by jphilo | Aug 6, 2012 | Walking Down the Gravel Road
This summer has not been kind to the flower beds along our bit of gravel road.
Blame it on Hiram’s back injury preventing yard work.
Blame it on the heat trapping us indoors after he recovered.
Blame it on the drought eating up my time watering.
Blame it on the Japanese beetles gnawing leaves and blossoms to shreds.
Blame it on my tendency to use any excuse to avoid weeding.
Blame it on whatever you want, but like I said…
This summer has not been kind to the flower beds along our bit of gravel road.
So Hiram and I were surprised when a Sunday morning peek outside showed the sweet potato vines were taking over the patio. The vines’ fingers, which three days ago were hanging close to their container pot homes, were inching up the trumpet vine pole, snaking across the grass, and twining around the patio furniture.
I blame their wild abandon on Saturday’s rain.
The downpour and the cool down that followed had a similar effect on me. I snaked my way around the house, twining my fingers around windows long shut and impatiently tugging them open, though rain was still falling. I understood the sweet potato vine’s over-the-top response to the rain. But if such behavior continued unchecked, the patio would disappear forever. The the patio furniture. And finally the house.
So I grabbed the plant clippers, and gave the vines a haircut.
They required some persuasion to relax their grip on the patio furniture. And they dragged their snaky little feet in the crispy, brown grass while I hauled them across the lawn to the refuse pile. Once the job was done, I put the clippers away. Heading toward the house, I noticed the pesto had grown about 6 inches since the rain.
Maybe cosmetology school would be a wise investment.
by jphilo | Aug 3, 2012 | Church Newsletter Columns
O God, Thou art my God; I shall seek Thee earnestly;
My soul thirsts for Thee, my flesh yearns for Thee,
In a dry and weary land where there is no water.
Psalm 63:1
The drought of 2012 is a doozy, no doubt about it. The hot, dry weather has our family reminiscing about other droughts we’ve endured. Mom remembers how hot their old farmhouse near Pipestone, Minnesota was during the summer of 1936. “The upstairs was so hot,” she says, “we dragged our blankets and pillows outside to sleep in the yard.” Then she adds, “The next drought came in 1956. The summer I was pregnant with you.” She nods in my direction. “I was miserable until you put in an appearance in July.”
I pretty much know how miserable Mom was because our daughter Anne was also born in late July during the drought of 1988. Anne, of course, doesn’t remember that toasty, dry summer but our son Allen, who was six that year, does. “The grass was brown and crispy,” he says, “and the yellow jackets built hives in the cracks in the ground.”
And now Allen’s wife knows how miserable Mom and I were during the droughts of ’56 and ’88. Only more so because she’s pregnant during the worst drought since ’36 and isn’t due until September. Please, keep her in your prayers!
Our family tradition of anticipating new life during drought years has warped my perception of them. When reading biblical accounts of droughts, or when listening to current weather reports I see circumstances, both past and present, as pregnant with opportunity. God used ancient droughts to bring his wandering people back to him. Men and women who trusted him in times of need became part of the Christ’s lineage. Over and over, God blessed bone-dry believers with the promise of a future Messiah, and the faithful clung to that hope.
This rain-starved summer, as every other drought year in my lifetime and yours, is an opportunity for us to cling to faith as our spiritual forefathers did. We can pray for people to turn to God as their illusion of human control evaporates in a cloudless sky. We can trust God to prove himself faithful in the midst of spiritual and physical want. We can share Christ’s living water with lost and parched wanderers and expect God to bring forth new life in many.
When we trust God in lean times, we are like the psalmist David, who sought God earnestly in the desert. Like David, we look beyond the burned fields and wilting trees and see God in his sanctuary, watering our souls with his completed promises and grace. We learn to be satisfied in him as we’ve never been satisfied before. When we gaze upon the God who waters our lives through the saving grace of a baby in a manger, our Father assures us that his fountain of life never runs dry.
by jphilo | Jul 25, 2012 | Recipes
A cantaloupe smoothie is not something I would have tried in a normal summer. But this summer’s far-from-normal heat and drought is playing havoc with our community supported agriculture (CSA) shares. This week, the heat caused all the melon fields to ripen at once, so our friendly, local farmer sent us home with three large melons…and a couple recipes for cantaloupe smoothies.
Hiram, my husband who eats almost anything, doesn’t like smoothies much. Or cantaloupe for that matter, so this recipe will never get his coveted seal of approval. I was a bit skeptical, too, but with three melons staring me in the face, what was there to lose? My first sip of the concoction was disappointing. But gradually, the flavor grew on me, and the drink was extremely refreshing on a hot, hot day. The recipe below is non-dairy, with the dairy equivalents in parentheses.
Cantaloupe Fruit Smoothie
2 large slices cantaloupe, peeled, seeded and cubed
1/2 cup crushed ice
1/2 cup almond milk (skim milk)
1/3 cup raspberry or orange sherbet (3 ounces yogurt)
1 tablespoon honey (if using yogurt)
Put all ingredients in blender and process until smooth. Serve immediately. Makes two small or one large smoothie.
by jphilo | Jul 23, 2012 | Daily Life
It’s lunchtime, and I just realized there’s no post yet for today. My first inclination was to blame the oversight on my age, which as of Friday will be closer to 60 than to 50. But after looking over last week’s to do list and writing a new one for this week, I decided busyness was the culprit. Take a gander at these to do lists and see what you think.
Items Completed on Last Week’s To Do List
- Buy groceries to feed hungry daughter and son-in-law.
- Water the flowers gasping for moisture because of the drought.
- Squeeze in writing time between cooking and visiting with company.
- Take daughter’s birthday meal, including homemade German Chocolate birthday cake, along with hubby, daughter, and son-in-law, to my brother’s to celebrate birthday with his family and my mom.
- Buy more groceries to feed hungry company.
- Water the flowers again.
- Finish washing the windows with daughter. All done! Yahoo!
- Make pesto from basil growing like crazy because of the heat.
- Buy more groceries.
- Water again.
- Watch 2 episodes of the PBS series Sherlock with husband, daughter, and son-in-law. Waaaay good!
- More groceries.
- More watering.
- Meet with friend (who organized the daughter’s wedding reception) to organize her son’s upcoming wedding reception.
- Finish tweaking of book proposal and send it to agent. Double yahoo!
- Groceries.
- Watering.
Items on this Week’s To Do List
- Get son-in-law to auto repair shop so leak in his car’s gas line could be fixed.
- Buy groceries on way home.
- Water flowers.
- Take son-in-law back to auto repair shop to pick up car.
- Squeeze in writing between cooking and talking about books and movies with daughter and son-in-law.
- Water flowers.
- Take measurements so daughter can make me two bras.
- Watch final episode in series one of Sherlock.
- Try not to cry when daughter and son-in-law leave on Wednesday.
- Water again.
- Prepare for Camp Dorothy by moving Hiram and me to upstairs bedroom.
- Tune the television to The Price is Right, Jeopardy, Judge Judy, Wheel of Fortune, and Antiques Roadshow.
- Pick up Mom on Friday for Camp Dorothy.
- Water some more.
- Celebrate my birthday with Hiram and Mom.
- Put on Vana outfit and settle in for 5 days of Camp Dorothy fun.
- Help at wedding reception on Saturday.
- Water.
What on your to do list makes it easy for you to forget the most routine things? Leave a comment!
by jphilo | Jul 20, 2012 | Current Events
Yup, The Amazing Spiderman is making an appearance on this blog, even though superheros don’t get a lot of play along our gravel road. To be honest, the only reason Spiderman gets his due is because I was plumb out of stuff to write about.
I thought about writing an I-told-you-so post about how I predicted the drought of 2012 way back in January. But that seemed kind of evil, and I ditched the idea. My next thought was to gush about The Amazing Spiderman movie, which we went to with our daughter and son-in-law on Tuesday. The movie was good. Really, really good. But writing a review is hard work, and I wanted to keep the memory fun.
So I ditched that idea, too, and didn’t have a thing to write about until a Facebook friend of mine posted the above picture. It shows the window washers at Michael Hopkins’ Evelina Children’s Hospital in London.
I almost ditched that idea, too, since this blog is for fun stuff and DifferentDream.com is for kids with special needs stuff. But then I read the text accompanying the photo and decided it was fun enough for this blog:
Evelina Children’s Hospital was the first new children’s hospital to be built in London in more than a century. The hospital was designed with a goal of “making a hospital that didn’t feel like a hospital.” Accomplishing this required hospital designers and staff to create a patient experience that included touchpoints fostering a sense of inspiration and wonder – in addition to healing – for children throughout their stay.
Perhaps the most remarkable touch point of all comes from an unexpected source: the hospital window washers. As part of their contract, Evelina requires that hospital window washers dress up as superheroes while cleaning the hospital windows. Bedridden, sick children delight in seeing Superman, Spiderman and Batman dagling just beyond the glass. The window washers report the superhero visits to Evelina are the highlight of their week.
I thought maybe the window-washers-dressed-as-superheros was urban legend. But according to Hugh Pearman’s article first published in The Sunday Times, London, on November 27, 2005, the window washers are for real. The article, “Just What the Doctors Ordered” tells the story of the vision behind Evelina’s Children’s Hospital and mentions the superhero window washers.
I think the idea of window washers at a children’s hospital dressing like superheros is way cool. The perfect medicine for a nation full of hot and thirsty people worried about a drought they’re powerless to control.This story is just what the doctor ordered. Do you agree?
