Monday

I wrote a post this morning on my other blog. I thought I would write one here as here I know what I am doing. I don't think it will take me quite as long as the one I wrote here this morning.

Can you believe August is almost here? Its hot and yucky due to the smoke from the fires. I know every year I speak about it but this year it seems to be worse than in past years.

William and Makenzie took a trip to find Ben and Megan and the boys in Michigan. They found them and Makenzie took some of my favorite photos. This was at a museum in Detroit.

I loved seeing our two oldest boys with our four grandsons looking at swords. It made me happy to see them together.

This one made me so happy to see them standing in front of this painting. Around the fourth of July Ben and Megan were in Yellowstone. They saw this in person. So when they walked in one of the boys said, " That is the canyon at Yellowstone." It was . They had stood right where the painter had painted this. Ben had I phone pictures of it. Isn't that cool?

You know, this rug is giving me fits. It could be the heat. Sitting with my frame on my lap and sweat rolling down my legs always makes me a bit grumpy and I end up putting it away. I just need to get busy. I worked on it some this morning, until it just got to hot.

Here is His Eye is on the Sparrow. By Beth Twist. I just have a little bit more to go. I hope to finish it before the summer is over. I really have worked on it so much more than the rug. I get obsessed with finishing it so I can hang it. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would ever get this far.

With August on Wednesday, it means we are that much closer to fall. Yay!! I hope all is going well and you are able to stay cool. The swimming pool feels like a hot tub. Its wonderful.

I wish you well,
~Kim~

"Today you are you,
That is Truer than true.
There is no one alive ,
Who is youer than you.
---Dr. Seuss

A New Address

 

Good Morning to you.  I hope you are having a great summer. I just wanted to share with you my new blog. I have been working on a new blog on Word Press. I have been so frustrated at the changes to blogger. So I have it up and running. Kind of, I am still tweaking.

So here is my new address.

https://my-field-of-dreams.blog/

I will be keeping this one open for awhile so don't worry.

Have a great day,
~Kim~

Odds and Ends

Greetings from hot and muggy California. It is summer after all and really its not all that bad. I am glad I am not a chicken though and have to spend my whole day outside. Do you know I think we should have a national holiday celebrating the genius of Willis Carrier the creator of the air conditioning.

"The Inventor of Modern Air Conditioning. Genius can strike anywhere. For Willis Carrier, it was a foggy Pittsburgh train platform in 1902. Carrier stared through the mist and realized that he could dry air by passing it through water to create fog." Isn't that just a wonderful thought. Anyway of all of the wonderful inventors there have been, that man changed the world. I think of that every time I come in the house from outside into this nice cool house. 

Don't you love Morning Glories? They are just such happy flowers. Are you having a nice summer?

What have you been doing? You know the only thing I wish I was doing was sitting in a tree reading a book like I did when I was a kid. I am sure though, that if the kids came over and saw me in a tree, they might think I flipped, because I am afraid of heights. But still I think of it every now and then. 

I have these really cool flowers I planted a few years ago out in the pasture. They are these double kind of flowers they look really neat. I tried transplanting them into my flowerbeds in the yard but they didn't make it. So now I let these pretty volunteers just grow out there by themselves. 

 I made my first batch of zucchini bread today. Its a gluten free version I found online. I tasted it and thought it was terrible. I made real pretty Cinnamon rolls today for the Bible Study in the morning and I had leftover cream cheese frosting that I always put on my Cinnamon rolls and Ron said it was good. (I can't stand zucchini bread at all, ever, even if I was on a desert island starving.) In fact, that one taste made me sick at my stomach. So I had to spend the day reading a book. That part was nice. 

Nothing deep going on here today. I wanted to check in this week. By this time in July, summer is full on summer. I always feel like its just put my head down and hanging on for the ride. Thankfully, the weather man has been wrong this summer more than half the time. We haven't had the hot weather he predicts every morning. I decided to stop watching him and move on and ignore the weather. Its hot. We don't get rain until December. It doesn't cool off until Halloween. So there is the weather report for us. No reason to sit and watch the weather and hope that it will cool off. It won't. I have been scrubbing the tile in the pool. That is a good thing about hot weather. 

I hope he makes you laugh. I still love Minions. Have a lovely rest of the week. 

Thank you so much for stopping by,

~Kim~

"Many dogs can understand almost every word

humans say, while humans seldom learn to

recognize more than half a dozen barks, if that.

---The 101 Dalmatians, Dodie Smith,1957

A Summer Day

 

I thought this morning you might like to see my little garden. This time of year it looks so green and pretty. As summers go this one hasn't been as hot as last year. We had over 60 days in a row of 100+ temps in 2017. This one has been more normal to my memories. I hadn't put my silkies in their little pen yet so they are playing hide and seek with me. They just make me laugh, so when I have a slow morning like today, I like to sit on the patio with my coffee and watch the little gnomes run around the yard.

I was trying to get a good picture of that eggplant, but Mr. Rooster thought I wanted to take his picture. He is getting up in years now. He is still my favorite rooster. He does love his little hens and is a good rooster to them.

On the fourth of July, I was madly going though my cookbooks, and drawers and everywhere I could think of to find my ice cream recipe. I ran across a journal that I had written in 2007. My life has changed so much. I only had three grandsons. I was babysitting the oldest. I was still homeschooling four kids. I was still entertaining the idea of being a writer. I hadn't even run across the idea of blogging. (I found the recipe by the way.)
 So here it goes.

Reflections From My Porch.

"The air is perfect for November. The sky is filled with jumbles of clouds, telling the sun to go away and come again another day---like March. 

The Sugar Maple who began the week wearing a splendid dress of red and gold. She looks today that she has lost most of the dress during the night. As I walked this morning to visit each tree before they go to sleep for the winter, I noticed under my friend the Sugar Maple her leaves were all around her feet. Once on the ground the leaves only stay bright and red and orange one day then they fade and melt down to become brown and crunchy giving themselves for the good of the earth. 

 

I will forget the beauty of this fall, I will not remember the blowing of the wind though the cottonwoods or the sound of the ocean though the branches. I won't remember the orange and yellow or reds and bronze that lit up my pasture as a candle brings light to a darkened room. 

The wind and the rain will come and the leaves will scurry away until their places are no more or I will rake them up to make everything look neat and clean.

My chickens have come up to the porch, they are in my pots on the porch scratching and eating the rest of my aloe they found earlier in the summer. They are all clustered around waiting for me to feed and collect their eggs. They are such an interesting group of ladies, they are still girls rather than respectable hens. They still like to be petted and talked too not like my old graceful biddies who only see me as the one who brings food. My rooster walks on his feathery feet next to the swimming pool, I can't believe that I have allowed chickens to take over the yard!"

Back to today, its warming up outside. The garden loves it. I haven't yet began to panic because of the zucchini. I have lots of plans for the ones that I do have. I have been working on the last pages of His Eye is on the Sparrow. I will show you when I have some discernible progress. I am starting to panic about that last final edge, will it meet up or not. Will I have to do some ripping out? That last corner will be a test. 

Ben and Megan and the boys got to spend the Fourth of July in Yellowstone. I think that is so very cool to experience that. They also love Glacier National Park. It makes me almost wish we did summer vacations. Kind of. 

I just wanted to write a post, because I would hate to change the name to" Once in a Great While Field of Dreams."

Have a wonderful weekend this first week of July,

~Kim~

The world is full of happiness, and plenty to go round, if you only will to take the kind that comes your  way. The whole secret is in being pliable.

---Daddy-Long-Legs, Jean Webster, 1912

Happy July!

 

Really, I will try harder to post more than once a month.  June is kind of a blur. I thought I would show you a picture of the inside of our tiny airport. Isn't that funny? We were sitting, (Ron and I) waiting for Peter's flight to get into Bako. He was in Florida for a job interview and was returning. We were sitting there and I was just laughing at how peaceful everything is in our airport most of the time. (He didn't take the job!) I was glad. With Kessie and her family in Arizona, Ben and Megan on the road, I think Montana. I wasn't ready for one in Florida. Not yet, anyway.

Did I mention in my last blog post that I have a group of ladies come on Thursday morning for Bible Study? We have about nine ladies and I fix breakfast and Emilie teaches. Its very nice, but I think I spend a lot of time keeping my house presentable. One of the reasons for my lack of blog posts.
Plus I have been painting and rearranging and fixing. I painted my wheelbarrow, to match the step stool Ron made on the porch. I took the picture of it but I can't find it on my new computer.

 

Elliot went to Las Vegas. He went with his girlfriend's family. He was not quite prepared for all for all of the sights he saw. He now knows why its called Sin City.

This last week we found out that Ron was receiving a job promotion. As always bittersweet. He really likes working where he is working now, well except for the two hour drive. Now he will be back in Bako. No more 4:00 A.M. mornings. That is nice and he won't be on 24 hour call anymore. Which of course hasn't been all of that bad. Still, this has been a month of changes. Kessie being pregnant with number six, which is a boy. She will have bookends. Her oldest is a boy, and the youngest is a boy. She developed a blood clot. Me being here and her there, put me in a bit of a tizzy.

I think if I could say anything about June, its been how I have leaned really hard on God, and tried to pray more than worry. I have tried to keep my thoughts at peace. Knowing that there really isn't a single thing I can do to change a single circumstance. The other day when we were having our Bible Study, Emilie said, " Do you notice how all super hero villains are the ones who try to control everything?" As I sat and thought about it, every single bad guy is someone who tries to tell other people how to live. Well, it showed me how if I am not careful I could just as easily turn into a bad guy. I am working on keeping my fingers out of every ones pies. So for July, my goal will be to pray even more than I do now and not worry or tell God what it is I think He should be doing.

 

 Summer is here. I do love summer. My list of summer projects continues to grow. I have all of those white railings around the porch to paint. I like painting when I am outside. August is going to be our painting the rest of the inside of the house. Hopefully, I can finally have a very nice bedroom. Its always the last thing on my list. Makenzie wanted to make curtains for her bedroom this week. We had a very nice time together, while she and I figured out how to make curtains for her. She is did wonderful job. They look so pretty in her room too.

 

All of those white railings in the picture. At least most of the time its in shade. It will be easier than the swimming pool fence. My hands have been full.  I have sat down so many times to try and write a blog, but the tyranny of the urgent was louder than my ability to write a cohesive sentience. 

I have sewed a little on His Eye and worked a little on my Jonah rug. Just not as much as I wish I could.
I hope you have a lovely Fourth of July. We will have a nice day I think.
Thank you to Lauren, for checking up on me. I appreciate it very much.

Blessings from me to you,
~Kim~

"In winter I get up at night
And dress by yellow candle-light.
In summer quite the other way,
I have to go to bed by day.

I have to go to bed and see
The birds still hopping on the tree,
Or hear the grown-up people's feet
Still going past me in the street.

And does it not seem hard to you,
When all the sky is clear and blue,
And I should like so much to play,
To have to go to bed by day?"
-  Robert Louis Stevenson, Bed in Summer

(I won't have to do this much longer. Yay for summer!)