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| Tomatoes out of control |
Our acre-lot has three tiers, with a shallow creek curlicuing its way through the bottom tier on toward the river only a few blocks away. We live in town, but it feels like the country in our back yard.
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| BLT time |
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| Butternut squash hidden under the leaves |
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Peter Piper positively pondered the predicament
of precisely how many pickled peppers
Peter Piper could pick! |
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Smokehouse for homemade baloney in winter
Trellis for cucumbers in summer |
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| Helping mine Daddy with yard work |
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| The bird buffet |
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| Home is where the heart is |
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| Patio sparklies and danglies |
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Thanks for coming to our house!
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So much splendor surrounds us. Living in the Midwest has satisfying appeal for those of us who are prone to appreciate Mother Nature. When we were younger, we were tied to our job responsibilities and the other survival responsibilities that go hand in hand with the rights we Americans are blessed to have within reach. Now that we are older, our harvest from life doesn't only come from the ground. It comes to us through our eyes and our hearts. All that we worked so hard to achieve is now our final hurrah. There have to be a lot of years of sweat and tears before any of us get to sit in the easy chair.
Our home is our trophy. It has only one bathroom, a front door and a back door. The rooms are small compared to most. But, they provide all we need, and they're paid for. We make sure that these later years are punctuated with fun stuff, but before all else, we stop to appreciate. That's a significant element missing from our society today. There's a tendency for us to always want more, but at this time of financial hardship for so many in our country.....maybe it's time we tend to be grateful with what we have, get it all paid for, and then look to the future.
It's my feeling that we all have to reach a certain age before life comes full circle and we understand these things. I don't know, but it seems to me that's how it is. All the warning signals that my mother gave me....well, I'm now watching them unfold. It's not that generations are at odds with one another. It's that the generations must co-exist, each owning their own accumulation of experiences. Let's all try to honor one another, and maybe this country will regain its global prominence. Every one of us Americans has a job to do now, so let's quit running around like we're on a race track. Please pause and appreciate.
