Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Happy Anniversary!

Yesterday was my parent's anniversary. If they were living, it would have been their 63rd! A little less than one year later, I was born. I have seen a video of old home movies that a friend of mine has. They looked like kids. They were young, they were so in love, and they had their whole lives ahead of them.
The monarda is blooming. It is such a vibrant red! It looks really pretty now with the yellow of the correopsis. The echinacia is blooming also. I have the purple and an orange one of those. The sunflowers are almost there. The lambsear is blooming. The althea in the back has a few blossoms coming on. So the change is happening from the early flowers to the summer flowers.
I guess everyone has heard about the Albert Pike flood in southwest Arkansas. This was a place that I spent a lot of my childhood, and then it was not a fancy campground. We did primitive camping, and we were away from the main campground area. We had our camp set up on the banks of the river. There were two mommies and six small children. I remember that my youngest brother was 18 months old when we first went there. There was never any danger of flood then-or that I knew of at that age. We walked quite a long ways to a spring to get water. Everyone had to carry containers of water. On the news it said Langley-the nearest little town-was six miles away. I remember it as being a long ways away, and that we made a major trip there once a week to get ice for the ice chest, and maybe to wash clothes. There was someone who had a you-pick-em field of corn on the road, and we always stopped to get corn on that trip. We never worried about how to communicate with anyone. There was no danger as we know it now. Our mothers probably called our daddies when we went to Langley, but I don't remember it. The only danger I remember was the fear of wild pigs getting into the camp. We had drills where we had to run to a tree and climb a tree as fast as we could. I can only remember once that it actually happened. I also remember how intrigued I was when Miss Eloise made toast in the fry pan by putting a dab of butter in the pan, and then the bread to brown it. I had never seen that before, and that was fascinating to a little bitty kid.
And also I spent a great part of my summers in Gulf Shores, Alabama. And now it is gone too. The oil has ruined the beach, and people are not going. When we went it was just a summer place for people out of Mobile. The cabins were very simple and rustic. We always rented a cabin that belonged to a friend. There were no condos anywhere then. We put crab traps out, and we fished a lot. We had friends in the shrimp and fish business, so we always got the freshest fish as the boats came in. I remember one time that a doctor met us on the beach. He was so intrigued that there were four generations of us there together in a tiny little cabin. My great-grandmother, my grandmother, my mother, and us kids. A family friend that was older than my grandmother lived in a small town in Alabama and we would often get her and bring her along.
Sunday was spent in the raging hot sun building a fence for Miss Patty. My goal is to teach her that she can go outside by herself without me holding her paw. Right now she will only go out with me and I have to walk along with her around the yard. She is getting more adventurous, and she has ventured out onto the deck by herself. I have seen her in the yard twice by herself.
By winter it would be nice to open the door and she could go without me.

I looked out just now and a beautiful yellow finch was in the front flower garden. I guess it is eating what seed there is. But I think they know that the sunflowers are coming along nicely. They just want to stake out their claims.

CJE and JE came over during the fence making activity. My friend GO had pounded the stakes in, which is the hard part I cannot do. I had nailed the fencing to the deck, and the four of us were able to stretch the fencing and wire it to the posts. I just want to say, getting old is not all it is cracked up to be. I was hot, I was tired, and I was wiped out by the time that fence was finished.

GO left as soon as the fence was completed. CJE and JE and I ate a chicken wrap, and lay on the floor to cool off. We then did a great deal of show and tell. JE gave CJE and me a small bag of merino roving and a dog toy for Miss Patty. We had such a good time together.

I am knitting the hem on the handspun sweater. I have done this three times now, and I guess this is going to be it. Why is the provisional cast-on and then picking up of cast-on have to be so fiddly? I seem to have a major time with it.

I have been knitting on the second fair-isle sock, and I did another stupid thing with that. I was knitting along on the row, and without thinking I snipped the tail of some yarn hanging inside. I didn't realize that I had not woven the ends in. So when I got to that section, it pulled out when I inserted the needle to knit that stitch. So last night I tinked back to that section and will start over again. Sigh!

I am crocheting along on the giant granny square. I am quite happy with that. Yesterday I could tell I was tired. I had added a new color, and did a coupla stitches and kept looking at it. It wasn't right, but what was wrong? It took a while to realize that I was going the wrong way. The good thing about crochet is that you just pull the string and the mess goes back to the right place, and you don't have to worry about a dropped stitch.

I apologize for the appearance of this entry. I went back and tried to tidy up and space a few things. It got all out of hand. So I guess it is all good. Just as long as I can get some news down it doesn't really matter what it looks like.

I guess I will go sew for a while. I also have some more sorting through junk to do. GO reminded me that I need to make a new will since I have the house now. Sigh! I just want to sit and knit. I guess I need to pay some bills too. Later.

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