Asparagus Beds

A few more beds in Barn Garden need to be made up, We did these this week for asparagus. Anna did an excellent job of clearing the area of weeds including along the duck fence.

When the weeds get thick at the fence line it holds the rain water in the garden area instead of letting it go on down to the pond. So yay for Anna for being diligent on those weeds.

We are considering putting down some of our weed mat along the fence line to keep the weeds from coming back. No body likes weeding fence lines. Ugh.

Dirt says my garden method just looks like a bunch of graves, that's why I usually try and make them longer than ten feet.

After the weeds were removed, I came along and helped her dig out the paths and build up the beds. Barn garden is going to become our perennial vegetable, fruit and herb garden. Asparagus will be just one of the stars in the garden here.

I'm definitely no asparagus expert. I grew some once but only got a small little harvest before the crowns disappeared and we decided to not garden in that spot any longer turning it into a lawn for the resident lawn ranger.

I will be building one more asparagus bed as another order of crowns is due in. Unfortunately I was unable to get my really big order because the grower that offered the crowns could not ship their product to Washington, not that their product was inferior but that in order to ship here there are some hefty inspection permits that the grower is subject to.

I did find another grower that has the same type of crowns and at a really great price but unfortunately the Hippy Hot Hut is taking up the funds at this time.

After the beds were built we had some whopper rain storms and the beauty of raised bed can be seen here as the water has made some mighty mud in the paths but the soil in the beds remains well drained and ready to plant.

The bed on the left was raked as smooth as the one on the right until I place the asparagus crowns in holes approximately two feet apart and then only covered them partially. Now it appears as if I was back playing WWll with my brother and we pretended this was war torn France with bombed up ground.

Both of these beds are Jersey Supreme, an all male variety. They are on two foot centers and I was able to get twenty-four in each bed. The newer Jerseys, Supreme and Giant are able to handle taking a small harvest the year after the crowns are planted. Other crowns need two years and if you start your bed with seeds, they need five years of growth before you begin to harvest.

I am now officially behind, well heck, officially, I was born behind and I have never caught up. I remember as a child my mom saying on Saturday mornings while we were working, doing things like dusting dustless baseboards, "Keep at it and then we can stay ahead of things."

For the most part, the ninety-nine point nine percent part, my mom was ahead of things, always. I on the other hand, even though I am genetically hers, haven't even been in the vicinity of "things" let alone ahead. So I guess it has always been official but now I'm re-admitting it. But I refuse to admit complete defeat! I never said that! After all it is my job to keep everyone back here in the "not ahead bleachers" entertained.

Therefore, I am, with Dirt's permission, delaying Vicktory Farm and Garden's opening, grand, semi or peep show. No matter how you slice it, it is delayed. Maybe when I get over some disappointments and actually have some blooming baskets, peas or some salad mixes to sell or give away, I will throw up the open sign but for now I'm in the busiest holding pattern I've ever seen.

Besides, and you'll love this rationale, April 22 is Earth Day, I hate Earth Day. It is Lenin's birthday. Not Lennon's birthday, although he doesn't impress me as a person either, Lenin like Stalin, yeah, his birthday.

The first Earth Day organizer picked it for that very reason. So even though I was going to open V- F&Gs with an anti-Earth Day attitude. I can't, it just doesn't feel right. Every day is God's Day and so every day should be a "get your head screwed on straight and take care of the things God has gifted you with," Day. Uh, that would include the earth, duh.

But it would also include using your brain and not jumping to ill conceived ill supported conclusions, for the green-beanies own fellow once said, "A lie told often enough becomes the truth." Well not really Lenny Dear, it just seems like it 'cause most folks swallow it.

Oooh harsh. And that from a hippy chick with a bran-new Hippy Hot Hut to boot.

Tol ja, you'd like my rationale for not opening on April 22. (I had randomly picked the day based on some other things I wanted to have the whole pressure of opening out of the way for, but Bet nearly immediately pointed out it was Earth Day,(how does she know that stuff?) at first I said "forget that date then." but then I thought I would lead my own personal counter-the-greeny-banana-heads movement, with tea, cookies and the hue and cry: "Com'on, Really Live, Go Persimmon!"

Alas it just truly is a bad date for me to pick to open to the public, groovy rationale or not. But we can still have a party, wait, lets have a party on... Wednesday, April 21st or how 'bout Arbor Day?

This is what happens, New Dear Reader, when Lanny spends the day sick in bed. (Long-time Dear Reader already knows I can go a bit over the edge when thinking).

Bits of the First of Christmas

Dirt and Anna work on the lights

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This is where I left you Dear Reader, just before our Christmas tree decorating night. Sorry if the break bothered you, but it was a tough and quiet week before Christmas and not looking any better, if you want the details on why Dirt and I are not our raucous jolly Christmas Tomten selves this year, google Pierce County Deputy, we've dined and joked and campfired with the man who survived being shot by a forty-five in the hands of a angry drunk and it brings tragedy like this incredibly close to home, especially after two Seattle city police were purposely shot in Oct. and four Lakewood officers gunned down in a coffee shop in November. It just seemed to get closer and closer. But all that may or may not be for another post, when I am ready to understand the sorrow I feel mixed with gratitude for the life spared.
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This year Christmas tree night started with my lights not working, that always happens to a certain extent but this year only one little strand worked and all the rest were duds. Of course I was in denial because these lights were my favorite yet, I am very sad that they are no good now.

Bet tenderly unwrapping the ornaments

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So while Dirt and Anna worked on the lights for over an hour, Bet unwrapped all the ornaments that she wanted to use. I have lots of ornaments and most of them don't end up on the tree, especially when the tree is a living tree. Living trees fill the room just fine, a grand specimen of our Christian take over of paganism, but they don't have nearly the same amount of hanging room on them compared to the ones we go to the mountains and cut down.

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Many ornaments either stay in the box or are used in other parts of the house, but not this year, this year we are low key, the last left clunker on the board to be exact. Many ornaments have gone with the two older girls, each of our girls has a collection of ornaments that either I have purchased for them or their older wiser friends over the years have brought them. It is hard to see some of them go, but I know what it is like to start off with no ornaments.

Anna carefully stringing the working lights

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Anna got over her frustration of burned out lights and the wasted time of putting on the first string only to have to take them off so that we could break out the new lights (I always have a large stash of lights, I pick up at the after Christmas sales).

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But then her frustration returned and the hand full of lights got tossed at the tree at one point. Patience, not a big virtue in this household with the Lanny clones, patience is for Dirt and his clones. So Bet took her annual job back. As each girl has become the "oldest" they not only get to sit in the front seat of the car when just the girls go to town, and represent St. Lucia, they are in charge of decorating the tree. Each has patiently waited their turn and went through training.

Ornaments collected over thirty-one years

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But Anna has claimed special circumstances and is requesting (nice euphemism for demanding doncha think Dear Reader?) that she be given a chance to do a few things, like decorate the tree. Hmmm where was she on the morning of December 13th?

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My ornaments go back to 1978 and my first Christmas tree away from home, when I was learning what it was like being autonomous, why I should never have been on my own, and why I value multi-generational living. But back to the ornaments. My first tree had only three ornaments, green glass holly leaves, a blown glass angel blowing a trumpet, which she misplaced years ago, and a clear glass bell. I still have all three.

One heirloom but many fond memories are collected here

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Doncha just love my gorgeous trays? They were an Ikea find. When my second oldest daughter was getting married here at Victory Farm and Gardens, I knew I needed some trays for my servers to carry the food to the tables so when I was at Ikea picking up ten cent champagne glasses (glass glasses) I found these for ninety-nine cents apiece. You know I bought those, the crazy design covers easily with parchment paper and these trays are tough and sturdy and big.

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Back to the ornaments. There is a real oldy in this second batch, the ball with white and colored sections, middle top of the tray. This ornament is the only one I have of my childhood and it brings back so many memories. My brother Chris, only two years older than I, would sit with me in the arm chair next to the tree and we would share twisting up the string that this ball hung on and then watch in awe as it spun itself around and around.

The lights on and the ornaments almost all hung

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For years, while the girls were little, they sat and watched from the couch as I carefully loaded the tree with lights, then ornaments, then on some years garland, some years ribbon, or bows on the tips of the branches. I only tackled tinsel one year, but on living trees it just means a mess and on a live tree it means that the goats and sheep wouldn't get their treat on January seventh so tinsel doesn't play in Vickville.

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Besides, the tinsel these days is no longer actual tin. My mom kept her tin-sel from year to year on special card boards she designed for holding it. She would carefully pick it back off of the tree at the end of Christmas, place it on the cardboard and when it was full she would tenderly wrap it in newspaper so that the tin-sel wouldn't get bent and crumpled.

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She was especially crazy covetous of her tin-sel, taking painstaking care of it, once it changed from tin-sel to plasti-sel. Plasti-sel develops a static charge in the winter air and clings and globs, not the pretty straight hanging shimmer of my childhood. She also carefully swirled angel hair around C-7 lights. Her trees were always so beautiful and carefully done.

Just the red berries need to be placed on the brances

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I'm terribly fond of mono-chromatic lights on my tree, I love visiting other folks' houses where they use multi-colored tree lights but Mom switched over to all white in later years and so did I eventually. Then I discovered that I really really like blue lights on the tree in my green room, in fact I even like blue trees.

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We have a lovely tall blue spruce by our flag pole now because I like blue with my green. But that year I didn't have any girls desiring to decorate with me. I decorated with long sleeves and gloves, alone. So I was incredibly excited to discover cork bark fir, or Abies Lasiocarpa Arizonica. They are an incredible blue, often blue-er than blue spruce but without the pain of the stiff poky needles.

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I have some Arizona fir waiting in the nursery area, just not big enough yet to handle the indoor job of shading the packages that Santa brings.

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This year we dug one of our unknown nursery trees here at our farm. It is a great tree, the dark green needles on the branches are long and full making the tree appear larger than it really is. I really like it. It does have a huge draw back, no fragrance. None. Zip. Even when you grab hold of the branch slide your tightly closed hand down the branch, open your hand and whiff, nothing. Blank. Gorgeous to look at but you really need to burn the evergreen candles because the tree gives you nothing for fragrance.

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We are looking forward to when our other trees can be used in the house and even more excited to go and pick up more saplings at the Lawyer's nursery sale, so that in future years our choices will be greater and we can share with those we love.

No cookie baking for the boys today

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The day after Tree Day was cookie baking day. Steph came out with the boys, but Kai decided that going to town to do errands with Dirt would be way more fun.

Oops they forgot something.

Now they are on their way!

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A long list of Christmas foods, treats and a few presents in hand and they were off. Kai was so excited and the stories Dirt told of his time with his grandboy were priceless. Dirt is an introvert, friendly but business first, Kai is an extrovert, eventually the business gets done, maybe, but it is people first. So getting through the friendly Christmas crowds four days before Christmas was a little difficult for Dirt.

Just a small sampling of the beautiful and tasty cookies

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The girls had a ton of fun making cookies and I had a ton of fun potting up forty-three Brugmansia plants that rooted since being trimmed off of the parent plants before they went into dormant storage earlier this fall. Ahh forty three water guzzling, fertilizer demanding tender tropical plants that are fragrant in the middle of the night.

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I could have sworn that I was not only not going to have any new brugs (brugmansias) but that I was going to bring the ones I have into bloom earlier than I did this last year and adopt them out to someone who has way more time behind the hose than I do. But Dirt has promised me an automatic watering system for all my fussy pots and so here I am the proud parent of forty-three big fat babies. Fairly evenly divided among three colours, white, yellow (Dr. Seuss) and peach.

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Funny, as a matter of fact on Tuesday and Wednesday, after Monday's Cookie and Brug Day, we went up to visit the folks where I first acquired my brugs a year and a half ago at one of their local nurseries. It was a lovely memento of a terrific trip up to visit newly acquired life-long friends. So really, I could never get rid of my brugs, even though the parent plants are no longer able to fit in the back of an Explorer let alone five of them all at once, they still remind me of the great time we had getting to know our Coulters better and further cementing our friendship. Now they are simply framily.

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We had a great time up in Coulter-land, just Dirt and I, the girls stayed home to take care of the farm and do the final touches on our easy quiet Christmas. We looked at lights, did a little shopping in Mt. Vernon, went to dinner one night at a great little public house and the next late afternoon in downtown Burlington at a terrific ma and pa Greek and Italian eatery. They have some wonderful yarn shops up there and Becky and I tortured the fellas with a couple of stops.

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We got home late Wednesday to a cozy home and happy girls looking forward to our Christmas Eve shopping date the next day. Due to November's remodel and lymph issues, December's pneumonia for me and Chippy Hacky's infirmity, we hadn't had a chance to get all of our gifting done, whether made or purchased.

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The plan was to spend most of the day out and eat dinner at a restaurant so that we wouldn't have dishes and clean up to deal with. We got a late start due to chores taking a bit more time than expected and the shopping didn't go as smoothly as we had hoped, some decisions had to be redecided a couple of times, by the time dinner was the next activity not a one of us was in the humor to wait to be seated, wait for food to arrive. So we grabbed pizzas (Dirt grabbed a turkey pot pie) and we went home to the oddest Christmas Eve we have had. That won't be happening again, if we can help it. It wasn't horrible, just not the lovely Christmas Eve outing that we thought it could be.

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The Tomten came through for the girls and dropped off their all time favorite jammies. Warm, snugly fleecy jammies, Anna's with penguins, her favorite, scampering all over the bottoms and Bet's have the cutest little bone chewing doggies, but Martin is a little put off by the raucous little invaders. It made for a wonderful fun and cozy Christmas Eve.

Lady Amber enjoying her Christmas treat

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Ahhh Christmas Day. Everyone found a little somethin' somethin' for themselves, even the dogs. The married children stayed in town a little later this Christmas morning and didn't arrive at the Farm until nearly eleven. The girls, Dirt and I had a lovely morning, I had decided the night before to just go to bed at nine and get up at five and finish the wrapping and packaging that I had left to do. That was one of my better ideas, a stellar move! So I was up and coffeed well before anyone else was up. Dirt made a nice unpretentious little breakfast for him and I, but the girls were up later and snitching cookies instead.

Aksel and Vicktory Farms 2009 Christmas Tree

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The boys came out to the Farm in their jammies and had a wonderful time just lounging and playing until dinner.

Steph put some past Christmas photos together for all of us

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Christmas Day was joyful and joyfully followed by the First Day of Christmas, or St. Stephen's Day or Boxing Day if you please, we opened our house to some friends for the day, meatballs and taters, Kathy's lefse, Pat's tiramisu, Pablo's, Fryers and Long's pies and treats and Bet's coconut cake, the Coulter's provided a beautiful prime rib that Dirt barbecued - slowly and the Bowerman's brought a keg of Pipeline Porter. Dirt was in beef and brew heaven for the day. Well, we all were, all thirty-five or so of us in less than a thousand square foot, one bathroom home.

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Sunday, the Second Day of Christmas, was a relaxing quiet one with our out of town company, we spent the day looking at pictures of our girls' childhood and talking about what we used to do for entertainment around Vicktory Farm and Gardens when Dirt and I were a young family.

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Monday, the Third Day of Christmas was a very very relaxed day, well for me. I was reading and planning knitting and garden projects, what the year and the next few months will look like. And early in the day Dirt and Anna went shearing. We came together later in the day and not unlike last Monday when we had spent an odd off day only to hear bad news in the evening, this Monday we heard that our friend's partner was taken off of life support. Hard news to hear indeed.

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Today, Tuesday, the Fourth Day of Christmas, we went to the Bowermans so that Dirt could pick up his tractor. The farm just isn't the same without the orange tractor. It was good to share a cup of warmth with my good friend Rebecca while Dirt got the tractor. They are much closer to the surviving sergeant and in fact it is the Bowermans who introduced them to our group of families. It is an odd and perplexing time. And it hangs in the middle of ordinary life.

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We here at Vicktory Farm and Gardens, hope that you have had a wonderful start to the Christmas season, that you have found all the time you need to reflect on our Lord Jesus and the incarnation of God and continue to as we go through the season of wonder and reconcilliation.

I'm Awake Again

Don't get cranky with me, I was asleep now I am awake again, breathing issues. When I fall asleep I slump, when I slump I cease to breath. This writing thing, it is rest for me. I'm drinking my fluids, mowwing down on vitamin C. Chewables, yum they are addictive, to a point.

There is a clam tide this coming weekend. I can't wait.

Ha I knew that would get you. "Whadda think I am? Dumb or sumpin?" Unless a miracle occurs I will not be going down to clam dig. Which is hugely disappointing because I did not go down to dig at all this fall. Next month is lambing season, won't get to go then. That would be a pout.

And even though before I got sick Dirt said I could go, it was a reluctant "You can go if you want." It is a two hour drive, Dirt has a big fat conference he has to speak at. And now? No thanks, I would like to be alive to see if my experiment with my onions is going to work.

Read this book once that portrayed heaven and our being there as a time that we will continue to learn. To this I say hooey. No way. And I happen to be a person who loves to learn, constantly. But even though it was fiction, that idea was so ridiculous that they lost me.


I also do not cotton to the popular silliness that heaven is a time and place for me to do the things I didn't get to down here on earth. Who gives a Rat Terrier's posterior about rafting the Colorado or climbing the local mountain when there is eternity with my Lord to finally enjoy. I cannot imagine anything including the death defying acts that I didn't do here being better than His presence. Uh, death defying, no longer an adrenaline rush ya think?


That said, the pull to see things through, children raised, onion experiments, it is hard to think that I wouldn't wonder how that all turned out. But really, I'm ready. In a heart beat, ready. I know it, God proved it.

The other day when I was up on the ladder pruning one of the trees I noticed the branch I was about to cut was intertwined with the power line that feeds our garage, barn and wash house. It wasn't really intertwined, intertwined but this power line has been known for being on a rotting cross piece coming from the pole.

I knew that I didn't care if I went, I actually asked God that if the power line came down and hit my aluminum ladder that I wouldn't be in too much pain for too long but then I realized that just about any way we go out is probably painful. I was up the ladder, ready to cut, when I stopped. I knew I was okay and ready to go, if my number was up, my number was up. But then I realized that my husband was out with one daughter with in eye shot and earshot of the area I was in and my other daughter was inside.

I thought about them, got down off my ladder got out my shorter wood ladder approached the cut from a more protected angle. Well I made my cut and see, I am still here. All that for nothing. Well not nothing. I know now, again, that I am okay and ready to go, ready to let go of the plow handle, not go back inside for one more look, one more thing. But that I will never be careless with my life. Especially in front of my girls.

Terry, loaned me a collection of Spurgeon's sermons. They are all on the Power of Christ's Prayer Life. Good stuff Maynard, you should pick it up sometime when you've got something better to do. (No, I did not leave any words out of that last sentence.) Anywho, Chapter Seven is 'Our Lord's Prayer of Glory'.

At the end of the chapter he says, "Dying is but going home; indeed, there is no dying for the saints." Let me back up a couple of sentences:


"Let us watch the Master's call. Let us not dread the question - who's next, and who's next? Let none of us start back as though we hoped to linger longer than the others. Let us even desire to see our names in the celestial conscription. Let us be willing to be dealt with just as our Lord pleases. Let no doubt intervene, let no gloom encompass us."


Please, don't yes, but. Not with your lips, not with your head, not with your heart. Please don't attempt to cite scripture that give you an out to cling.

We know Spurgeon's words to be true, we didn't even really need him to say it, so why do we not try to live it out? Some of us have heard the good news, there is nothing to fear if we believe on Him. Some of us have been blessed with evidence of something greater, so great we cannot imagine. Some of us have had the confirmation we need, we just need to remember.

My mom passed away fourteen years ago last month, December fifteenth. She didn't have a big huge faith, she had just a tini bit, like Bet's cat's name, she had a Scrawny Mustard Seed's worth. But it was enough, enough to over come heartache in her married life, enough to overcome what most can't imagine, enough to overcome her children not having the life she wished for them, and I am not talking about wealth and security, I am talking failed marriages and mental illness. Enough to overcome the painful drawn out death of her husband thirteen years earlier.

It was enough to get her through her fear of dying, dying from cancer of the pancreas, she knew she would die with or without treatment, she knew it would be painful. Along with my sisters, I did my mom's hospice care. the night she died we had tucked her in, did everything we could to make her comfortable and left her room. I had noticed that she kept attempting to rally for particular family members, ones that kept saying, "I'll see you next week mom."

Hello? Next week? You get to go home to a busy fulfilled life and you are asking her to wait? Wait on finally seeing her Lord whom she leaned on to get through all those things she had been through when we were all out of smart things to say. You were asking her to wait until you were ready, you've had six months, she has had six months of pain. So a few nights prior I had decided that whether it was to be that night or not, we would begin to give her the space to go. A bold forceful move for the baby.

I kissed her cheek and told her I would be in the next room if she needed me. She barely responded, a pleasant look on her face, no bright smile, but also no worried look.

In the wee hours of the next morning I went through the door into her room and there she was, reaching out with a smile on her face.


I knew immediately what had happened. She was never alone, her Savior was with her, he had always been with her and she had finally, truly understood and reached for Him, one last final time, to go with Him. I was glad to have been there, I needed to know that about my mom. My world at that time was filled with people all too happy to give doubt and at that time, I was susceptible to doubt, great doubt. There was no denying what I witnessed over the weeks and what I saw that morning. God's grace and mercy, my mom's scrawny mustard seed of faith, and His loving response, His tender care.

My mom had found the desire to see her name in the celestial conscription, willing to be dealt with just as her Lord pleased. No doubt remained, no gloom was in her countenance. The Lord was giving me a huge gift through her, if she could reach out with a smile, so could I. Daily. God, his grace and mercy, his words, were not imagination, not hopeful thinking, not a grand fairytale to get us through the days we covet if we just clung blindly.

I'm not saying that she had a death bed conversion. All her life, the years I knew, she had believed in the salvation that only came from Christ. Was her faith often shaken? No doubt. And there were times she was done believing, angry and upset with the God she trusted. But then hadn't Peter? She always came back to who He was. What I am saying is, she came to know who she believed in. She came to fully trust. She came to the point that Spurgeon is asking us as saints to come to right now in our lives at this very ordinary moment.

It will make every moment spent here clearer.

Seasonal Greetings: Part I

When I was little, a long long time ago in a galaxy far far away, I went to a parochial school and we wore plaid woolen uniforms (jumpers for little girls, skirts for older girls) with particular white blouses and green wool sweaters, even the socks and shoes were prescribed, white or green cable knit knee highs with soap and water saddle shoes (not sure what the soap and water thing was all about it is just part of the name for me), yet we still shopped for back to school things.


There were nice clothes to be bought for going to church on Sunday and nice everyday clothes, not to be confused with play clothes, to be purchased for our wardrobe for when we went to town. There were also book bags to be purchased and all the things that went in them. So suffice it to say there were "back to school" things that must be purchased, even in my family.


"Back to School" was not a bad time for me, yes I liked summer, my birthday was in the summer but fall is my favorite time of the year. September for me is like the real New Year; a new start on things, a chance to get it right this time, a time that is fresh with unending possibilities. I say this to note that I did not mind the whole back to school thing I only had two problems with it. Number one was that my birthday presents from my parents were most always some back to school thing. Mind you I was the youngest of six, I noticed that everyone else just had birthday presents, only mine were double duty, birthday and back to school needs.


The other problem I had with the whole back to school thing was that the stores had back to school signs all over the place; their racks and shelves were chock full of back to school things. Shopping with mom in the summer consisted of looking at all sorts of sweaters, wool skirts and the fabric to make fall wardrobes. These things did not show up in September, they didn't even wait until mid August, they were there in mid July or sooner, depending on the store - the fancier the store the sooner the fall wardrobe selections showed up.

Most times it didn't bother me because I liked fall so much, but sometimes I felt rushed, I didn't hate summer or even dislike it, so what was the stinking hurry to get it over with? I remember complaining once to my mom when we were in a particularly fancy store in the women's department, of course there were no signs saying back to school, but there where definitely fall clothing on every rack in sight. Well that complaint lead to one of my biggest life lessons.


My mother gently, methodically and for most of the rest of that day explained seasons to me. She explained that in order to enjoy the season many people had to think and plan for it well ahead of time. She explained that farmers for instance rarely did things that weren't really about what was going to happen six months from now.

She explained to me that grownups have to plan and think ahead and that it was only a child who could get away with taking one day at a time purely as it comes to them. Her words have stuck with me and when I find myself a victim of my own procrastination her words indite me. Only a child who has someone in their life pre-planning can blithely skip through life enjoying each isolated moment. But even children do a little future thinking, they certainly anticipate even if they are not planning and working toward a good outcome.

Now I know dear reader that you want to whip a Bible verse out on me and so I will beat you to it. Matthew 6:34 Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.

However, the key lies in the verse prior, there we see that it is not talking about only dealing with each day one by one, but of putting God first, resting in His best for us, it is not about not planning or planting "But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you." The verse is really speaking of attending to what you are to attend to and to not worry.

Ahh the key, not to worry. Not to fret, not to get our panties in a wad and freak out about what is or isn't getting done. The Bible warns sternly against the danger of worry but worry is not the same as preparation. The Bible does not condone childish flitting from one day to the next as our whims drive us along. The Bible does not condone the idleness that results in poverty, of the cupboard or of the soul.

Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider its ways and be wise!
It has no commander, no overseer or ruler,
yet it stores its provisions in summer and gather its food at harvest. Proverbs 6:6-8

My mom explained to me that just because the store mentioned school and essentially the end of summer was no reason for me to be upset and not enjoy the summer and look forward to the days in between now and the beginning of school. She said that just because she knows she has bills to pay in the future does not mean that she has to pay them right now today or have the money right now today. It means that knowing those things she and my father plan and prepare for his business to make the revenue it needs to cover what they know to be their expenses. To not plan and prepare is to invite disaster or, in the case of the farmer not planting his wheat, guaranteeing failure.

She took that day to bring up so many different industries that depend on at the very least a six month lead in. Being a farmer's daughter she leaned heavily on those examples and talked about not only planting so that you have harvest but all the planning and preparations that the farmer must do even to get to the planting stage, or the butchering stage or the milking, cheese making stage.

Retail, my mother explained to me, is even in the extra predicament of having to have the goods out so that people not only can buy them on time but ahead of time that the homemaker might also be prepared. She talked to me about how as a mother she appreciated the stores having the next seasons clothes out when it seems that the prior season has barely begun. It gave her time to plan and to budget out her needs, with her wants, with her ability.

Just because the store had beautiful plaid skirts and luscious woolen cardigans out in July did not mean that we had to purchase them that day. But even when we did purchase a lovely fall ensemble in August it would be silly to put it on when we got home and go out for a visit. When the store decorates their display with beautiful apples, Indian corn, cat tails and wheat stocks in July to get my mother to think about the up coming season, she in turn does not need to go home and decorate her home likewise. She would be silly if she did.

Just because the stores have Christmas things out the day after Halloween does not mean we must also decorate our homes at the same time. Just because they pipe in the Christmas music before Thanksgiving does not mean we need to go home and do likewise. Retail, like other businesses, deals with the next season before the current season is barely underway. But then perhaps we weren't meant to make retail areas the place where we hang out all day either. Retail is a place of business. Keeping that in mind may help if you feel cranky about their seasonal marketing displays.

If Aunt Suzie has her house decked out November first, with carols blaring on the stereo and pushing reindeer sugar cookies on you, making you open a gift and wonder where hers is every time you stop in from November first till her batteries run dead in mid December, then maybe you have something to get your panties in a wad over.

Worse yet, if the neighborhood puts a gun to your head or threatens to kick you out of the cul-de-sac if your house isn't decorated and you aren't hosting at least three holiday parties within the first week of November, then you ought to get your jockeys in a bundle. Those are our private lives, the lives we use the retailers to make easier and pleasurable. They are not the lives that should be following the retail business calendar.

Tag? I'm It? Family Secrets? Not No More!

Kathy tagged me and I believe that I am to tell five things you do not know about me. Which could be very different from telling five things you might not know which then could be an extremely short list - five things to be exact. But I am going with the first interpretation only cause I am feeling very writy.

Since I am writing to such a mixed crowd of people, some have known me for over eighteen years, some have only known me here for months or weeks, and some somewhere in between, I am just gonna let 'er rip. When you have discovered your five things you didn't know about me you can be done. (There may be things on this list that you knew but did you know I knew, and isn't that the point of getting to know someone? There are things you may even have guessed about me but did you know them for sure?)

When I am done I will not be tagging anyone else 'cause I doubt I have five people who read this who have not already been tagged by this whole thing but if you feel like playing along and you haven't been tagged then by all means "tag, your next" .

I love and worship one God; the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. I have loved him ever since I can remember. When I was just a little first grader and experienced my first Lenten season of being in Mass everyday and every Friday going through the Stations of the Cross I marveling at what Christ had done. I felt so close to him. I loved to gaze upon the pictures and crucifix that depicted His love for me, for man. And I was amazed, every day amazed. I know that I became a Christian sometime before that point in my history.

I really enjoy living on a farm not to far from where I grew up. I don't even mind that we have only rented and that we have no "family" home to pass down. Who knows, Dale, our landlord and his wife Norrine, could possibly die tomorrow and we would be without a house for ourselves or our animals. But that is really okay with Dirt and I, we are confident that God will have something in store for us that we cannot even imagine.

While I do not have a conversion "experience" that I can recall there were times in my life when I wished I could fake a new one so that I could have one to talk about but most of all so that I would not feel so crushingly horrible about my hideous rebellion toward the God I loved and desired to follow ever since I could remember.

I spell like a frog on acid. That's wierd doncha think. Oh wait, that word is "wierd" because it really is weird, even though the w is not a c, nor is the ie pronounced as "a" as in "neighbor and weigh" But I have no excuse for stolve, or most of the zillion other words I cannot seem to bring myself to spell correctly.

I am forever thankful that God's mercy and grace extended to me as a believer even after I committed every possible sin, most of them many times over, in just five years between the ages of sixteen and twenty-one. I was a murderer, a cheat, a marriage ruin-er, a liar, a God deny-er, a fornicator, a parent dishonor-er, an idol worshipper, a thief. And not in a sermon-on-the-mount sorta way but in a ten commandments sorta way, but God had reconciled me to Him, not just positionally, eternally, but here on earth yesterday and today. I may stumble but I know longer wallow in filth and vomit.

I like apple pie, I didn't as a child, but I do now. I also really enjoy mincemeat (lots of whip), pecan (warm, lots of whip), cherry (warm with ice cream), any berry especially huckleberry on Thanksgiving, pumpkin (lots of whip), sour cream raisin, lemon meringue. I like to make banana and coconut cream and I'll eat them, but not excitedly.

Here is something else you may not know, about me. I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that no one is un-redeemable, and it is heinous for any Christian to believe that any unbeliever or screwed-up-believer is beyond God's loving hand. I trust my God and I know my God can do anything, absolutely anything He chooses to do. But for any one of us to write someone off, to give up on someone, to say we have said enough, prayed enough, waited for long enough, been in pain over for far too long, think that they are beyond the touch of God, then betcha by golly wow we better be darn glad God does not think the same of us.

I really, really like commas; and semi colons are just too cute not to use a few each day!

I love my husband with the love God instilled in me to have for Dirt. I love my sons and daughters with the very same love from God.

My mother, bless her constantly-challenged-but-now-resting-with-God heart, was an English teacher who could write in Latin (of course there was no one in my world who could verify that what she wrote was correct but I believed her). She was awesome and very sought after for her talents as a teacher, a teacher of teachers in a field that she co-authored and later as a story teller. She would be bursting at the seams over this year's election, and busting with pride that finally her daughter was voting the right way (but still sad that I have not yet grasped the art of spelling or the capability of writing a decent, readable sentence)

We only have eight cats at the moment.

I dislike the phrase "in-law". God knit first Eric and then Mike and someday, God willing, two more men into Dirt's and my heart as if they were our very own sons. So how can I call them "in-law" when it is hardly the "law" that put them in my heart? Aside from my feelings even is the fact that God made Eric one with Steph and Mike one with Michelle, when I love one I love the other, the two can not be separated ever. I do however understand that I am very weird and no one understands when I say I have two married daughters but no sons-in-law.

We have nine dogs and it is the first time on this farm that the dogs out number the cats.

I suspect that my father would be busting out of himself over this election. He would have been wild over both McCain and Palin. I could almost hear him cheering with me as I listened to both speeches.

Mis-spellings are not the same as mis-typings where my fingers forget who they are and think they are a different finger or one of my "clever" fingers rushes ahead of one of my slower fingers. As clever as those fingers think they are it is interesting that they make the same mistake of arrogant impetuousness over and over again. (You may not have know that I think of my fingers as nearly separate entities, you may have guessed or you may not be surprised but did you know?)

My father owned four small businesses and was a consultant to others by the time cancer made him stop doing everything including living here on earth. During his life people often said that he reminded them of John Wayne, which always pleased my dad as he enjoyed the comparison. He was a hard working man, who never asked of his few employees what he wasn't willing to do himself. He had huge permanently stained hands, hands I thought all real dads had. He wore jeans that he cuffed.

I had a blue room as a girl, when I wasn't being shoved off to the sister in the yellow room. But when they had both left for college I resided in the blue room. Which I loved until our house was burglarized and the look out creep stubbed out a cigarette on my head board and one of the creeps defecated on the floor of the yellow bedroom.

I don't believe the death penalty should be used in any circumstance, in spite of how I feel at the moment of hearing about some horrific crime, see the statement above where I say that there is no one un-redeemable, and perhaps you'll understand why, but then maybe those two are totally disconnected for you, that's okay.

I have three brothers and two sisters. Did I mention we were a Catholic family? Just seven kids shy of a visit from the bishop or cardinal I can't remember which. Most of us married, all of us have children. I was the youngest but the first grandmother among my siblings. Their children were all waiting to finish college and save enough for elaborate honey-moons. Did I mention we once were a Catholic family?

I like horses, especially their fragrance. I like gardening and flowers for those fragrances too.

My mom's yard was featured in Sunset Magazine. My father hand dug most of our Christmas trees which he later planted in the yard. Not to mention all the "green" deer he came home with from hunting trips, no need to skin those "deer" just plant them. So my folks' house and yard got the write up but my dad had already passed by then. But I guess for him and where he is that was really small potatoes.

In some of my past gardens I have even grown my own dried beans. Did I mention that I live in the Pacific Northwest, the wetside? (pat of the back please)

My eyes are hazel, my hair used to be blonde then it went dark and now it is grey, not dyed. I'm 5'6.5" I have big feet and even larger hands.

My mom is from North Dakota and my dad from Okanogan County.

I scream when I unexpectedly see mice, although I don't hold my scream for as long as I used to, which used to be about five minutes (maybe they could die by being screamed at). Mind you I am not afraid of them and would even play and hold them (if I was sure they didn't have rabies (I read Ol Yeller)).

My folks were very aware of the hardships of the Depression. My mom witnessed first hand how finances destroyed the people she loved. She and my father worked very hard to ensure that that would never happen in their own family.

Dirt, my husband, has had his nickname ever since he was little. It has to do with being a catcher and the dirt sliding down his face from putting the catchers mask back on and then it stuck because of signs that would say: "fill dirt wanted" (Phil pronounced fill, get it?) But I like the signs that say: "Clean fill wanted." He works in aviation mechanics (he teaches it) and consequently always smells like my least favorite fragrance - fuel. Did I mention that one of my father's businesses was a service station (ask your dad what those are) and a fuel oil delivery service. Loved the dad, loved the station and the trucks, hated the smell.

I am really pretty cranky (a nice polite term) that we de-regulate the banking industry under the guise that everyone should own their own home, 'home ownership after all is what make this country strong' (gag) and now we are bailing people out right and left and the final straw for this camel, we, the government, are taking over the main idiots in all this - oh wait, no, the main idiots are the bright boys who deregulated the banking industry, gee golly who are they related too. So much for that "small government" promise eh? Small where you want to be small. Oh, but lets not call this welfare! Okay I'm done (for now).

I have eaten Lutefisk. And I am still alive.

My grandma worked for Scoop Jackson. This same grandmother was raised in a soddy in South Dakota before her family permanently settled in the Okanogan Valley.

I have told my daughters that if they have a problem with their spouse they may come over for a cuppa sumpin, a Kleenex or two and then I will send them back before the sun goes down because God hates divorce and to rip a body in two is a very violent thing indeed. And woe to the man, or woman, who for what ever earthly reason willingly, knowingly participates in such violence.

We had a daylight basement, on the back side of our house the basement was half exposed. There was an exterior door from the basement on that side of the house and my folks always referred to the walled in area that served as the entryway as a bilcoe or maybe bilcole. But as usually I can not find that term anywhere in the universe. My folks had a lot of names for things no one else had.

I believe that it is possible (but not probable) for the spirit of a dead person to "visit" you, but that it is entirely wrong, wrong, wrong for a live person to "bug" a dead person.

I am positive that my father planted barberry bushes outside my brother's windows for a reason other than landscape effect. He should have planted them all around the house, and in my brothers' car and at my school and…..

What we call intuition God calls discernment and it is a gift He gives to us. To bad we don't listen better to it.

One more "political" thing, Sarah Palin will not be a "role model" for my daughters, there are very few women who are, unless they are mostly at home with their children, single and working selfishlessly for the Lord or abandoned single moms working and fighting for their children in a cold hearted world. So I have some friends who my daughters are pointed to and people like Mother Theresa or some saints in the past (catholic concept here but not necessarily canonized). People in politics rarely ever move to "role model" in my brain. But that doesn't mean I won't vote for them, even vote enthusiastically. Unfortunately for my children their very own mother doesn't constitute as a role model for them. They darn well better do a darn better job than I have, even recently. Even non-role models can do things for us and teach us things.

Dirt is on vacation and so I have one more hindrance to getting things done.

I am verbose but then that is obvious by the time you got here. So on that note I end.

Kathy I hope you learned five knew things - it is hard to do for someone I have known for almost twenty years.

Okay, I'm Finally Sitting Down, Are You?

I really do not know where to begin. I have spent a great deal of time reading many blogs, catching up with "home".

This camping trip was a very good one, the best yet. In spite of rain, snow while picking huckleberries and tears on the mountainside while I thought of my parents.

I miss my folks a great deal.

My daughter, Michelle, and her friend Jenn made my mom's favorite camp dish, Noodle Medley. It made me think of my mom more than ususal. She was a trooper, always willing to go camping with my dad, crammed in a tiny trailer with her six children and at least two of their friends. She was a great cook in the trailer or over a camp fire. She dug clams, fished, hiked and kept a very tidy camp. One favorite memory was when we hiked up out of Salmon La Sac and she read "How Green Was My Valley" at each rest spot. I love that novel which caused the movie to become one of my favorites and a large piece of Dirt's and my parenting choices.

My mom was very pretty and always well dressed and made up, but she was willing to get grungy (in a very tidy way, like she was a movie star) and work hard. She helped my dad do much of the physical work around the house that they built together and I grew up in. She was my dad's bookkeeper for his business and that was hard on them both. She was a saver, she even saved leftovers that we so small that they went in with other leftovers to make it worth it to keep. A hold over from her childhood spent in the depression, I am sure but it was also an admirable trait for a wife of a self employed man. Along with her willingness to turn her husbands collars around to extend the life of his shirts, split sheets down the middle and sew them up when they were worn in some places but not in others, all those things she would do to stretch those dollars. Even when they could begin to afford not to.

She is a hard act to follow in many respects and I cherish the things she taught me. I tease about her lack of color in her decorating but her life was certainly colorful, and yes, there were plenty of things we didn't see eye to eye on but man I wish I had some more of that time back that we had. But God had other plans and I trust Him.

Verbiage

This frame of mind and writing was all brought on by acknowledging once again that a few of the words I use, like some in the very last post, do not exist in most dictionaries. Hope those words that I like to invent do not drive you too insane. And if there was "phrase check" I would have many more uncorrectable yellow highlights in my writings.

Considering Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary definition of verbiage it would be a combination of the two definitions that I operate under.

1 : a profusion of words usually of little or obscure content 2 : manner of expressing oneself in words : diction

Lets just say that my definition for verbiage is "manner of expressing oneself in words, a profusion of words most likely of little or obscure content." And verbiage is exactly what you my dear friend subject yourself to when you attempt a read at this thing called "It's The Dirt."

My mother was an English teacher, the epitome of English teachers, so let us just call what I pen, or keyboard if you will, a form of "offspring rebellion". When I left her notes on the kitchen table to let her know where I was, she would correct them, only and always with her red pen no less. There would be circled words with "sp" written above them, underlinings with arrows to where the phrase should appear, new punctuation would appear in red along with margin notes on correct word usage, always something about dangling participles and of course red lines straight through several words, no explanation necessary, I am and obviously was born verbose. This all on a note left to tell her that I was up at Yvette's, that I left at 4:25 and would return home at about 7:00.

I think she was always highly disappointed that I didn't hand in corrected versions of my notes. I am sure she chalked it up to why I was not improving in my note leaving let alone my school compositions that I eventually learned, by the time I left for college, not to leave lying around within twelve hours of their due date especially if eight of those twelve hours were those most people slept through. I am the youngest of six. I say that to say that my oldest brother is an English teacher in Oak Harbor. My oldest sister a Speech Pathologist (or something like that) in Portland. Ahh those rule following eldests, how do they do that. I seem to be completely incapable of following rules, even rules I come up with. Like laundry room rules, or rules for leaving the living room for the night, or any number of the gazillion rules I have made and usually broke before my children did.

I think that the whole rule thing is why I personally am so drawn to Christ, the rule fulfiller, the rule completer and the heart-maker. I love that. I love how he takes, tries to take, those Pharisees on past the rules and into the heart.

So lets consider what language is really for. Communication. Do we communicate better when our random grunts come under rules? You bet. I have a hard time communicating with someone who even though they are playing by rules are not playing by the same rules, like a Frenchman or a Swedish second cousin by marriage thrice removed. So rules are great. But rules often stifle what they intend to support i.e. communication. I do not communicate as much as I should. I am sure that global warming has been caused by the tons of paper trash I have personally made by throwing out cards and letters that I wrote but which did not live up to what I knew was acceptable communication by the rules and therefore un-sendable and horribly incriminating as to my lack of ability to participate in intelligent society.

A blogger from Molalla, OR, a young twenty-something budding journalist and I am sure a college graduate from WSU, captured my attention with a post which included an observation about the random interchange of "doesn't" with "don't." It is the one rule that stuck in my brain and is like fingers down the chalkboard of my spine when I hear it's use, or misuse shall we say. I commented to her that I whole heartily agreed with her noun-verb agreement issue. But on other posts she shares with her reader more of her frustrations with the less literate section of society, of who, or is it "of whom", no, "who" it is, wait maybe I should just say it differently... a section I identify strongly with. For who am I (did I do that right?) to call someone out for misspelling "strikes" on a cardboard sign at a baseball game as "stricks" when I spell the thing with four burners on top of the kitchen oven as "stolve." She had another picture of a note written on a pole in Seattle, an invitation to go to somewhere. Yes, I got that one of the two mistakes was that the person used the wrong "too" and should have used the "to" that doesn't mean an over abundance. However, I could not come up with the other mistake. I am not even sure with English handbook in hand I could have. But the note communicated to me. I knew that I would not be going to where this person was asking the reader to join him or her, but all in all I was communicated with whether intended or not. And isn't that what language is for?

I hope that I communicate with those who read my ramblings. Communication isn't agreement or even acceptance. I only hope to let you know what I am thinking. If you get it or even think you get it great, that is my intent. If you don't understand what I am saying or think you don't, please let me know and I will in earnest try to clear up the miscommunication. If you get it but don't like it or don't agree with me, let me know that too, I might change my mind. But please if you can at all get by without it, leave your red pen in your pocket. You may think that it is ink that comes out of that pen but really it is the blood of stymied communicators who used to love to write but write no more because they could not follow the rules that were made so that we could all get what the other was thinking.

You are welcome to apply this nutty concept to other things in life. Is strict adherence to the "rules" helping to obtain the outcome that the "rules" intend? Or is it time to go beyond the rules and instead dive into the heart of the matter? Jesus, in the Gospel accounts of the Sermon on the Mount, calls us to consistently look beyond the rules, the account of the pealing off of the wheat berries and eating them on the Sabbath or the healing of the man with the twisted hand on the Sabbath are more pleadings, leadings, for us to go beyond the rules and to the heart that the rules point us to. Was the sight of our Lord and Savior munching down on wheat berries that he just stripped off a stalk on the Sabbath like fingers down the chalk-board to the Pharisee? Perhaps. Should I let go of my irritation over improper noun-verb agreement? MMMM. Most likely yes, for it is the one grammatical mistake my dear Dirt owns, but better than I, he gets his meaning across. I have so many more words to use than he does and all those many more words are just many more opportunities for mistaken communication.

Hope I haven't today.

What Can I Say But I Am Sorry?

A day in town. I do not like a day in town. I don't mind dressing up, doing hair and make-up, I do so little it matters little. I have a difficult time retaining my composure in town and today I lost it. I love my mom. She was a lovely person but she could embarrass the heck out of me by being kinda demanding and snarky to clerks etc. Well I stood right there in my bank and channeled her.

The frustrating thing is that my husband always does, at the branch by his work, what I was asking the teller at the branch I was at to do. She couldn't. Clearly you get better service at a bank if your a man. That is what I said to her as I folded up the checks made out to my two minor daughters by our landlord and headed for the door, instead of allowing her to deposit only one of them and not the other because the fourteen year old daughter doesn't happen to have ID. You must be kidding. We have banked at this bank for nearly 28 years at the very least 25. I go to this branch several times a year over the last 10 at the very least and probably 15. I recognized the teller immediately as one who has been at that branch since it was just a mobile home up the street. If I could recognize her, can't she recognize me?

Drove to my husband's branch. Walked up to the first teller, she smiled and was engaging, and quickly went to work depositing the checks, not even bothering with the ID my older daughter had out in her hand. We chuckled about a few thing about my husband had a lovely exchange and got our business done. I have been in that branch maybe four times in the last six or seven years with my husband and maybe three times without him. I did not remember her but she remembered me and the husband I belonged to. She was lovely. I'm pretty sure her name is Annette. Annette, I will be back and I will not go back to the other branch where I thought they knew me.

But I am sorry that I got snarky with the other teller. I usually do not do that. I gotta not ever do that again cause it so did not feel good at any point. By the time I hit the car I felt horrible.

Did I mention I don't like going into town?

Weeds And Paths, And No Weeds in Paths, Hopefully

Argh. Okay, you have probably surmised from previous posts that I am subject to confusion. I don't mind weeds. In fact, sometimes I cultivate herbage that most people would consider weeds. But in certain places I can't handle them. In some places instead of delight and wonderment they cause irritation, frustration and mild depression. As for instance, our five-eighths gravel drive needs to be weed free because that particular gravel is not a carefree medium. There are some applications of pathways or walkways that "spill over" say of nasturtium is welcomed or when determined columbine, nigella or sedum is allowed to sprout, root and grow. Then again there are some applications that cannot tolerate such wanderings. We have established that five-eighths gravel in a driveway is one of them.

The other is the dry river bed thingy that everyone is doing and that I have succumbed to. Albeit I have put a twist on mine. But that is a later subject. Now I am not against a large clump of something spilling over the large rock edge but the center of the "dry creek bed" must be free of greenery or else it will look like a creek that clearly had gray water waste infiltration from some lady who used a high phosphate detergent and was not very environmentally friendly and the excessive greenery probably had something to do with choking out the natural flow upstream and that is why it went dry . Sometimes green isn't always green.

So now that we have established that there are some applications where I cannot abide by weeds no matter how interesting or the jumping of beds by cultivated plant life, let's also establish that I am a messy do-er. Whether it is in the kitchen, the garden, the craft room, anywhere, I can whip up a mess that is larger than the target product. My mom used to say of even my cleaning projects, "Lanny, you make a bigger mess than you are cleaning up." Yep, that's me, in just about anything. But I do eventually get the place tidied up and a product produced but there is that intermediate mess that those who stumble on to me mid-project are usually surprised by, shocked by.

I have realized late in life, perhaps too late but who knows, maybe not, that if I can possibly not make such a big mess I don't have such a lengthy clean up. There are also times when you really cannot clean up the result of your messiness. One in particular would be in gravel driveways and rock paths where dirt has spilled. Weed control mats work only if you keep the dirt on the underside of the mat and the gravel or rock on the top side. Yes, somethings will grow in pure gravel or rock, but not for long and they pull out at the mere suggestion to leave. But if there is dirt, for get it, Much like Satan they have a foothold. One they will not readily give up. So the only way to prevent herbage gaining a foothold in gravel or rock, you need to keep out the dirt. And that my dear friend is easier said than done for a messy do-er.

So today when I needed to weed along my yet unfinished creek-bed walkway, it's waiting for more rock and some sand, I had to come up with something that would keep the inevitable lump of dirt from landing amid the existing rock on top of the lovely black weed mat. Dirt, my husband, and I have often had issues with my getting dirt, the soil stuff, on his lawn, which he hates. So I will take the time to put down a tarp or sheet of plywood or cardboard on the lawn while I make my hole or take out a strip of sod or whatever. I needed to apply that low level technology to my current problem. Elisabet was a good scout in her dad's garage for me and came up with a sheet, that we split down the middle and a chunk of clear plastic.

There is still the black weed mat showing because all the path material has not yet arrived, so I took extra precaution and tucked the edge of the "drop cloths" around the lip of the black mat and weeded to my hearts content. You know, I really don't mind weeding. It is true what some people say, it is therapeutic. Just one more evidence of Romans 8:28 in my book. Satan means to harass and depress me with the inundation of weeds in my garden over the short span of a couple of lost weeks. But instead God gives me the chance to work some things out, get some needed time in with him, and get a good close look at the soil structure and some things I might need to deal with. Not to mention feeling accomplished over my "invention" of a weeding technique.

Amazing how that can all work out. Something else I just now touched on that I really need to let you know about in case you are a struggling side-tracked nut job like me. The use of children as go-fers. It is a necessity for me to have my children around when I am doing a job. If I had left my job site to go fetch a suitable "drop cloth" I would have begun to organize my husband's garage which would inevitably lead me to another job, and another job and yet another job, never making it back to my original job until dark or even the next day, maybe not even then. I wonder what will happen when we marry the last one off. Well, "I can't think about that right now. If I do, I'll go crazy. I'll think about that tomorrow. " Just know that if I have accomplished something, anything, it is with great help, usually from one or more of my beautiful, generous daughters and so I am always thankful for them.

And now look! no large lumps of dirt in my rock path! And except for the time spent thinking about a solution, tucking the drop cloth into place and moving it along in front of my work it really didn't add that much time to the whole job and the job looks better right now and later, when I don't have a bunch of weeds growing in the soil on top of the weed mat.

Thanks for hanging in there for my big explanation of my new trick. I am sure Martha will have it on her show this week saying that she has always used this method. Don't believe her ! I came up with it on my own!