Honesty

My one word for 2015 is “Honesty.”

Let’s see how I did with Honesty in July and August. (I was recently reminded that I haven’t done much posting AT ALL this summer.)

My garden is still taking up a fair amount of my time. I’ve donated almost 40 pounds of cucumbers, squash, and tomatoes to the Fish Food Bank. That’s in addition to everything Al and I could eat. We’re eating a couple of tomatoes a day, and plenty of squash. I also supplied us with several weeks of green beans. The second round of beans that I planted around the middle of July are just about ready to be picked, so we’ll have those to enjoy. I got enough Serrano peppers to make pepper sauce, and a few small jalapenos to make pico de gallo.

It has turned cool this week (after temperatures consistently in the upper 70s to mid-80s). It’s also started to rain some (we had NONE – ZERO -ZIPPO since early June). The woods and fields were on fire all over Washington but the rains since the middle of August have helped. Folks here welcomed the early warm, sunny weather, but now they realize that we really need the rain that usually falls.

I’m still walking every Thursday morning with the group from the church, and I’m keeping up with my 12,000 steps a day as counted by my trusty Fitbit. I also continue to faithfully log my food on MyFitnessPal, although the scale isn’t moving. (sigh)

The racial unrest, typified by Ferguson, Baltimore, Sandra Bland, McKinney, and Charleston, finally got under my skin enough that I began to be more pro-active about seeking change. Another woman and I from the church curated and led a discussion on race for four Sundays in July and August. We talked about systemic racism, white privilege, white fragility, and racial appropriation. Then in August, I “attended” an online course entitled “Hard Conversations on Race.” I feel like I sharpened my antenna for veiled racial slurs, and I’m becoming more vocal about challenging them when I hear them. It probably isn’t endearing me to my associates, but I really don’t care if racists don’t “like” me. At least, I finally feel like I’m being HONEST!

In August, my team at Bethany hosted a neighborhood night out and the annual Church Picnic. At the picnic we packed school bags for Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, and Church World Service. (Sorry, I was busy enough that I didn’t get any pictures taken, but you can see photos from the last couple of years here, and here and here.)

Big Al and I are getting excited for our big 50th Anniversary trip. We leave Tacoma on Sunday, September 27th and return on Saturday, October 24th. We’ll take Amtrak from here to Vancouver, BC, where we’ll board VIA (Canada Rail) and ride to Toronto. We’ll spend the night in Toronto, and then take the train to Montreal where we will spend two nights before training to Quebec City and boarding the Queen Mary II for a cruise up the St. Lawrence, around Newfoundland and down to Boston, Newport, RI, and New York City, looking at the autumn leaves (hopefully). We’ll spend a couple of days in New York, sightseeing and visiting Harriet and Robert, before we board the Jersey Central RR for Philadelphia and a quick visit with Marianne. We’ll take the train from there to Washington DC where we’ll spend three nights sightseeing (we’ve both been to DC as teenagers, but we haven’t been back). Then we board Amtrak on the Capital Limited for Chicago where we’ll have a one-night layover before catching the California Zephyr, bound for Sacramento. We’ve traveled the Empire Builder so many times we know the route by heart, so we decided to see the central Rockies this time. In Sacrament we’ll catch the Coast Starlight and home to Tacoma.

I’ll be posting pictures from the trip on Facebook, and, possibly Stellar, but I’ll be sure to put a link here to those posts.

Don’t be surprised if I don’t do an HONESTY update the first part of October, but I’ll promise to do one in November. See you then.

 

Honesty

My one word for 2015 is “Honesty.”

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

Lunch Bunch was a trip to the Clubhouse at McCormick Woods Golf Club, in Port Orchard. Good food, and a lovely setting overlooking the 9th tee.

The main thing that happened in June was our 50th Wedding Anniversary. Both of the boys and their families came and we really enjoyed having them here.

Ray and his wife (and step-daughter who is being camera-shy).

There she is after all – Katie Meers.

Bill

Erika

Ian

and Kate Watters.

While they were here they went to Seattle and saw the sights. Big Al and I stayed home (why get on I-5 if you don’t have to?)

We also had a picnic at Owen Beach on Puget Sound and Bill and Kate tried their hand at kayaking.

We went up Mt Rainier to Paradise…

…rode around the Olympic Peninsula where Bill spent most of his time looking for Big Foot. We stopped in Port Angeles for lunch and looked across the Strait of Juan de Fuca at Canada…

…saw Crescent Lake…

…drove through Forks (no vampires visible). Then we stopped at Ruby Beach on the Pacific Ocean.

They all left on the 13th and 15th, and Big Al and I have had a fairly quiet rest of the month.

My garden is still taking up a fair amount of my time. The squash are taking over the joint. I had green beans for lunch today that I grew, the peppers are making nice little peppers, and the onions are getting pretty big. I’m pretty sure I have some cucumbers under the big tepee, but I can’t get to them for the tomato plants. I have more little green tomatoes than I can count.

The spring onions were great!

I’m still walking every Thursday morning with the group from the church. (Actually, I’m still walking every day – although the weather is pretty hot – even for someone from Dallas – over 90 deg. today.)

We went to see a baseball game at the local AAA ballpark – the Tacoma Rainiers played the Reno Aces. We lost unfortunately, but it was a good game.

I’m going to see the Seattle Mariners next week!

I won the virtual race to the border by several days (remember, several of us were counting steps to see who could walk 150 miles first – the distance from Tacoma to the Peace Arch on the Canadian Border.)

I’ve gotten a FitBit for Big Al, and he is still walking a little. Maybe he will reach his goal of walking a mile. He could do it if he would try. His physical therapist released him today, so we’ll see if he will keep it up.

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

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

Honesty

My one word for 2015 is “Honesty.”

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

April started off with a bang in Holy Week – Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter. Very inspirational and spiritually uplifting. We had a Maundy Thursday Communion service in the evening, Friday we joined with the Episcopalians for a Tenebrae service, Saturday we held a prayer vigil at Bethany, and then Easter Sunday started with a Sunrise Service, a potluck brunch and then Worship. By that time I was ready to give church a rest for a while.

Lunch Bunch was a trip to Marzano, an Italian restaurant in Parkland, just a little southeast of Tacoma.

Very tasty, and a little more out of the way, so we hadn’t ever been there before.

The week after Easter, Franke Tobey Jones took a bunch of us to the Tulip Festival in Skagit County, WA. You can read all about it here.

I’m in a better place emotionally and mentally than I was when I wrote this post. Time and prayer are doing their work, both on me and on the situations that brought me to my knees last Tuesday.

FTJ hosted a dinner party for all the independent residents in the middle of the month. It happened to be on Barbershop Quartet Day (who knew there even was such a thing), and we had a really good Barbershop Quartet to entertain us.

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 also planted purple hull peas but they don’t seem to be sprouting.

This picture is before I moved the plants out of the greenhouse. The black-eyed peas think they are climbing on the tepee, and the beans are at the back of the plot.

These are the beans just beginning to leaf out.

And here is what the garden looks like today with the plants from the greenhouse in the ground. The cucumbers will run on the big tepee with the peas and the squash should run on the little tepee.

I’ve got flowers in baskets on the back porch and in planters. The daffodils are finished and I’m trying to decide what to put in that bed. There’s a trip to the greenhouse in my future, I think.

I think I told you last month 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. Today we have a party for anyone who is ready to make a commitment now, instead of waiting for Commitment Sunday in two weeks. (oops, today is actually May…) Anyway, I hope to be able to report next month that we have raised our $280,000-$300,000 to meet out 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.

Unfortunately, HONESTY may have gotten me in trouble, as my “honest” tongue can tend to run away with me. I’m afraid I was a little too honest with a friend, and may have offended her (not that I didn’t mean it because she is a gossip and a chatterbox.) I may not have been as tactful as I could have been when I told her to quit telling me what someone else did wrong and tell them instead, if she felt so strongly about it. I have a very low threshold for triangularization.

I press on with my walking and my diet. Slowly, slowly, slowly now, the pounds are coming off, but at least they aren’t going back on.

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thankful Tuesday

Beans are up! in my little garden plot.