Honesty

My one word for 2015 is “Honesty.”

Let’s see how I did with Honesty in May.

Lunch Bunch was a trip to the Tanglewood Grill in Gig Harbor.

I think I told you last month couple of months that the church is doing a capital campaign to raise money to bring the facilities up to ADA standards and to do some needed repairs on our 80-year-old building. We have commitments for just shy of $300,000 to meet our goal. That’s a pretty big goal for a little church of less than 100 members, but we are very healthy, if aging, and are committed to living out our faith with our pocketbooks.

The new activities director at FTJ took us to Watson’s Nursery and I was able to get some lovely red and white columbine that are going a long way to minimizing the dying daffodils (you have to let them die down if you expect to get blooms next year).

I also got two more foxglove, since the ones I got last year look so pretty (and the deer really don’t eat them).

They finally had a Joe Pye Weed (it doesn’t look like much now, but it will spread and cover the whole corner by the steps to the porch.) It smells divine when it’s in bloom.

Finally, I started dividing the ground cover that is in the bed at the base of the porch. I had the yard men dig out the old stuff that was in half of the bed, and I’m getting this to “expand”. The runners I transplanted have taken root beautifully and are beginning to put out new runners of their own.

I’ve started walking every Thursday morning with a group of folks from Bethany. We walk on the waterfront for about half an hour and then we drink coffee at a new coffee shop in the new construction.

Two Town is mostly a bar, but they have decent coffee, tea, and pastries in the morning and we are the only ones there.

FTJ has begun taking the bus down to Owen Beach a couple of Friday afternoons a month so a group of us can walk on the paved path and look at the sound.

A group from FTJ went to see the Georgia O’Keefe exhibition at the Tacoma Art Museum.

We also had a talk by a biologist who studied the wild life and repopulation of Mt. Saint Helen’s after the eruption in 1981. You can see pictures here.

I have a little raised garden plot in the FTJ garden that has been taking up a fair amount of my time. I am growing green beans, crowder peas, tomatoes, yellow squash, cucumbers, Serrano and jalapeno peppers, and onions (if they ever do anything). I gave up on the purple hulls, and put Walla-Walla onions in their place. I also got two artichoke plants to try out.

The squash and cucumbers are blooming and setting fruit, and this weekend, I spotted a couple of blooms on the tomatoes. The green bean plants are getting enormous, and the black-eyed peas have started trying to climb. Sorry I don’t have any pictures of the whole garden recently.

The Wellness Center had a “healthy” potluck lunch on Senior Fitness Day, Wednesday, May 27. My team won first place in the Fitness Jeopardy game.

I remembered my one word, HONESTY, when we were eating lunch in one of the dining rooms here. (It was Memorial Day and they were having barbecued ribs.) Anyway, one of the old men at the table was blathering on and on about how awful Obama Care was, and how awful Obama was, and I finally stopped him and “tactfully” told him that he didn’t know what he was talking about. He tried to keep on, but I finally said, “I just don’t want to talk about it.” He kept on, and kept on, and I finally said “I said, I don’t want to talk about it with you. I’m obviously not going to change your mind, and you FOR SURE aren’t going to change mine,” and we got up and walked out on him, sputtering.

A group here at FTJ are doing a virtual walk to the Canadian border (almost exactly 150 miles). We’re keeping track with FitBits or other GPS devices. I’m in the lead with about 60 miles since the 27th of May. I’ve gotten a FitBit for Big Al, and his physical therapist is making him walk. His goal is to be able to walk a mile. I told him he would have to be able to do that if he expected to have a good time on our trip/cruise this fall.

Until next month’s report on HONESTY you can follow along with my daily pictures.