Hand – Work

As much as I love my garden and want to work in it every day, July is always the month it looks it’s worst, and I don’t want to go out there. Anything that bloomed in late spring or early summer has finished it’s run and dried up. The sycamore tree is shedding bark, and this year is the worse than any I can remember. I have bushes to be cut back, roses to deadhead, and berry bushes to tie up to supports, but I’m not doing any of it. I have found that I can’t work in the heat like I used to, and since I’m a night person, I don’t get up early enough to go out in the mornings. That leaves me digging weeds between seven and eight in the evening, and puts dinner after that.

After doing two online collage workshops in the spring, I have one of my work tables set up for collage and usually do several small ones each week. I’m also playing with watercolor paint.

To add some new interest to being at home all the time I spent about a week considering getting a cat. It was kitten season and the neighborhood email feed had lots of kittens looking for a home. I couldn’t decide, almost went to see one, but then in a moment of sanity, I remembered how annoying it is to have a cat who insists on being in the center of my work table whenever I’m working on art.

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At the beginning of July, when the newsletter from the local astronomy club appeared in my email late one evening it contained an offer to borrow a telescope from the club. Impulsively, I replied I might be interested, and the next week one of the members backed his truck into my driveway and unloaded a large, heavy scope that he said would use the built-in computer to find the planets and stars I wanted to see. It was much bigger than I expected from the photo in the newsletter.

When I got around to moving it to the center of the patio a week later and tried it out, it couldn’t find anything. I could see Jupiter with my own eyes, but couldn’t find it in the scope. When the fella came to get it, he brought another scope that would not be quite as heavy, and not motorized so it should be easier for me. Unfortunately, the previous borrower had not returned the eyepieces that went with it, so I could find Jupiter in the finder scope, but nothing in the main scope. During the day I practiced using it by focusing on the dead tree in the yard behind me. The wires across the backyard access line are in excellent condition, but again, at night all I saw was dull brown no matter how I turned the focus knob.

At that point, I noticed that my neck and back were complaining about how I was standing at this thing and trying to move it around with knobs that I could barely reach. The man came back and retrieved the scope, suggesting something smaller. I said no, I had learned what I needed to learn: this activity was going to require me to study star charts and measurements, and be way more work than I wanted to put in to it.

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I would guess we are all reading more than we did a year ago. I have been reading about the early 1940’s during WWII. In my blog of December 31, 2019, I wrote about a fictional work about Varian Fry, an American who went to France during this time to help artists get out of Europe to safer countries.

I read a review of “A Woman of No Importance” by Sonia Purnell and ordered it from Amazon. This is the story of Virginia Hall, an American woman who had studied in Europe, fell in love with France, and became a diplomat to try to help the French people. She worked for Britain, and later for United States when we entered the war, to coordinate activities to support the resistance movement. It is a fascinating story.

Some years ago, I had acquired a book called “The Shameful Peace, How French Artists and Intellectuals survived the Nazi Occupation” by Frederic Spotts. A short while after I started reading the book about Virginia Hall, I decided I’d read this one at the same time. This book was in the dining room to read at lunch and dinner, the other was in my bedroom.

And as I’m reading these two books this last month, I noticed some similarities between that time and now. Germany had invaded France after taking over Belgium and Luxembourg. They occupied the northern part of France, which included Paris where many of the cultural activities were located. Germany was trying to take over Poland and Russia, so they set up a sort of provisional government in Vichy with Marshall Petain as president, who did what he was told, but tried to protect the cultural life of the French people.

Theaters, concerts, opera, and some galleries were allowed to continue but were required to include some German music and plays. The German military often filled so many seats at events that ordinary French people couldn’t get a ticket. Some publishing was allowed but censored. The idea was to get the people used to German music, values, and ideas through the cultural venues so they would experience how superior Germans were.

There were French people who collaborated with the Germans, some were fascists, some were just afraid. There were people who kept quiet and tried to live so they wouldn’t be noticed, because the Gestapo were arresting men and deporting them to Germany as workers to produce arms and whatever the German military needed to keep going.

And there were the resisters who were working secretly to sabotage German operations in France, squirreling away equipment, guns, and ammo to be used once the Allies invaded and came to their aide.

Where do I see similarities to today? Our culture has been hi-jacked with all the glorification of violence, our music is loaded with filth’ or not even understandable, and I certainly can’t sing along with it.

My local newspaper has been bought out several times and now there is virtually nothing in it but COVID articles, speculation on what our president might do, and maybe one local photo item. Very little about what is going on in the rest of the world.

Personally, since when is it Google’s business to send my emails to spam instead of the in-box, and label them with bright red warnings not to open them because they are dangerous?

My favorite sentence in “The Shameful Peace” is on page 68: “People who think for themselves are a nuisance to any government.” If ever there was a time for us to be a nuisance to government, national and state wide, it is now.

Don’t believe everything you hear and read.

Think for yourself.

 

 

I just noticed another month has evaporated since I last wrote a blog. Where have I been? inside, outside, and eating fruit. My strawberries are still producing nice, good size berries, my refrigerator has a tray of plums from my tree, and the white nectarines are just about ready to come off their tree.

Outside I’m still cleaning up debris from my huge sycamore tree, which is now in the stage of shedding bark, huge pieces of it. The ivy beds around the house have gone into their normal overdrive to cover every inch of ground, and I’m cutting them back as quickly as I can. But this week will do little of that due to near 100 degree heat each day.

Last week, the mixed media group that normally meets twice a month in a member’s home, but has not met since March 5^th, had our meeting in my yard. There were six of us and we spent the time catching up with each other, and having show and tell with the art we have been making. It was so wonderful to see my friends. Perhaps at our next meeting we will find time to make a little art together.

After participating in two online collage workshops in April and May, I decided to take a break and attend to some household activities that had been waiting for my attention.

I had a lightweight summer jacket that I like to wear in the morning when the house is cool which was shredding apart. I drew a pattern from that jacket and made a replacement. Since the sewing machine was open, I noticed some other items that could use some attention.

I’ve discovered that as I get older my clothes don’t always fit the same way they did before, or maybe I’m just not willing to put up with things that aren’t comfortable. I have two other lightweight jackets that I used to wear to work, but now the sleeves were constantly sliding down my arms and getting in my way. They must have come from that fashion statement where women had their jacket sleeves pushed up and bunched up by their elbows. I never did understand that.

So, I shortened the sleeves to suit me now. And so it went, altering those clothes I had put on in the morning and by the time breakfast was over I was changing into other garments for one reason or another.

The sewing project I’m most delighted with is a bit of an archeological rescue. Years ago when I was moving my mother, she mentioned that in her cedar chest were some things my paternal grandmother had made. When I had to sort out her belongings, I looked at them briefly and saw they looked like quilts. A year ago, when I was donating clothing I never wore, I looked at them more closely, but didn’t know what to do with them. They were quilt tops, with unfinished undersides. I put one of them at that top of the cedar chest, in case I got an idea of how to use it.

In the hot summer months, I like to use a bed cover that is light weight, rather than the comforter I use all winter. I took a queen size flat sheet that I had not used much, which was a few inches larger that the quilt top, and sewed them together on the edges to protect the unfinished edges on the backside of the quilt.

One of my fond childhood memories was studying a heavy quilt this grandmother had made, seeing all the different fabrics she used and repeated randomly in different blocks. Now I’m doing that again, searching for matching fabrics in different circles. Such simple things that engage and delight us.

I do hope that in the midst of the craziness around us, you are finding things that engage and delight you. Be careful and stay well.

 

 

This is always my busiest time of the year in the garden. While I’m cleaning up weeds and tall grasses that came up in February, and then dried out in our first hot week, I’m also harvesting spring and early summer fruit.

I’ve been picking luscious strawberries all month. The plants are doing much better this year than last year, possibly because we have been alternating a warm week, then a cool week in March and April. They are doing so well that on the Holiday Monday, I spent a chunk of time freezing berries to enjoy next winter.

I’ve been doing this for many years. I rinse the berries, cut them into bite size pieces and place them on a wax paper lined cookie sheet. This goes into the freezer in the kitchen for an hour or two, after which I scoop the frozen pieces into freezer containers and place them in my larger freezer. With this method, they don’t stick together. I can take out just enough for my breakfast granola each morning.

I also have what I call black berries, but are probably black raspberries, which started ripening last week. We are scheduled to have three days of 100+ heat starting Tuesday, so they will ripen quickly.

The apricot tree in the very back of my yard was loaded with fruit which began ripening two weeks ago. Fortunately, they are not all ripening at once. There were so many apricots on the tree, I invited my neighbors across the street to come and pick some about a week ago.

I usually have to fight the squirrels for the cots, but this year I’m not seeing as many of those rascals. They must have relocated across the street because my neighbor said he has a lot of them in his yard.

Those tomato plants I wrote about last time need to be planted in the ground, but I’m having a sprinkler problem, which hopefully will be resolved by the time you read this, and I didn’t want to transplant them right before the hot weather this week.

With all this going on outdoors, I’ve spent very little time making art. Crystal Neubauer had a second online collage workshop which included journaling. It ran from the end of April to the middle of May. We had assignments between the classes and we were also given “Prompts” to generate ideas for collages.

The prompt that I think came out the best was “Fifty Shades of White.” I have a lot of old paper: a few sheets from various reams of old typing and computer paper, old stationary, receipts, doilies, wallpaper samples, and old books. I glued them to a black substrate.

After the workshop, I cleaned up the work tables in my studio and set up one area so I could do a quick 5” x 5” collage each day. Ha! Haven’t gotten to it yet. The yard work and fruit processing are taking all my time and energy.

On Memorial Day, I made apricot cobbler and ate dinner outside on the patio with Robert, who was grilling burgers, just like normal. I hope you are all doing well and enjoying creative activities.

Where have I been?  At home, of course.

I have just spent the first three months of this year / decade getting my yard cleaned up from last fall. While my energy is much better this year than it was last year, I find that everything takes more time than it used to. Some of this is because I’m moving slower, being careful how I move about, so I stay upright.

I’m so thankful for my lovely flowers all blooming now – a perfect place to be when I can’t be anywhere else. Having been here for 23 years, I’m watching each tree and plant put on its spring finery, one after the other, in perfect order, just as they have in previous years.

It occurred to me last week that perhaps our Father in heaven has grown tired of our noise and nonsense, and lowered the volume. I’m not suggesting that God is responsible for the virus, but like many of His creatures, He never lets an opportunity go to waste.

This idea came to me as I noticed last week that my house phone was silent after years of constant daily robo calls. The junk mail has mostly stopped. I don’t watch TV, so perhaps your home is not as quiet as mine.

And it’s not just in the U.S. that life had become frantic. Although we barely hear anything about the rest of the world, Israel can’t get a government together, Venezuela is a disaster, Great Britain is tied up in knots, and everywhere there is unrest and uncertainty.

After I got home from Florida last summer at the end of June, I’ve been mostly at home, so my days now are not much different than they have been the last nine months. When I considered travel for this year, none of the gatherings I might attend were in places I wanted to go. I registered for a weekend with the basket makers in Visalia, but we’ll do it next year instead of this month.

I spent August and September cutting back a wall of ivy that I had neglected for too many years. I reorganized closets and drawers, donating clothes and household linens I no longer used.

I have a whole set of new routines that take up my time. Near the end of 2019, my dentist told me I had a gum infection. I have had crummy teeth since I was six years old. Seventy years later, I only have front teeth left and the uppers and lowers don’t come together in a useful way, which limits what I’m able to eat.

My dentist, bless her, is trying to make things better. She removed the tooth which was the source of the infection, and has installed braces on my lower teeth. Braces are different now than they were when I was fifteen. I’m spending a huge amount of time putting on wax to minimize pain on my lip, removing wax, cleaning up residue from the wax, and threading floss between the wires.

I’ve been using gummy vitamins for several years now. After the arch wire slipped out of the bracket on the end tooth, I decided I shouldn’t eat them, at least not whole, so now I’m cutting them up in teeny, tiny pieces every day with the kitchen scissors.

When I’m not in the yard or dealing with my teeth, I’ve been reorganizing the sea shells that I have collected for over fifty years. I’ve started reading those books that I keep saying, “I’ll get to someday”.

I had planned to work in my studio this winter when it rained, but it didn’t rain. So, I’m still trying to balance the yard time with the art making time, and so far, the yard is winning. The one thing I’m missing is meeting with my mixed media friends twice a month.

Individually and collectively we have been given an opportunity to reflect on what our lives have become, what we truly value now, and how we might want to make some adjustments. Let’s not waste it.

Early in April my garden woke up, and I was seeing clumps of bright tulips everywhere. My grandson, Vinnie, helped me plant them probably six years ago. I was surprised to see four to six blooms for each bulb we had planted. They seemed especially bright and happy with all the rain we had this winter.

My iris plants started to bloom the middle of the month as I was getting ready to fly to Portland to visit my son and three granddaughters who live just across the river. I was hoping they would still be blooming when I got back.

This trip was a nice change of pace for me without my usual “to do” list. We all went to dinner together on Sunday evening, and I met their two new kitties, Chester, a black long-hair, and Chuck, a shy, black short-hair. The two oldest girls are in high school and college who are either gone all day, or in and out every few hours. My youngest granddaughter is living with her mother.

My son and I had a lot of time to talk, which is such a gift when I don’t see him every year. Tuesday I had an appointment in Portland, after which we did a quick tour of Mt. Tabor, an extinct volcano that is now a park in the midst of neighborhoods.

Wednesday, when asked what I wanted to do, I said I wanted to see the Columbia River Gorge that I keep reading about from time to time. I had mentioned that I wanted to do some walking while I was there.

My son knew about a mostly flat, short, hike to a river overlook on the Washington side. When we arrived at the river, another hiker was digging up huge dandelions just above the retaining wall. He said he wanted to give the native plants a chance to fill in the area.

After we walked back to the car, my son drove back the way we came and went over the bridge to Oregon. We rode up the original road US 30 along the river going east. We stopped at Vista House, a round stone building, built in 1916, where we could take photos looking up the river.

He pointed out the hillsides where the Camp Fire had burned last summer. We had some lunch before crossing back to Washington over the Bridge of The Gods. We saw the Bonneville Dam which provides the electric power for the Portland area.

Riding through wooded, hilly, windy roads all week was so beautiful. The fruit trees were blooming, as well as the dogwoods.

I got back to my Stockton home at 2:17 am on Friday morning due to a rescheduled flight. Later that afternoon, I was delighted to see that the irises in my garden were taking their time to come into full bloom.

My rose bushes did their first “rush” to bloom while I was gone, and are now ready for some dead-heading. It’s nice to go away, but I really love and enjoy my own garden.

This week Monday was the first day this year I haven’t felt cold. As in, wearing my boots cold. We usually have a week of spring-like weather in mid-February, but not this year. Even days with some sun have been rare.

The pink plant in the upper center of the photo above is a Fringe bush, which has been blooming since late in January.

The nectarine, peach, and plum trees are finishing their bloom and showing green tips on their branches. Likewise, the blackberry bushes are waking up.

My garden has been getting ready to put on its annual show, and over last weekend could wait no longer.

Given the tremendous amount of rain we have had, the wild flowers can’t grow fast enough. Tiny blue flowers are dotting the parts of the yard without grass. The little red flowers are starting to appear and will be like a carpet in a week or so.

In the back of the yard behind the garage where I store yard equipment, I already have a carpet of green plants that have a circular disk on top of the stem with tiny white flowers in the center of the circle. I don’t know their name, but at the first hot day they will burn up and collapse.

I’ve been outside every day in the last two weeks unless it has been showering or extremely windy. Field Madder is an invasive weed that was covering the strawberry bed, and I wanted to dig it out before it could bloom. It has a root that is about one and a half inches long and it just lays itself over the ground like a rug. The strawberry bed took five days to clean up.

I’ve cut back ivy on the fence behind the fruit trees before they leaf out. This is especially difficult where the huge fig tree comes over the fence. While cutting back the Pyracantha on the west side of the house, I found peeling paint on the house which needed to be repaired.

In the planter next to the fountain are flowers that look orange in the photo at the top of this blog, but in the close-up the camera made them red. I bought one plant of this, years ago, and it grew and put down more roots, filling the planter.

These yellow flowers are a variety of what we used to call Freeway Daisy.

So, for the time being, making art is on hold except for the group I attend every other Thursday. I’m so thankful to be where I am, with this wonderful display of color.

I hope you have a beautiful spring whenever it arrives.

 

On the first two days of the New Year, I raked up leaves from two good size areas in the yard that had not gotten any attention for cleanup, as well as the patio which always needs to be cleaned up. I hauled a total of eleven full garbage cans to the street for pickup by the county.

On the third day of 2019, the county came with their heavy equipment and picked up the pile of leaves at 8:45 a.m. I was still too exhausted, after eight hours of sleep, to attend my M&M art group, went back to bed and slept two more hours that morning.

In the afternoon, I went to the grocery store. When I returned, I saw that my yard man had come while I was gone and had deposited the leaves and grass clippings from my yard as well as from a yard across the street in the nice clean street. Grrrr!

On Friday, the forth day of the New Year, I made a quick trip to an estate sale nearby before I went out to the street to clean up the leaves, because the county was not coming back, and rain and wind were forecast. I filled my large green waste bin and began to fill leaf bags. Fortunately, a neighbor walked over to ask when the pick up was. He graciously offered his empty yard waste bin and proceeded to pick up the mess with his shovel and pitch fork. I am so thankful for his help.

On the fifth day, I did some household chores, and after supper I watched the first video of the online class, which I had planned to start on Friday.

On Sunday, day six, the rain started while I ate breakfast. Rain days should be art making days, right? But first, I reorganized a small book shelf so I can reach things without using a step stool, and dusted everything so I’d have a clean start. The wind was blowing, rain pouring down.

I made a pot of soup. Robert came in the house and cooked something. As we were eating, his van started sounding its alarm. He was able to shut it off quickly from inside the house. I was looking out my large front window as the man across the street had his headlights pointing directly at my yard and saw a surge of huge palm fronds blowing into my yard. Robert speculated that a frond hitting his van probably set off the alarm.

I noticed that the lights were out across the street. A little while later, Robert’s wheelchair became stuck in a flowerbed near the garage when a wheel slipped off the sidewalk. We called the guys across the street to rescue him. Then our power went out for about twenty minutes.

So this morning – I’m writing on Monday evening, January 7, 2019 – the mess from the storm was not a surprise. The rain had passed on overnight, and the day actually had a little sun between the clouds. My activity for the day was obvious. Clean it up!

I loaded at least 35 palm fronds into my truck, with small pieces going into the trash bin that was waiting for pickup in the street. These fronds are huge, hanging over the end of my Chevy S10 buy at least two feet, maybe more.

Here we are a week into 2019 and nothing to show for it art wise. Tomorrow, day 8, I will tarp the truck and drive half an hour to the dump. Yes, I was planning to go there some time this winter, but not this soon.

More rain is expected on Wednesday – maybe then I’ll get going with my class.

I hope your New Year has started well.

If not, perhaps we should fasten our seat belts and hold on tight!

 

 

 

The photo above was the state of my studio work table last Friday as I was adding “mechanicals” to the five collages I have been working on sporadically last month. Mechanicals is the term the artist Finnabair uses to refer to items she adds to her collage pieces such as gears, screws, nuts, bolts, safety pins, paperclips, and other odd parts of things that have been discarded.

I have been working on these collages once or twice a week all last month because the weather has been pleasantly warm until last week. I began an extensive weeding project a few months ago. It has probably been a dozen years since I cleaned up this area. From a distance, it is all just shades of green, but up close the grass thins out and the whole area looks messy.

Under my big tree, I have been digging out things that don’t belong in the grass such as tiny palm trees, privet, pyracantha, mock orange, and other woody plants that have grown from seed dropped by the birds. I also removed large masses of ajuga, a flat, flowering plant that takes over if not removed, and bermuda grass that sends long strings of itself under these other plants. Today, I finished this job.

The next garden chore will be getting the huge sycamore leaves out to the street so the county can haul them away. Sycamore leaves are tough and do not compost into the ground, so I like to get them out of here ASAP. I also have been picking up apples from my tree at the back of my lot every few days, and bringing the good ones inside.     ~~~

My bedtime routine is to shower and then have a custard-cup-dish of ice cream as I read in bed before sleep. Saturday evening, when I went to the kitchen for the ice cream, I found an apple on the floor in front of the dishwasher. I had a tray of newly picked apples on a table near the cat door around the corner from the kitchen, and apples in the refrigerator, but what was an apple doing on the floor? I’m the only one in the house and I didn’t drop it there. So, I picked it up and put it back with the other apples in the tray.

When I found a second apple on the kitchen floor, same spot, on Sunday night after my shower, I became suspicious. This apple had been gnawed at. Maybe he got in through the cat door, but this would be the first time in almost five years anyone has used the cat door. I picked the apple up and figured I’d deal with it in the morning. But I’m thinking: the animal had to smell the apples from outside the house. If it wasn’t using the cat door, maybe it was getting in near the plumbing, but none of the cabinets were open and they don’t shut on their own. Maybe from under the dishwasher.

Imagine my amazement on Monday morning when I found a third apple on the kitchen floor. I immediately put the tray of apples in the refrigerator. The question remains, is this mouse or rat coming in somewhere every night, or has it set up housekeeping inside somewhere?  The curious thing is there are no droppings, or other signs of a resident mouse.

Tuesday morning the gnawed apple was not on the end of the counter near the door to the driveway where I left it yesterday. It was, of course, on the floor in front of the dishwasher. It became evident that the critter had gotten up on the sink counter by way of a table where I keep my keys because a coupon that had been on the table was now on the floor.

Making breakfast, I discovered that this guy had also stolen a half-used supplement capsule which was in a tiny plastic dish on the counter. A second capsule was still in the dish. Why did he take one and not the other?

Fortunately, my cleaning person is here today so she can clean the counter thoroughly.  When my life hits a stretch where each day seems like the one before, nature provides some comic relief!

 

 

When my grandchildren were little, I had a basket of outdoor toys in the garage in case they came to visit. I had some balls, Frisbees, chalk, and a pin wheel. When I was little I always liked pin wheels. Games and athletics were not my thing.

Two or three years ago when I reorganized the garage, I got rid of the toys but not the pin wheel. First of all, it was my favorite green color. So I stuck it in the ground of a flower bed that wasn’t doing much. As it turned out, I see this bed and the pin wheel from my kitchen window. It became a sort of weather vane on how windy it was on ground level.

By early this year, the sun and wind had become too much for the little pin wheel and it fell apart. I expected to get another one when the spring toys arrived at the dollar store. No pinwheels this year. Not to be found at my drug stores, the grocery stores, or Walmart.

Finally, after Memorial Day, I found a red, white, and blue one at Michaels. It felt too stiff to me, but

I brought one home anyway. I promptly stuck it in the ground where my lovely green pin wheel had been and . . . it sat there and didn’t move. Even on a day when branches were flying off my big tree it didn’t turn.

When Robert returned from Florida at the end of June, he needed a marker at the end of his new parking pad, so, I mounted the stiff pin wheel on a pole, where once in awhile it will turn for a minute.

Last week, I finally found one at a grocery store that had about six light-weight pinwheels on a mark-down table. I brought one home. It has all the colors: red, orange, lime, blue, and purple, spinning like crazy in the spot where I can watch it from the kitchen window. As my husband used to say, “It doesn’t take much to amuse her.”

The other simple pleasure from my childhood that is still a passion is beach combing. You can read about the shell collecting trips I’ve been on in my Memoir, “Looking for Connection” available as an eBook on Amazon.

This week I’m packing up to attend the Conchologists of America’s annual convention in San Diego all next week. I will hear about other people’s collecting adventures, bid for some shells in silent auctions, and enjoy sea breezes.

I’ve decided to post a day early this week because of tomorrow’s July 4th holiday. I want to share what happened the day after last week’s blog.

The back story: my best friend, Robert, left Stockton for Florida on April 19, and I expected him to return late last Wednesday or afternoon on Thursday. He had called Monday evening to tell me he and his driver were near Oklahoma City. I calculated they would get to Robert’s brother’s house in Hayward to drop off his driver by dinner time Wednesday.

You may recall, I wrote about what a mess my yard was in the blog that posted May 9, grousing about the amount of debris my huge sycamore tree was dumping all over the yard. The tree has continued to drop leaves, dead branches, and fuzz during the last two months, but it seems to be slowing down now. In addition to the leaf mess, I was seeing that most of my fruit trees needed to be trimmed soon before their summer growth got going. Several times I had actually said as I walked through the yard alone, “Lord, what am I going to do with these trees? How can I get them cut back soon?”

Wednesday, I worked in the yard, moving some dirt that my yard man had piled up last week, and I cleaned up the patio. I did all the odd jobs on my To Do List for the week, extending my day as I waited for Robert. At 2:30 a.m. I gave up the vigil and went to bed.

Thursday morning when I got up, sure enough, his van was in the driveway. As I was about to sit down to breakfast, I noticed out the window that the van door and ramp were open. I was surprised he was up so early and went out to greet him. Turns out that when he got here he was too tired to get out of the van so he lowered the back of the driver’s seat and slept there. I helped him get a few things out of the van, and I knew he was going to go back to sleep in his own bed.

I made a note of his arrival in my journal, saying I needed to eat breakfast—it was already 10:30. “Fun Day!” I added.

Since my breakfast was delayed, I was still eating and reading the newspaper when the door bell chimed. I well groomed man started telling me about the mistletoe in a tree in my front yard. I agreed it needed to be removed, but proceeded to walk him through my yard discussing each of my trees. The name of his company on his business card was one I had seen before. I knew he understood trees from the way he detailed what each tree needed and why. He had a crew in the area that day, and gave a reasonable estimate.

While the trimmers worked on the sycamore, I baked lemon bars, which was what I had planned to do first. The second item on the day’s list was to start cleaning up the yard mess. I laughed. This was such perfect timing. The tree trimming mess that is always left after the crew takes the big stuff, will be there when I get to each section, and I won’t have to clean up twice.

When the trimmer got to the smaller trees, I quickly realized that I needed to tell him what I wanted done on each tree besides the obvious problems. They also cleaned up my back-side roof where debris and branches had accumulated all winter and spring.

I worked with them picking up smaller branches that their rakes had left behind. They were out of here by 5 p.m. Robert slept through to Friday morning. I don’t think he even knew they were here until I told him.

One of the things Robert has said to me several times is, “You need to let things come to you.” I guess from his perspective he sees me trying to make things happen faster.

So, long story short, I asked God what to do about my trees, He sent the answer, and His timing was perfect.    Enjoy a safe Forth of July tomorrow.