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.

A Much Anticipated Road Trip

Because of the pandemic we haven't done much traveling this year. As a result, there are some of our kids that we haven't been able to see or spend time with near as much as we would have liked to. But there has been one event that we did not want to miss, by any means.  That was the baptism of one of our grandkids, Heidlebeere's son; so far we have been able to be to them all.  So we've really been wanting to go to this one, and things were shaping up so that it looked like we'd be able to go.  That would also give us a chance to see Moosebeere and his family as well.  We really wanted to be able to do that because it had been over a year since we were last able to visit them.  So this was a very much anticipated trip.  The plan, as it had shaped up, was to leave early on a Monday morning, hoping to get there by Tuesday evening.  But when Sunday evening rolled around and everything else was done, we looked at each other and realized that there really wasn't anything to wait for.  So we quick packed, threw everything in the car, and took off.  

And so it was that we found ourselves stopping for gas in Wyoming on Monday at a Sinclair station, you know, the ones with the cute dinosaurs that so many stations like to decorate?  This one, too.  Monday evening we pulled into Moosebeere's place after one of the better, quicker drives across the country that we've ever made.  I think we were anxious to get there.

Because of the pandemic, there really wasn't any place to go, so we just hung out at the house, enjoying this family that we hadn't seen for so long. The kids love playing on the trampoline, one of the more fun things they've been able to do with so many other things are shut down. 

It was fun.  It reminded me a lot of when I was growing up.  We also had a trampoline.  They were not nearly as popular back then, ours was the only one I knew of in the neighborhood and all the neighborhood kids loved to come jump on it.  Saw a lot of the same moves on Moosebeere's trampoline that we used to do on ours.

Anyway, one of the things we did do, since outdoor activities are generally acceptable, was drive up into the mountains for a picnic.

That was particularly nice since all the fall colors were still on.  Fall in the mountains can be really nice.

The variety of trees up in the mountains, at the higher elevations, is quite different from what we have at home.  And the added element of the mountains makes it really nice.

Up in the mountains you can see the colors stretch out for miles and miles.

We went way back in, up near the summit, which was about 9,000 feet.  Alas, there had been some cold weather just the week before we got there, including some snow, that had pretty much ended the colors up near the summit.  But driving there was really pretty.

At the top, we pulled out into a meadow, broke out the camp chairs, and had our picnic.  We had also brought our bocce ball game.  We've really liked it because even the youngest can play and have fun, right along with everyone else.  Its been fun watching the littler kids play it.  Some of them actually do pretty good with it.

Grandma got to spend some time with her youngest grandbaby, whom we haven't seen since last year when she was just a few months old.  Its amazing the difference a little over a year makes.  But what was really nice was that the little one took to her grandma right off the bat, they were good friends from the moment we walked in the door.  That made grandma really happy.

All too soon, our time with Moosebeere and his family drew to an end. It was a good visit, a relaxing visit, which I think we all benefited from.  Then it was on to Heidlebeere's for the main event.

The baptism was a little slow starting because the bishop had forgotten and was out of town.  Some last minute phone calls and juggling got the first counselor there, albeit a little late.

But in the end, the baptism took place and everyone was happy.

We also went picnicking with Heidlebeere's family, too.  This picnic was at a local park, rather than up in the mountains.  But that was okay.

The added bonus was that Stachelbeere has been staying with Heidlebeere since he graduated so we got to see him.  It has been even longer since we last got to spend some time with him.  So it was nice to see him, along with Heidlebeere and her family.

Camp chairs again, it was a good time.

Grandma had come prepared so one of the other things we did was make "slime" with the grandkids.  Kids seem to love slime, making it and playing with it. This time was no different.

So we spent time with the kids and grandkids, having fun and enjoying each other's company.  Unfortunately, all too soon it was time to head back home.  The trip was cut shorter than we'd have preferred, not by the need to get back to work but by an appointment we'd been unable to reschedule.  

So we hopped in our little Sonic and headed for home, making sure we stopped at a Sonic for lunch along the way.

I love taking our Sonic to a Sonic for lunch.  Unfortunately, they don't have them where we live so we have to make that stop when we're out west.

A good chance to get a nice hot dog; simple pleasures.

This was a good trip, a fun trip.  And now that we're retired and can go whenever we want, we might have to find an excuse to go again, certainly before another year goes by.

How Our Fathers Went Down ...

Recently we were able to make a trip out west to visit some of our kids.  This was a long anticipated trip but that's another story.  Today, it's something else.   I recently was poking around in Brombeere's family history and discovered that she has an ancestor buried not too far off the route we frequently take when we make this trip out west.  So we decided to make a stop and see if we could find the grave.

Originally, the plan had been to stop on the way out but we moved the time of our departure up which put us going by the cemetery after dark; we weren't sure we could find the headstone in the dark.  So we saved it for the trip home.  

The cemetery wasn't hard to find, but it was a bit out of the way.  Out on the plains, in the middle of nowhere.  Actually, it was a pretty nice setting.  We'd learned that this ancestor had moved out there after a conversation with a brother, who had suggested relocating.  Yeah, so that's what happened.  Unfortunately, a few years after moving they'd suffered a stroke and died and had been buried there, instead of in the county where all the rest of Brombeere's recent ancestors are buried.

So we stopped and had to hunt around to find the headstone.  But it was a small cemetery and it only took ten or fifteen minutes to find.

So we spent a while there, thinking and talking about the ancestor and their life, as we had been able to learn about it.  It was a good stop.  We were glad we had been able to stop.