My oh my...

...

I wish I could fill the page with this photo.  It was so lovely, and this is a sunrise!  Sweet Oklahoma...

 Ah but it has been hot...

Meanwhile I cool my heels going to garage sales as often as I can fit them in.  A week ago I made it out of town into the countryside and found an estate sale.  I asked if they had any sewing related items - YES!  A huge plastic storage container full of magazines, patterns, recipes and just a little of everything.  Sooo...that went home with me.  It actually had to be loaded into my car with a dolly - it was so heavy!  It was a total mess - things just tossed in and it has taken me over a week to sort and organize and toss.

But this is something that I want to share and will send hard copies to my family because I think it is hilarious.  It was hand written on a now raggedy and stained piece of paper.  (I bet someone else thought it was pretty funny, too, and read it more than once!) 

Some Times Life Is Tough

I've gotten used to my arthritis.  My dentures I've resigned.

I can manage my bifocals but, Lord I miss my mind.

Just a line to say I'm living and not among the dead

but I'm getting more forgetful and I'm mixed up in my head.

Sometimes I can't remember when I stand at the foot of the stairs

if I'm going up for something, or if I've just come down from their.

And before the frig so often, my poor mind fills with doubt

whether I've just put something in or just come to to take it out.

So if it's my turn to write or call, there's no need in getting sore

I may think I've already done so, and don't want to be a bore.

But nevertheless I do love you - and wish that you were here

but now it's nearly mailtime so I'll say good-bye my dear.

As I stood before the mail box, with my face so red

instead of mailing you this letter - I opened it instead.

But, hey, maybe that isn't so important as long as we remember to look up and still enjoy the beauty of life (as I am sure the author of this little peice did with such a wonderful sense of humor!).

The Sky Readers...

...uh oh, look at that sky..."Don't worry hon, them's friendly clouds," Dorothy says.

That is good news to me, here in the heart of Oklahoma, where the ever moving atmosphere could keep a person's attention fixed forever.  So pretty, so fierce, so fickle.  How can this sky happen at 7:00 in the morning? 

Dorothy has started arriving about 7 or 7:30 on Sunday mornings, pulling up in her little pickup truck.  I grab my bathrobe and dash out for her delivery of garden produce, it is a huge bag of beautiful yellow squash and tiny oblong tomatoes.  Today I finally asked her name after seeing her husband and she walk by my house twice a day with their little dog ever since we have moved here. It seems only right that I should know the name of the person who so kindly gives away the results of her hard work to a perfect stranger.

I know where they live a few blocks away and see that they have a greenhouse.  Already they have tomatoes at least five feet tall and it is only June.  I ask her if they start everything in the greenhouse and she said yes, they start everything in the "hothouse".  Why did we call it a green house in the Pacific Northwest and it is called a hot house here?  Perhaps the geographies make the words self evident...

Happy Memorial Day...

...and here is hoping you are all enjoying a 'take it easy' kind of day.

 
On this day I would almost always go back to the town where I was born and place flowers on all the graves of my departed family members.  My little daughter and I would pick any flowers available in the yard and then go down to the pasture and pick armloads of wild white daisies, as this was the time of year they bloomed in Oregon.  We would gather up the coffee cans I had been saving, tin foil to cover them so they would look "pretty", rocks to weight the bottoms down, some big jugs of water, the flowers and off we would drive for an hour or so to the "coast".  We had all the burial plot locations memorized and we would start the decorating.  We always brought extra for those lonely graves that didn't seem to have someone looking in on them.  In my memory it was always sunny and always windy!  Of course I am sure there were some wet and rainy Memorial Days too, but somehow one's mind just blocks those out!  We would spend time wandering around reading grave markers and wonder who were these folks and what were their lives like?  It was always so peaceful and gratifying and just a tiny touch back to my favorite people who I knew were watching us from above.