so.

So, in addition to helping with the leaves, she rearranged the pumpkins for us.  Who knows, maybe it will help them sell better.  The pumpkins are actually part of a fund raiser our Young Women have done for the last several years; they provide the trailer and keep it stocked.  We just provide the yard.  But this future little young woman was doing what she could to help out.

We wanted to get the leaves raked so the city would pick them up.  Unfortunately, the date the city picked got here before the leaves were all down out of the trees. 

We have one tree in particular that holds a lot of leaves.  And, as luck would have it, a good half or more of them were still up in the tree.  

Actually, only one tree in our whole yard had dropped pretty much all its leaves.  All the others still have plenty left so we will likely be out doing this again.  

In fact, three days later you couldn't tell we'd done anything at all. The joys of homeownership, right?

A Good Year for Birds

Where we live there are lots of birds.  Some years we see more birds in the yard than others.  If we have the bird feeder out, we tend to see more birds.  This has been a good year, we've had the feeder out and tried to keep it filled all summer. And so we've had lots of birds in the yard this year.  And a bigger variety than seemed normal, as well.  They are elusive, they don't tend to sit still very long, so getting a decent picture is sometimes difficult.  But we have managed to get a few.

We've had nuthatches, they're smaller.  We've actually had a couple of different kinds of nuthatches.

The white-breasted nuthatch and red-breasted nuthatches.

We've had cardinals, they tended to come in the early spring but then we didn't see so many.  They must have elected to build their nest elsewhere.

But still, they're fun to see.  One year we did have a pair of cardinals build their nest in our yard.  That was fun.  We see blue-jays as well, but not very long and they are hard to photograph. Makes me wonder if they're just passing through as they migrate on elsewhere.

A new bird this year was a family of catbirds.  They did build a nest in our yard and raise a family, the same bush the cardinals had picked years before.  It was obvious how they got their name, their call sounds a lot like a cat.

And little black-capped chickadees, we usually see lots of them but they don't sit still long.

They tend to come to the feeder, grab some seed, and then fly off somewhere else to eat it.  So they go back and forth, between nearby trees and shrubs, and the feeder a lot.

All that activity at the feeders means lot of seed getting knocked onto the ground below the feeders.  So that's where we tended to see the squirrels, digging in the grass for the seed.  Enough this year that they didn't try getting directly into the feeders like they do some years.  That was nice.  

Never a shortage of squirrels in our yard, much to the delight of the dog that's staying with us. He likes to chase them but, of course, he's never gotten even close to catching any.  They are hands down way faster than he is.