Little Britches: Father and I were Ranchers

Seed Saving

Beach Time!

Now That I Have Held Him

That old man in the temple
Waiting in the court
Waiting for the answer to a promise
And all at once he sees them
In the morning sunshine
A couple come and carry in a baby

Now that I've held Him in my arms
My life can come to an end
Let Your servant now depart in peace
Cause I've seen Your salvation
He's the Light of the Gentiles
And the glory of His people Israel...

Fall Conference

SBYSO Beginnings

New Season

AO Composer Study - A. Dvořák

Jerusalem Artichoke & Wild Things

Currently Reading. 2016-2017

The Tempest

Hiking Season!

IF by Rudyard Kipling

If—

Rudyard Kipling, 1865 - 1936

If you can keep your head when all about you
   Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
   But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
   Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don’t give way to hating,
   And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
   If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
   And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
   Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
   And stoop and build ‘em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
   And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
   And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
   To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
   Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on”;

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
   Or walk with kings—nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
   If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run—
   Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

First Year Raised Gardens

Hot Peppers for Winter

Chicka Chicka Boom! Boom! Up the Coconut Tree

Meet Bobby Jack!

But Mercy is Above this Sceptered Sway

PORTIA The quality of mercy is not strained. 

It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven 

Upon the place beneath. 

It is twice blessed: 

It blesseth him that gives and him that takes. 

'Tis mightiest in the mightiest. 

It becomes 

The thronèd monarch better than his crown. 

His scepter shows the force of temporal power, 

The attribute to awe and majesty 

Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings, 

But mercy is above this sceptered sway. 

It is enthronèd in the hearts of kings. 

It is an attribute to God himself. 

And earthly power doth then show likest God’s 

When mercy seasons justice. 

Therefore, Jew, 

Though justice be thy plea, consider this— 

That in the course of justice none of us 

Should see salvation. 

We do pray for mercy, 

And that same prayer doth teach us all to render 

The deeds of mercy. 

I have spoke thus much 

To mitigate the justice of thy plea, 

Which if thou follow, this strict court of Venice 

Must needs give sentence 'gainst the merchant there.

Book Repair Time

I thank God for my readers who read ever so violently sometimes as they learn to handle books with care.

Garden things.

Evergreen Oak Academy!...We Have a Name!

On bikes to tennis etc.

Harvesting and Dehydrating

Adam Carolla: Change Your Life

Shakespeare in the Park: Pericles, Prince of Tyre

Tracing Your Ancestors Through History: The Table of Nations Genesis 10

Off to the movies again! Professor William Albright, Dean of Biblical Archaeology, (1955:4,) a man highly respected in his field had this to say about Genesis 10: "It stands absolutely alone in ancient literature with no remote parallel even among the Greeks...The Table of Nations remains an astonishingly accurate document...it shows such remarkable 'modern' understanding of the ethnic and linguistic situation in the modern world, in spite of all its complexity, that scholars never fail to be impressed with the author's knowledge of the subject."

This Summer of Tennis

Tennis with my five: One spends half their time not missing the ball and the other half heckling and frustrating the one currently missing the ball. Another one spends more time giving dissertations on why they keep missing the ball than they actually spend keeping eyes on the ball. The other one has a fiery temper and missing the ball is cause for bitter complaint and exuberant dissatisfaction with said balls thereby flinging them to unreasonable heights. Another one hoards balls and doesn't really get the point. And this one believes there is a conspiracy and a perfectly good reason why these balls are illusive: the manufacturer of the balls had sinister motives in velocity and design and besides, the racquet must be broken and nets and things dysfunctional. And to this one, the contemplation of losing the game is simply out of the question. 

July Harvent: Fruit and Veggies

THE FEMALE OF THE SPECIES

The Female of the Species

Rudyard Kipling
1911

1 When the Himalayan peasant meets the he-bear in his pride,
2 He shouts to scare the monster, who will often turn aside.
3 But the she-bear thus accosted rends the peasant tooth and nail.
4 For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

5 When Nag the basking cobra hears the careless foot of man,
6 He will sometimes wriggle sideways and avoid it if he can.
7 But his mate makes no such motion where she camps beside the trail.
8 For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

9 When the early Jesuit fathers preached to Hurons and Choctaws,
10 They prayed to be delivered from the vengeance of the squaws.
11 'Twas the women, not the warriors, turned those stark enthusiasts pale.
12 For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

13 Man's timid heart is bursting with the things he must not say,
14 For the Woman that God gave him isn't his to give away;
15 But when hunter meets with husbands, each confirms the other's tale --
16 The female of the species is more deadly than the male.

17 Man, a bear in most relations -- worm and savage otherwise, --
18 Man propounds negotiations, Man accepts the compromise.
19 Very rarely will he squarely push the logic of a fact
20 To its ultimate conclusion in unmitigated act.

21 Fear, or foolishness, impels him, ere he lay the wicked low,
22 To concede some form of trial even to his fiercest foe.
23 Mirth obscene diverts his anger --- Doubt and Pity oft perplex
24 Him in dealing with an issue -- to the scandal of The Sex!

25 But the Woman that God gave him, every fibre of her frame
26 Proves her launched for one sole issue, armed and engined for the same,
27 And to serve that single issue, lest the generations fail,
28 The female of the species must be deadlier than the male.

29 She who faces Death by torture for each life beneath her breast
30 May not deal in doubt or pity -- must not swerve for fact or jest.
31 These be purely male diversions -- not in these her honour dwells.
32 She the Other Law we live by, is that Law and nothing else.

33 She can bring no more to living than the powers that make her great
34 As the Mother of the Infant and the Mistress of the Mate.
35 And when Babe and Man are lacking and she strides unchained to claim
36 Her right as femme (and baron), her equipment is the same.

37 She is wedded to convictions -- in default of grosser ties;
38 Her contentions are her children, Heaven help him who denies! --
39 He will meet no suave discussion, but the instant, white-hot, wild,
40 Wakened female of the species warring as for spouse and child.

41 Unprovoked and awful charges -- even so the she-bear fights,
42 Speech that drips, corrodes, and poisons -- even so the cobra bites,
43 Scientific vivisection of one nerve till it is raw
44 And the victim writhes in anguish -- like the Jesuit with the squaw!

45 So it cames that Man, the coward, when he gathers to confer
46 With his fellow-braves in council, dare not leave a place for her
47 Where, at war with Life and Conscience, he uplifts his erring hands
48 To some God of Abstract Justice -- which no woman understands.

49 And Man knows it! Knows, moreover, that the Woman that God gave him
50 Must command but may not govern -- shall enthral but not enslave him.
51 And She knows, because She warns him, and Her instincts never fail,
52 That the Female of Her Species is more deadly than the Male.

Lieutenant Sir Bear