Another grandchild on a ladder

This year Grandpa Glen made use of his available grandsons to take down the Christmas lights.  This involved tall ladders and walking around on the roof much to their delight.

Sadie's jumper

Sadie's birthday jumper has been a long time coming but I wasn't too concerned as it is made of corduroy.  Now that it is cooler I took time to finish it.

Sadie and I both liked this outfit when it was featured in Australian Smocking & Embroidery magazine, issue 94. The pattern is called "Top of the Class."  I had the white corduroy having purchased it for another project and then changing my mind.  The magazine called for using baby wale corduroy.  I forged ahead with my bulkier fabric and it was hard, really hard to put it through my pleater.  Lesson learned!  The smocking is pretty "rustic" looking.

However, it seems to flow with the stick figure embroidery.  The pattern called for a smaller version embroidered around the entire skirt.  I opted to scan the pattern and make it larger and use it just once.  The piping is of alternating black and white cording.   I ordered the black long sleeve tee and leggings from Old Navy.  Finally a play dress perfect for school!

Sharing the garden produce

I know that many of you are in middle of mostly white and gray winter.  In Arizona, it's winter garden time.  I was so happy to share parts of mine with my holiday visitors.  Amongst the lettuces, you will also see my first cheddar cauliflower.  It tastes like cauliflower but looks like it was bathed in cheese sauce.

My little garden platform is bursting with 'good for you' things to eat.  I'm always so glad that I take the time to plant in October.

I've been sharing not only lettuce but two kinds of kale and spinach.  There is also Swiss chard, broccoli to come, and sugar snap peas.

My biggest worry is always the tomatoes and a big freeze before they ripen.  I moved a few of those starting to turn on to the warm kitchen window sill.

Too hard to move them from the platform to the garage this year, plus the garage is full of Glen's Christmas light containers.  He wants to add more insulation before he moves them to the attic.

Fresh green leaf lettuce anyone?

Sunday musing

This morning in my church program there was this quote from a talk by President Monson entitled "Hidden Wedges."

The spirit must be freed from tethers so strong and feelings never put to rest, so that the lift of life may give buoyancy to the soul. In many families, there are hurt feelings and a reluctance to forgive. It doesn’t really matter what the issue was. It cannot and should not be left to injure. Blame keeps wounds open. Only forgiveness heals. George Herbert, an early 17th-century poet, wrote these lines: “He that cannot forgive others breaks the bridge over which he himself must pass if he would ever reach heaven, for everyone has need of forgiveness.”

I took this picture in a cherry tree orchard in Utah.  One can see that those are new cherry trees.  I find it interesting that those cherry trees stand straight as the wooden poles next to them have bent in the wind.  Perhaps the trees were once tethered to the poles to keep them upright, but now they stand on their own.  They have been freed.  When we forgive and lay down our grudges and hurt feelings we, too, are freed.

President Monson's talk in General Conference of April 2002 began like this:

In April 1966, at the Church’s annual general conference, Elder Spencer W. Kimball gave a memorable address. He quoted an account written by Samuel T. Whitman entitled “Forgotten Wedges.” Today I, too, have chosen to quote from Samuel T. Whitman, followed by examples from my own life.

Whitman wrote: “The ice storm [that winter] wasn’t generally destructive. True, a few wires came down, and there was a sudden jump in accidents along the highway. … Normally, the big walnut tree could easily have borne the weight that formed on its spreading limbs. It was the iron wedge in its heart that caused the damage.

The story of the iron wedge began years ago when the white-haired
farmer [who now inhabited the property on which it stood] was a lad on his father’s homestead. The sawmill had then only recently been moved from the valley, and the settlers were still finding tools and odd pieces of equipment scattered about. …

On this particular day, it was a faller’s wedge—wide, flat, and heavy, a foot or more long, and splayed from mighty poundings [—which the lad found] … in the south pasture. [A faller’s wedge, used to help fell a tree, is inserted in a cut made by a saw and then struck with a sledge hammer to widen the cut.] … Because he was already late for dinner, the lad laid the wedge … between the limbs of the young walnut tree his father had planted near the front gate. He would take the wedge to the shed right after dinner, or sometime when he was going that way.

He truly meant to, but he never did. [The wedge] was there between the limbs, a little tight, when he attained his manhood. It was there, now firmly gripped, when he married and took over his father’s farm. It was half grown over on the day the threshing crew ate dinner under the tree. … Grown in and healed over, the wedge was still in the tree the winter the ice storm came.

In the chill silence of that wintry night … one of the three major limbs split away from the trunk and crashed to the ground. This so unbalanced the remainder of the top that it, too, split apart and went down. When the storm was over, not a twig of the once-proud tree remained.

Early the next morning, the farmer went out to mourn his loss. … Then, his eyes caught sight of something in the splintered ruin. ‘The wedge,’ he muttered reproachfully. ‘The wedge I found in the south pasture.’ A glance told him why the tree had fallen. Growing, edge-up in the trunk, the wedge had prevented the limb fibers from knitting together as they should.” 

My dear brothers and sisters, there are hidden wedges in the lives of many whom we know—yes, perhaps in our own families.  (Use the link above to read the entire talk.)

So as I muse on this Sabbath Day, I encourage you to start 2013 with the buoyancy of soul which comes from removing wedges of feelings hurt, wrongs imagined, and grudges held.  Let you life be lightened through forgiveness of others and a reliance on the Savior's gift of grace.

Grandpa's birthday celebration

Grandpa Glen once again celebrated his birthday with some of his favorite people.

They sang him the happy birthday song.

With gusto!

Then helped him blow out his candles.

Then it was time for . . .

The birthday clap down.  There is more clapping every year.

Once again I was creative with the cake.  Lately I've been surprising him with something different each year.  The Meyer lemon tree was prolific this year so I made a lemon bundt cake with lemon zest in the batter, lemon simple syrup poured over the hot cake, a lemon juice and powdered sugar glaze over a cooled cake, and more lemon zest for decoration. It was lemony delicious!

Do you trust your TV news personality?

I recently finished read Mike Wallace by Peter Rader.  It dovetailed well with Cronkite by Douglas Brinkley which I finished earlier this year. This was a faster read and more of a soap opera.  Peter Rader, also a filmmaker, moved up the release of his biography after the death of Wallace in April 2012.  Rader's biography delved more into the personal details of Wallace's life as well as his mental well being than did Brinkley in his book about Cronkite.

Both men worked for CBS News in the second half of their lives.  It appears there was a blending of family members as a consequence.  Chris Wallace, currently of Fox News, dated Cronkite's daughter, Nancy.  Wallace and his first wife divorced shortly after Chris' birth and his childhood was spent with a stepfather, Bill Leonard, who was a higher up at CBS.  Leonard pushed hard to get Mike Wallace on 60 Minutes when his luck was down forever changing his life and giving him the journalistic credentials that he craved.

Because I am sixty, both reads were a walk through my lifetime history.  These were the events that I watched unfold on TV but which also shaped my life.  Now I better understand how the news media does and has always helped frame but also shape those events.  CBS News, as have all other news sources, always relied on "the ratings" and the bottom line.  Do I like that I now know that after Wallace would do a hard ball interviews for 60 Minutes there was a great deal of editing done for drama's sake.  That included a second filming and editing of Wallace's reactions and facial expressions to the questions he had asked those interviewed.  I watched 60 Minutes this week and wondered if this technique was still being used.

The media helps us feel some connection to one another after an event like Sandy Hook, but the media also picks and chooses its presentation and focus.  Now I better understand why and realize that many of the things I detest about current news networks have always been.  The more people who tune in, the higher the ratings and advertising dollars.  The more popular the broadcaster, the more power they have to shape national and world events and policies.  But the bottom line, it is harder for information that all should know to be withheld and kept secret.  I guess it is a love/hate relationship.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to all!  I am in Arizona enjoying the sunshine but took this picture of the Red Barn in Santaquin last weekend in Utah because it reminds me of the red barn on the farm where I spent my first years in Idaho.  This is how New Year's Day looked during my childhood.  Today I am making ham and navy bean soup using the leftover ham bone just like my mother did on New Year's Day so long ago.