good bye for a few days

I've been busy today getting ready to leave on a trip. Tomorrow we're flying to St. Thomas to see our daughter Rachel. So, today I finished trimming the yard, getting our walking around money, having the mail held; all that pre-vacation stuff. I'll be back next week with lots of pictures and maybe a few stories

more exercise

Dorothy's been wanting a stationary bike for her exercise. With her schedule she can't make the two mile walk with me. Her brother, Bill, goes to auctions on the weekends and Saturday he brought one home for her. It's a snazzy model that keeps track of your speed, distance traveled, and even takes your pulse. Marley, being the enterprising child that she is, charged her brother and sister to ride it. Of course, they just came to grandpa for the fare. All the technical gadgetry doesn't include the song of a meadowlark or the smell of new mown hay, so I'll continue my country walk every day and supplement it with the machine.

quote of the day

They deem me mad because I will not sell my days for gold, and I deem them mad because they think my days have a price.
--Khalil Gibran

daily walk

This is what I see along my daily two mile walk

What if I had not taken my camera on this walk.? Had I not stopped to take pictures would I have been in the path of the concrete bricks that decided to obey the law of physics and fly off a trailer onto the shoulder of the road?

Back to our little house down the lane.

a day in the life

Yesterday, after I finished the yard work, I took a yard chair, my walking stick, and some water down to the creek. I hadn't been down there in a while so it was nice to sit on a gravel bar and just listen to the sounds and absorb the sights. The creek is not so far removed that I couldn't hear the trucks on the highway a mile away or one of the neighbor kids riding his motorcycle up and down the lane. My solitude was also penetrated by airplanes; one was a silent, silver sliver leaving white contrails as it made it way across the sky and the other was a noisy small craft, possibly a pleasure flyer or maybe a law enforcement plane searching for the "tell tale" green of a marijuana patch. But, I was treated to a symphony of bird song and the sound of the water over rocks almost lulled me to sleep. I wonder what creatures would have crept up to me for a sniff had I nodded off. I don't know how long I sat there, but I had to move my chair twice to follow the shade.

It's a good cardiac workout climbing up this trail to the truck.

At the top of the trail my truck waits. You can see the back of my house in the distance. There were some black berry bushes nearby so I helped myself to a tasty treat.

what i'm reading now

Whenever I read something biographical about a politician I avoid the puff pieces done by their family or friends. I think if you read something a little more critical you can get a better picture of their character. Here's the blurb from the cover: John McCain is one of the most familiar, sympathetic, and overexposed figures in American politics, yet his concrete governing philosophy and actual track record have been left curiously unexamined...........Welch provides the key for decoding McCain's allegedly "maverick" actions, and the first realistic assessment of what a John McCain presidency would look like. McCain quickly lays out in overlapping detail the root cause of the senator's worldview: his personal transformation from spoiled, underachieving punk to war hawk dedicated to American exceptional ism.

4th of July

Yesterday we had the family over for dinner and fireworks. We were missing a few people. Rachel is in St. Thomas, Bill was sick, Sam was in Branson, Tara had to work. So our gathering wasn't as big as usual. But, we did enjoy a barbecued brisket, roasted potatoes, baked beans, cheese biscuit and a spinach/strawberry/ pecan salad. I made some Chocolate Tea ice cream to go on the strawberry cake, and we even had some ice cold watermelon. I don't think anyone went away hungry.

Marley and her cousin, Rachel, play with a smoke bomb while Jenna seems distracted.

Jenna and Hunter dance for joy in anticipation of the fireworks.