First Day Of School!

"Let my teaching fall like rain and my words descend like dew, like showers on new grass, like abundant rain on tender plants." Deut. 32:2

Today was a very big day for the two 4 year old girls in our lives. The first day of school!! For my new followers, the first two pictures are our granddaughter Anne Marie, and the second two pictures are Ella, the lttle girl we have watched almost since birth, who is like our second granddaughter. That is me with Anne Marie, in her backyard this evening. Her favorite part of school is snack, just like me! I somehow don't think she'll have a problem with school as long as they provide tasty food. Little Ella is very verbal, and her complaint was that the teacher wouldn't let her talk, and the day was too long. She was so exhausted from her new experience that when she got here, she spread out her blanket on the floor and tried to sleep, but she was just too hungry for lunch. Here is a teacher that knows what we need before we even ask, and gives us unlimited chances to get the answers right. As long as he is our teacher, we always get a passing grade. No sweat.

"Show me your ways, O Lord, teach me your paths; guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my savior, and my hope is in you all day long...He guides the humble in what is right and teaches them his way. All the ways of the Lord are loving and faithful for those who keep the demands of his covenant." Psalm 25:4,5 9,10

Nice Strawberries

To continue my story of our Labor Day weekend, after my knee was doing better and the computer fixed, we headed to Whole Foods. I wanted to shop around, and my husband Phil loves the fruit. In the above picture, you see the tall bins of onions, which were stacked way too high. And someone had carelessy put a carton of strawberries in among the onions, as you can see. As I was choosing an onion, a gigantic one from the very top came hurtling down and landed on my foot. This was the biggest onion I had ever seen in my life, and weighed about as much as a bowling ball. I screamed and doubled over in pain. "I think the onion broke my foot!" I said through tears to my husband. At this point, he picked up the carton of berries and said, "Hey, nice strawberries!" Now really crying and my foot throbbing, I wailed that I believed one of the tiny bones in the top of my foot may be broken. His reply, "Oh, well, I'm just sayin' they're really pretty..." then, quickly sensing he may be in trouble, he hurriedly dropped the strawberries. No, I didn't scold him at all, because he had actually made me laugh through my pain. Here are the offending strawberries, do you think they were worth it? If you would have seen us leaving Whole Foods on that balmy night, you would have seen me hanging onto Phil and limping while he pushed a cart in which one bag was filled with onions and strawberries. The Israelites in the desert would have loved it, as they soon got really sick of the food that God gave them. They wanted onions, as well.

"We remember the fish we ate in Egypt at no cost - also the cucumbers, melon, leeks, onions and garlic. But now we have lost our appetite; we never see anything but this manna!"

Numbers 11:5,6

The Agony And The Ecstacy

The Road To The Farm

There's rarely a dull moment here, though sometimes I would like one. And this holiday weekend has been no different. I will start with Friday. I have been trying to delay knee replacement surgery with injections every six months. And about a week ago, my knee went out. I kept getting stuck and not able to get up, or bend it, with really bad pain. So Friday it was off to the surgeon for more injections. This one was more painful than any had been, and my knee just buckled when I tried to stand. One strong man was on each side of me to help, and it was suggested to leave in a wheelchair. Not if I can help it! I sat awhile, then limped out, hanging onto my husband and headed for the hospital store to look for assistive devices. Phil said that the injection had hit the anterior excruciating ligament!! Feeling very down, I then headed to the cheese shop for local eggs, only to find them sold out. But they told us the farm they buy from was just down the road, so we went there to get them. It was a lovely drive, then on the way home, we passed this local fishing hole that is privately stocked, so beautiful. We sat and watched as the fish jumped in the air to eat bugs, and some nice people caught fish for us and let me take their picture. Feeling rejuvinated, we headed home, only to find my computer had crashed!! And you know the rest of that story! So many ups and downs all in the space of an afternoon.

"When times are good, be happy; but when times are bad, consider; God has made the one as well as the other." Ecc.7:14

YES!!!!

My computer is up and running!! And best of all, we were able to save all my data on an external hard drive!! The computer tech fiddled around with it for awhile, and finally, it just started! He has no idea what was wrong with it, but he said that Vista is real good at finding problems and fixing itself. We immediately backed up all my data while we could, and now I'm hoping that it stays fixed! He said that if it quits again, he will come back and diagnose it for free. You can now e-mail me at my regular, old e-mail address. The computer tech informed me that I have 6,300 pictures on my hard drive!!! I was stunned! How many do you have? It might surprise you! So to celebrate the return of my pictures, I am showing you one of my favorites, a peony. To see more peonies, and read the short story of how this flower got it's name, CLICK HERE. I have many stories to share with you about what has been going on with us on this painful, yet joyous weekend! Hope the rest of yours is great!!

Computer Crash

Dear blogging friends, this has been a very trying day, both physically and emotionally. Then I came home this evening to find that my computer had crashed. Dell tech support ran some tests over the phone and informed me that the operating system is corrupted. I need to wipe out and reload the whole system, but I do not have any backup. Now I somehow need to retrieve all my data from a computer that will not run. Tomorrow a tech is coming over to remove my hard drive and put it in another computer, hopefully retreiving the files. But if the source of the problem is a bad hard drive, this will not work and I will lose all my files. If everything works well, I should be up and running sometime this weekend, we will see. I am writing this from my husband's computer. Of course I have no e-mail, so if you want to contact me, please use my husband's e-mail, which I will be checking throughout the day. The address is:
phil.hartzler@yahoo.com Please do not forget me, and I will be giving you updates on the problem, but I have no access to pictures without a lot of trouble.

There's Nothing Like A Cone On A Hot Day

Perhaps you have bought Echinacea at the drug store to help a cold or boost your immune system. It is a big seller and found everywhere. But till now I didn't really know where it came from. These are the coneflowers around here, they have been everywhere, and they attract so many flying things. In these pictures I caught honey bees, carpenter bees, and skipper butterflies enjoying them. The proper name for the coneflower is echinacea. This is from the Greek word for hedgehog, because of the spiky bristles in the middle. Native Americans used it for snake bites, headaches,mumps,colds, you name it. Taking echinacea daily is supposed to reduce your chances of getting cold or flu. In the 1870's, a medicine salesman named H.C.F. Meyer sold a coneflower mixture as a cure for pain, disease, and snakebites. He became one of the first so-called snake oil salesmen. But it made the medical community take notice, and they found some truth to this plant extract claim. The rest is history. Here is the greatest healer of all time.

"Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people. News about him spread all over Syria, and people brought to him all who were ill with various diseases, those suffering severe pain...and he healed them." Matthew 4:23

You've Got Mail (Or Not!)

All of these pictures are actual mail boxes. Around these parts, people like to prettify them. So I don't imagine anyone in our little valley will be pleased to hear about the latest news from the post office. They have fallen on hard times, what with e-mail, fax machines, Fed Ex, and UPS. They are losing more and more profit, and it is expected to drop by half in the next decade. So they want to cut out one working day and deliver mail only five days a week. They figure that being off on Saturday will save them over three billion dollars a year. But this requires approval from Congress, and Congress already turned it down once in 1983. They are saying that the worst part will be for the rural customers, who live far from post offices and depend on the mail every day for parts for farming equipment, medicines, and government checks. What is your opinion, do you care if you don't get mail on Saturday anymore? Who was the greatest letter writer in the world? Probably Paul, in his epistles of the New Testament. What is an epistle, and how is it different from a letter? An epistle is a long, formal, didactic letter, or one of the letters included as a book in the New Testament. And they really deliver every time.

"This man is my chosen instrument to carry my name before the Gentiles and their kings and before the people of Israel. I will show him how much he must suffer for my name." Acts 9:15

And so Paul did suffer, but he did it with an inner joy that God had given him, and along the way wrote some of the most beautiful and spirit given books of the entire bible. Books that are still being delivered and learned from not just five days of the week, but every day.