Look Paul! I must have stolen a horse!!

My friend, Paul from the other church, has been taking riding lessons for over a year and finally bought a horse.  It is a match made in heaven.  As for me, I have always been afraid of horses.  Have you seen their teeth?  Those things are huge and I do not want to make one of them mad and have it bite me.  I am doing  very well with the cat and 2 dogs that reside with me.  We get along pretty good as long as I keep the groceries coming and the bed warm and the water dish full of fresh H2O.  But something has happened to make me question whether I have perhaps been living alone to long.  I did harvest the grapes and make juice which I drank all of it, but it was not made into wine so it should not affect me at all.

These are my grapes.  I only have one vine left, but they are the dark blue Concord with seeds.  Baby eats them by the handful, bug, bird poop and all so I figured I better get them picked and processed if I wanted them.  Best juice ever and not a drop of sugar in the whole gallon of juice.  If I were a jelly eater, I would have made jelly, but I am not so I just drank it all except what I shared with Baby.

This is my Climbing Cecile Brunner which did not bloom this spring at all.  I was very disappointed, but on a day when I was sad I looked at the bottom of the bush and here was a pretty little rose just for me!

But, now this is what happened the other morning.  I got up and went outside to hop in the mobile and go some where.  I passed this on the way to the car and did a double take.  What!  That looks like horse dodo.  Upon closer inspection it turned out that it was indeed horse leavings on my front lawn.  I was pretty sure I did not have a horse when I went to bed and upon further investigation I could not find one of the big hairy things anywhere on my property.  Not any on the neighbor lady's premises either.  I am very happy that I lock the doors at night, because Lord only knows what might turn up in there if I am not careful.  I do recall in the early years of homesteading out here on the Mesa that I had planted Tulips across the front of the house and I came back from town to find a big cow munching on the.  That was sad to stand and look down in the ground and see spots of yellow, red, and orange which would have one day been tulips.

I also recall coming home one evening about dusk and seeing 3 baby skunks playing on the grass.  My Chile dog used to get sprayed by skunks on a regular basis.  The remedy for skunk spraying is a bath in tomato juice.  After going through 40 quarts of tomato juice one season, I finally talked to the dog groomer and she told me she used Massengill Douche Powder.  That was way better.  Course the druggist looked at me a little strangely when I told him I wanted a pound of the stuff!  I was a tad naïve in those days.

Snakes and foxes, coyotes and chicken hawks.  centipedes and mice.  Always something creepy, crawly, or slimy set to ruin my day.  But I love my little piece of earth out here and I love my little 2400 square foot house.  I guess if strange animals wander in and relieve themselves on my yard, I can live with that.  I am not real fond of cleaning the house or burning the weeds or any of the mundane chores that daily life requires of me, but it is what it is and if this is the worst thing fate can throw me, I can live with that!

Where have you gone, dear David?

David Stevens

7/19/1947 - 9/14/2017

Rest in peace, my little friend.

I do not remember when I met David.  Time means very little in my world and marking time is not something I do well.  I know I met him when I came to First Congregational  from Christ Congregational and I know it has been 10 years or so.  The important thing is that I met him and he made an impact on my life in a way few men have.  David was special.

David was special in more ways then one.  He was a big man, but I can not say how big as the wheel chair he was confined to did not allow one to measure.  I know his hands were big and he loved his cowboy hat.  I do not know how many years he was in the chair, I just know I never seen him without it.

He lived in a home with other people and he liked to help them.  I would like to say I met him when he came to our church, but I am not sure he wasn't there before me.  At our church we have a microphone which we use to let the congregants make announcements or report on someone in need of prayer.  David loved that mic!  Any Sunday he was in church he would pick up the microphone and tell us that his parents and everyone were in heaven, but he had a new family and that was the members of this church.  We were his family now.  He would tell of his former church where he used to be a greeter, but now he was a greeter in this church and that made him very happy.  He was an usher and while he could not manipulate the wheelchair on his own, he smiled as broad as any man and enjoyed being a greeter in his church!

And you know what?  That made me very happy.  David was a simple man, with simple needs and he always put others before himself and isn't that what it is all about anyway?  A lesser man would have been sad to be confined to a wheel chair and to be taken care of everyday.  A lesser man would have perhaps rebelled at his lot in life.  But not David!  David started counting the days until his next birthday on the day after his birthday.  He looked forward to that more than Christmas, I think.

I am sure that David is up there (wherever up there is ) telling God that he used to be a greeter at this church and that we are his family.  He is probably explaining to his mother and father that since they had gone, he had found a new family and they should not feel bad because he did that because he missed them so much.  And I bet that is one happy reunion around that dinner table, but David, if you are listening, know that while we miss you, and our church will always have an empty place on that back row, we are very happy that you are where you are and we want to thank you for taking care of us for the very short time we had you.

Rest in peace our little friend and know that you were loved and you are sorely missed, but we are happy you are free at last!

Ah, the age of innocence!

This is a picture I have that is very old and I have had for many years.  Since I have geese it seems apropos that I have it.  Along with that I have a family history that details how great grandma and  other relatives before that raised geese.  They also raised sorghum and made molasses.  This may actually be a picture of me.  Probably not, though.

Here is another one by a different artist.  This one is a print.  The title is To New Pastures.  Either picture by either artist is basically the same.  This was back when leggings and boots and tending the flock was what it was.  Geese are funny little things.  You herd them.  I walk behind mine and they go where I point.  A cow, or horse or even a dog is led or at least they follow.

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What do you suppose this little girl is thinking about while tending the geese?  Video games were not even a concept back then.  Running water was probably not in her home.  She may or may not have attended school.  Not all girls did back in those days.  She probably was married by the time she was 13 or 14 and had her own family before she turned 20.  Things like that do not seems plausible today, but it was a different age then.

This is my grandson.  Herding the geese comes natural to him.  On days when he is coming, I do not let the geese out until he arrives.  I carry my camera so I can get a third picture for my wall.  I guess this is as close as I am going to get!

He prefers a sunflower to a stick when it comes to herding.

Well, actually he needs 2 sunflowers!

We are pretty sure he will be ambidextrous.  And after all that herding, he needs a nap!

How different his life already is from the little girl above!  He spends grandma time watching youtube and Wheels on the bus.  He arrives in a red car when mom and daddy bring him.  A "walk" consists of a stoller or buggy.  Whatever they are called.

It is hard to imagine, but the same blood runs in his veins that runs in mine.  Will his memories be the same as this little girl?  I don't know.  I am hoping that on some level we are the same.  I feel that I have a link with my kids, grand kids, great grandkids, but do they have the link with me?  As much as my kids try to be different from me, they stay the same.  They try to branch off and become their own person, but deep down, they crave home made noodles and a needle in their hand.  

I guess, what I am trying to say is, I think somewhere in the far recesses of my mind I have memories that belonged to my ancestors.  I would love to go under hypnosis and see if I am another Bridey Murphy.  Are there dreams that are actually memories?  

Or am I just nuts?