"I am what is around me." Wallace Stevens

This is a Scott's Oriole. This picture was taken about a month ago. March & April are bird months as the the northward migration moves through our area. This bird stayed around a few days before moving on. Anita puts out a half an orange each day as well as having several different kinds of feeders. You can stand in the kitchen and see a great many wonderful things.

Quote of the day

"Time-traveling is just too dangerous. Better that I devote myself to study the other great mystery of the universe: women!" -- Doc Brown, in Back to the Future, Part II

email from Marj

This is an email I received from Marj. I would have posted it earlier but I wanted to make sure I had her OK first. I am trying to get her setup so she can post directly. I know she has a lot of old family stuff to give us. Richard

Dear Richard,

Please do not fall over dead. I am finally reading and sending you a message. I hope you had a Happy Birthday. Consider this your special birthday present. I love the Blogg. I really enjoyed reading everything. I have some things that I can share. I have been thinking about life in Montrose lately. Dad's death date April 11, 1988. I also liked the Life of Bees. I have also read In a Million Pieces. I know Oprah came out very much against this book. I did not see all the things that went on about it but found it to be very interesting even if not all true. Most of the books I have been reading lately are not really anything great. They sure do help me to fall asleep even in the middle of the night when I can't sleep. I even read a Harry Potter book and have the last one on my stack of books to read.

I have a tape to send to you from a service at my church. Ken Medema (spelling?) comes to our church and presents a program. He is a blind man and writes his own music. One part of his program is to take stories from the audience and sing a song about what they tell as their experience. It was near Christmas and they asked for Christmas experiences that we remembered. I sat for a long time but finally stood up and told about an experience we had with Dad.

I don't remember if it was at Christmas or not. You know he would just come home with gifts from time to time and not especially on a special day. I told of the only time I remember he drove the car and pulled us on the sled behind him. All the other kids would get their parents to pull them but he did not feel it was safe and would not take us. This one day we had a new sled and he pulled us on the sled behind the car. Mary was too little to go with us so when he was finished pulling us behind the car, he pulled her around the neighborhood on the sled for a while. I remember how special that was because he refused to do it any other time. I remember going on Fifth Street when it was not paved and around the neighborhood and all three of us were able to fit on the sled. I will get my tape copied and sent to you. You will enjoy the song he wrote about my story.

I hope you had a happy birthday. I hope you got to do something fun and happy. Life has been very busy around here. March 5, Jim and I went on a cruise. Yes, a cruise to Mexico! Our friend, Mike, that took us on a cruise before took us again. There were 14 of us the week we went and 16 the next week. It was much fun. Jim had been the hospital for 5 days during February with pneumonia and they finally sent him home with an oxygen machine because they could not get his oxygen level up. He spent a lot of the cruise sleeping and trying to get his energy back. He is up and back to himself now. I also had pneumonia but was able to keep going and just take medicine. We think Michele brought it home from school.

Brandy is getting ready to move into an apartment with her boyfriend. He seems to be a really nice guy but Grandma is not sure she is ready for this. She took me to see the apartment. It is in a new apartment complex and very, very nice. He has a good job with PGandE. She is still trying to find a job that is not in retail.

In February Brandy and I attended a funeral in Tracy, for a young man that she had gone with and wanted her to marry him. He was killed by a suicide bomb in Iraq. It was very sad and she was very upset and had a hard time.

Mary has a job now. She has been clean and sobber for 2 years. We sent her to school to learn to become a building inspector in large construction. She took 8 different tests, concrete, soils, etc. She now has a job working for a local company. She takes calls and goes to local construction sites. She is enjoying it and doing very well. Grandma has to help with pick-up and get kids places. Michele has been in volleyball and basketball and both Brandon and Michele played soccer. It keeps me busy and trying to stay on top of everything.

David and Tracy have bought a piece of land with a big trailer house on it. They have the trailer house ready to rent and are working on their 5 acres. They hope to build a house on the property some day. The place where they live now is free rent because Tracy volunters in a small information center near Yosemite. It is a small place but works great for the two of them. They have done so much to fix it up and she has made beautiful gardens all around it.

It is getting late and I had better go to bed. I have to go to Mary's early tomorrow because she has an early job and Michele and Brandon need rides to school. I also work in Brandon's class on Mondays as a volunteer and get my teaching fix once a week.

I hope this finds you both well and enjoying your books on tape. I know that Mary listened to books a lot when she was commuting to their hardware store.

I love you both, Marj

Jack Hammer Acres

One of the things we found when we first moved to Tucson was the ground was very hard. In our area not only hard but full of rocks. So I bought a Pick-Axe. You may know it as a mattock. I made holes for a couple of fruit trees. It took forever.

I built some raised beds for a garden and mixed soil (really crushed rock) and store-bought compost. That worked pretty well.

We wanted to put in a fountain - using a large plastic container buried with a submerged pump and covered with a fine screen and rocks. It looks like the water bubbles up out of the ground. The reservoir is the large container and the water recycles. Every once in a while I have to move the rocks and clean the pump filter. The birds love it.

The neighbor, who is a landscaper come over one day with a BobCat back hoe and made the hole for the fountain. He started on another hole when he pulled up my electrical utility hookup - a large 2 inch wire buried only about 1 foot in the ground. There was no damage but he got very nervous and left. The wire was probably 3 feet deep at one point but the previous owner had leveled a large area in the back and must have taken away 2 feet of the covering. I marked it and filled in the hole. Our utilities are buried, those are just electricity and phone.

Now when I want to plant something I use the Jack Hammer it makes life much easier. The first picture is a hole I made to plant an aloe. The pile to the left came out of the hole. I will screen it and mix 50/50 with compost to fill the rest of the hole. The rocks usually go over behind the wall.

If you look through the railing behind the Jack Hammer you will see a pygmy palm I planted a month ago. It is struggling. We have had almost no rain this winter. Four months no rain. The winter rains usually create enough moisture for a great wild flower show here in March, April, and May. This year no flowers. Sunday, a couple of days after I planted the Palm, we awoke to a snowy world of about 3 inches of snow. The second picture shows the palm covered with snow. By evening the snow was gone but the palm did not take it very well.

We just got a digital camera. I will try not to over do but show you some of the world we live in. And describe some of the animals and plants. The temperature reached 91 degrees F. today.

Love Richard

Quote of the day

"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." -- Voltaire

Makes me think of "George W". We used to have a king named George.

Zen of Baseball

You see the ball, you hit the ball.
They hit the ball, you catch the ball.
You catch the ball, you throw the ball.
That’s it.

KIRBY PUCKETT’S ZEN OF BASEBALL

Quote of the day:

"Honest criticism is hard to take, particularly from a relative, a friend, an acquaintance, or a stranger." -- Franklin P. Jones