The Farm

This is The Farm or as I usually call it, “The South 40.” It is indeed south but not quite 40 acres. However a lot more space than we really need. I’m not sure what we will do with all of it. This view is from our patio.

Has it really been almost 3 weeks? Well, you know the old saying about how “time is what prevents everything from happening at once.” You don’t remember that one? Some wise person thought it up and then wrote it down. But I digress. It has been a good three weeks. We have done what we always do so let’s take a shortcut. Read one of the other blogs and you’ll have it. The end. Good bye. See you next time.

Oh, you wanted more. I can do that. I’ll tell you about our delve into gardening. Several weeks ago Ginger bought two potting trays. Each one had 24 little tiny cloth pots of something similar to peat – they expanded when wet. I wanted to get an early start on our garden (last year it was June before we planted anything) and I didn’t know how long seeds would take to grow. So…

I bought a few packets of seeds, watered the peat, watched it expand and then planted seeds. All kinds of seeds – peas, beans, corn, zucchini, a different kind of zucchini, acorn squash, hubbard squash, summer squash, cabbage, cauliflower, carrots, radishes, lettuce, and maybe a few other things. This was about Easter – maybe a little later. I kept the things covered with the plastic lid, kept them watered, put them in the light by the window, watched the moisture form on the lid, and sure enough they began to grow. And grow. And grow. I didn’t know they would sprout like that. I think the soil had a growth additive! We didn’t have the garden ready. It was raining. It was kind of cold. Too soon to plant outdoors. But roots were coming out the sides of the cloth pots, the beans were 6 inches high, the corn about the same. Peas were vining over the side of the table and heading toward the floor. This wasn’t good. They needed something bigger. So we bought the larger 4 inch peat pots and Joyce transplanted the big ones.

All to no avail. By the time the garden was ready the plants had outgrown themselves. The stalks were very spindly and couldn’t hold the weight of the plant and apparently couldn’t let enough nutrients pass through. They died. Oh well, we had lots of seeds (do you realize how many zucchini you could harvest from one package of seeds?!!). We planted again. This time the plants were ready the same time as the garden. And they made it into the ground. A side note here: the carrots, radishes, lettuce, and cauliflower didn’t respond to the starting pots. When we planted the garden their seeds were put into the ground. Same with the peas. And all are doing well. Take a look

I built one more raised bed this spring so we have four. They are 4 feet by 8 feet. I’m sure we have some things planted too close together, but oh well. The wimpy looking things in the closest bed are onion starts.

The tomatoes and corn are in the ground at the east side of the South 40. There are five tomato plants and about 24 corn hills. The corn is an experiment to see if it will really produce anything. I welcome any hints.

We got some squash and the tomatoes from a friend. We bought the cabbage plants and a cucumber.

The dark line in the middle right is where the raspberries will go. My blueberries will also go in here somewhere. All the dirt in the foreground is “extra” land. I don’t know what we will do with it.

Our biggest problem is that this is the dirt dug out from where Ginger’s house is and it is full of clay. I have tilled enriched top soil into it and will keep doing that each year but for now, there might be too much clay – especially for the tomatoes and corn. The raised beds are in pretty good shape.

I finally got a compost box built. I couldn’t find any pallets (four of them make a nice box) so I used the scrap stuff I had. I know the plywood won’t  last for very many years but it will do for awhile. I cut holes in it for air circulation. The large board at the bottom comes out to turn the stuff over and to get at the composted dirt.

If all this stuff grows and produces please come and take some. Please! PLEASE!! We’ll be overtaken by garden produce. The project I’m working on now is getting irrigation to all this so we don’t have to drag a hose around.

Depending on where you live you might be aware that we have had over two weeks of summer-like weather. A few days were even into the 80s. Monday it is supposed to rain and then back to sunny weather. No one knows (but everyone is prognosticating) what this means for later spring and summer. It will, no doubt, be a bad fire season.

So to close, here is one last picture. This is my mom’s wash tubs. I remember they were set up by the washing machine either in the kitchen or on the back porch. Mom (when I was older she let me do it) would run the washed clothes through the wringer and into the first tub of fresh rinse water. They would be swooshed around by hand and then the wringer would swing over above the divider and the clothes would go from tub one to the second rinse. Then, one more wringing into the basket and off to the clothes line.

Event After Event

Good evening. Since last we met a lot of time has gone by. Not without event, however. Life never gets boring around the ol’ homestead. A couple of things are worthy of note.

Joyce and I joined the Courthouse. Not because I have so many speeding tickets that it seemed wise to “join them rather than try to beat them.” In fact it’s not that Courthouse – not the one with the flag out front. Not too far from our house is a physical fitness/gym-type place with that name. We joined because we need the discipline of exercising our tired and worn bodies in a constructive manner. And our insurance pays for it. They have an insidious way to get you involved right from the beginning. If a new victim (i.e. client) attends 8 classes in the first month the company will wave the enrollment fee. No problem, eh? That’s only two a week. And so we embarked.

Silver and Fit seemed like a good baptism. The attentive reader will, at this point, recognize the connection to those with hair turning lighter shades of age. Of course we can go at our own pace. Which means sitting in chairs. After all the man in the wheelchair in front of us does. And the 92 year old lady does – sometimes. The instructor simply had us reach high, reach out, reach down – and while doing that move the left foot out, the left foot in, the right foot out, the right foot in (now do the hokey-pokey – no, no, no; that wasn’t part of it). After class I recognized muscles that had not introduced themselves in quite a while.

The next class of the week was water aerobics. Those would help Joyce’s knee problem. What can be so hard about doing that? Right? Do you realize how much resistance the water can put on your body when you are reaching high and low and putting left feet in and out? Well, you will after an hour of it. But the good news is we are sticking with it. We have two more classes this week. Actually we would be done except for the second thing that is worthy of note.

A senior couple in our church decided to move to Kansas. Their’s is a long story and we will miss them terribly but this is probably a good move. However they lived in their house here for 48 years and decided to pack and move in two weeks. They are wonderful people but obviously haven’t moved much so grasped only dimly the enormity of packing a large house, loading a truck and moving across the country. I am happy to report that they are now there and comfortably (I assume) moved in. In the meantime, we and many people from the church switched into rescue mode and helped them pack and clean. The small pod he was going to load everything into became a U-haul truck, then a U-haul with a trailer, and finally two U-haul trucks. He found a couple guys to drive them, they dodged the storms and the move went reasonably well. But there went a lot of our hours and consequently a couple of Courthouse classes. But people are worth it.

I must mentioned a third worthy event. In a moment  of  weakness I agreed to teach an Adult Sunday morning class on the Gospel of Mark beginning next Sunday. However, to kick this class off in grand style I taught a Mark Overview class last night. This was part of our Learning For Life that happens once a month for. It is amazing how much time had to go into preparing 2 hours of material (the class period can be as long as 3 hours). This was background information and looking at a few things in detail without taking away from the weekly classes.

I know there are no pictures this time. Just imagine Joyce and I sweating to the oldies (that’s not a pretty picture) and packing box after box after box (and that’s pretty boring). I’ll try harder next time.

Busy

There sure is a lot to do at home. I told Joyce that while we were at Catalina working at the SIL Center it seemed we were single-minded, one focus. Our task was to do our job at the Center. No other worries; no other responsibilities. Yes, I know that is a little understated. But we really did little else unless we wanted to. Now at home we go many different directions. The single focus has been replaced with many things – people to visit, house to take care of, yard to mow, garden to prepare, trees to spray, doctors to visit, etc. And so on. Maybe the optimum word is “responsibility.”

I’m not complaining, understand. This is life, real life, here where we live everyday. Snow birding in Arizona, even with the good of voluntary work, is temporary. The whole idea of going there – of going anywhere, going on vacation – is to become as single-minded as possible. We use the term “to get away.” The idea is to leave the responsibility behind. If only for a little while.

So we are back to responsibility. Since getting back home I (or Joyce and I) have visited 6 people, had lunch or dinner 7 times with a total of 31 people, attended 3 staff meetings and one Senior Adult Potluck. I also wrote the monthly Senior Adult Newsletter and got it printed. All of this revolves around my “responsibility” as Minister to Senior Adults. Then of course there were things around the house to do and the general  stuff of life – like visiting our insurance agent and getting my tax stuff over to the accountant, i.e. responsibility.

Okay, quit laughing. I’m being responsible and dressing for the occasion. It was a St. Patrick’s Day potluck and this was the closest to a green hat I could find. The picture below shows Joyce being responsible and visiting with some of our Seniors. The javelina picture projected on the wall is the introduction to a little presentation I did about our jobs in Catalina.

Here’s a fun responsibility we are now into. The other day we joined the Courthouse Athletic Club. On the plus side we both need the discipline of doing some healthy workouts and… our insurance pays for it. The joining fee is waived if we attend 8 classes in the first month. So we went to “SilverStrength” yesterday. It is for those “silver haired” folks among us. It lasted one hour and I knew I had had a workout. It will  be good for us. Tomorrow we are  going to a water exercise class and then sit in the hot tub.

Maybe it is because Easter comes so early this year or maybe it is because I’m no longer responsible for Holy Week activities but it just doesn’t  seem like Easter. Maybe it will tomorrow with the church Easter egg hunt and the Easter Sunday breakfast and worship.

But anyway… Happy Easter.

Home

We arrived home – Salem, that is, at 4:00 Sunday afternoon after 7 days, 1,560  miles, 6 camping spots, and 150 gallons of diesel. No incidents along the road and it seemed the Lord prepared the way before us. We came to many spots of damp pavement but only a very little rain on Tehachapi Pass. We fought some wind Monday night and Tuesday morning and discovered they issued high wind warnings later Tuesday after we had passed on. It was a long trip, but good. We listened to 3 stories on tape or CD.

Monday we left Jim and Joyce’s about 10:00. The first obstacle was getting around the corner. The road in and out is basically one way and a construction crew had been working on the gas lines for about a week. There was always room to squeeze by but the day we left they decided to dig up the corner where I needed to make a wide turn. This picture shows how tight it was getting by.

Just as we got on the highway – about 4 miles from Jim’s house – we heard a click, click, click sound. Joyce and I wondered about it and thought we would check on it as soon as a good stopping place appeared. Then it got louder and louder so I pulled over immediately. We looked and looked but couldn’t find any problem. Then Joyce said, “What’s this?” I looked at the right front tire to see a piece of black electrical tape on the tread with one end loose. It was click-clacking away as the wheel revolved. I’m sure it would have eventually flown off.

We drove a “whole” 3 or 4 hours to Wickenburg, northwest of Phoenix and got a place in Desert Gardens RV Park. The purpose was to meet Marilyn and Joy Griffith, friends from our Grants Pass days. They now live in Prescott so they drove down and we spent the afternoon talking and eating dinner together.

Tuesday we drove on up Highway 93 to I-40 then west to Kingman (one last stop at a Cracker Barrel for lunch!) and on into California. In Barstow we turned onto Highway 58. Our stop for that night was at Boron, CA. in the Arabian Trailer Oasis. Be impressed by the name, not the ambiance. However, for $20 it served the purpose of getting us off the road for the night. The wind blew but we were snuggled in. Boron, population 2,200, is known for the Borax mine located a few miles away.

The next day we were on the road early. It was a big 11 hour day. Over the Tehachapi Pass, thru Bakersfield, up highway 99, over to I-5 at Manteca, and on north to Corning. The Olive Pit is always our stop in that part of the country. We dry camped in their back parking along with a couple other RVs and a truck or two.

Thursday it was on to Grants Pass to visit with friends and park in Mike and Joann’s front yard. We had a great visit with them and a couple other people plus lunch with Don and Myrna, Joyce’s brother and sister-in-law. Friday we headed to Elmira (west of Eugene) to see my sister, Beth. We stayed there two nights visiting with her and Roy and Twyla, her son and daughter-in-law.

We went with her to church Sunday and then into Eugene to have lunch at Papa's Pizza with another of Joyce’s brothers. This time it was Jack and Luwayne along with Brandon and Megan and family and Katelyn. Bandon is Jack and Luwayne’s son. Katelyn is Joyce’s grand-niece from Alaska. She attends college in Seattle and was down visiting a friend during spring break.

And then it was off for home. As so this winter adventure draws to an end. I spent most of last evening sorting thru mail. It’s amazing how much junk mail a guy can get! And how much there is to catch up on.

I will continue to blog but perhaps not quite as often. So until next time… blessings.

The Tucson moon taken thru Jim and Joyce’s telescope.

Ahhh, Heat

I’m hot. Well, actually I’m warm. But yesterday was a beautiful, glorious, wonderful, very WARM day. Close to 80*. So nice. We have traversed through rain, sleet, snow, wind, and the dark of night to reach this point. Today wasn’t as warm but still very nice. And now, Monday we leave for home!!! What’s wrong with this picture… as soon as it gets warm in Arizona we leave for wet, cold, windy, Oregon? Hmmm?

Here’s my final report on keyboarding. Doreen and I finished the Mixteco Jamiltepec and then corrected it. She and I typed in this entire Old Testament summary. Isn’t that impressive? I guess I have to confess that it is only 95 pages, well, half pages because the bottom half is Spanish and we didn’t do that part. And a lot of the 95 pages were pictures. But it is fun to say, “I did that.”

While we were doing all that, portions of the Nahuatl were being finished by other keyboarders. After which they started a new translation of about 400 pages. I only typed about one page just to see what it was like. So in the 6 weeks I was keyboarding, one translation was finished just as I arrived, we did three, and a fifth one was started.

Wednesday we attended a potluck for the volunteers from Oregon. There are about 20 – I’m not sure of the exact number but Oregon is well represented among the states. There are two couples from Salem and 3 of the keyboarders are from Oregon.

Thursday was the Appreciation Dinner for the volunteers. This is put on by Wycliffe staff (i.e. not volunteers). They did a fantastic job from the decorations, to the food, to the program. We truly felt appreciated. By the way, there are about 150 volunteers here – the last couple weeks we were at the peak. But some leave earlier and some come later so at least 200 volunteers are here sometime during the winter. At chapel they give a little gift bag to those who are leaving. Thursday was the last day for about 35 of us! Big departure day.

Yesterday Jim and I went with about a dozen other Wycliffe people to hike in Oracle State Park. What a beautiful hike! Beautiful day, beautiful scenery. We did the 1.6 mile hike up (noticed I said, UP) to the highest point in the park. A short picnic lunch and Jim and I headed back home because he had a previous engagement for mid-afternoon.

On the way up.

From the top looking at the valley below.

Just to prove we were really there. The beauty of the Arizona desert is certainly different from the beauty of the Oregon mountains.

This old guy had seen better years but now he just stood there and let us enjoy his decaying beauty. I’m speaking of the tree, not Jim.

Here is our group eating lunch. Some of them went on to tour the old ranch house that was home to the man who claimed 50,000 acres of this land. The park is just a small part of that ranch.

Tomorrow we leave for Oregon but it will take us several days to get to Salem. We have some stops along the way to visit family and friends. I suppose the next blog post will be from home but I’m not sure what day. Think of us. Pray for us. And blessings to each of you from Arizona.

Snow! Again!

It seems something other than weather should be the point of interest when a person is in Tucson. But for the second time we got snow. In the last blog I mentioned how nice a day we had on Monday, and how nice the weather was. Monday: 70 degrees; Wednesday: snow. Late morning the wind began to blow, then rain. This turned to a rain-snow mix, then to snow. It was big, wet flakes that stuck to everything except the pavement. By 4:00 when we left work and drove home there was about 2 inches of snow. Very pretty. Late that evening it started to snow again. By Thursday morning we had four inches of snow and about 31 or 32 degrees. Very little snow on the roads so we went to work.

This seems unreal to me but it really happened (maybe that’s why we take pictures). However by midafternoon it was all gone. Look very carefully at the picture below. The dark object in the middle is a javelina (or peccary). Six or seven of them walked through this little clearing just off the balcony of the building where I do the keyboarding. I guess they were out looking for breakfast amidst the snow.

Keyboarding was interesting this week. Tuesday Doreen and I corrected the Nahuatl we had typed in. This went well even though there were more errors than we expected. It’s interesting how I can type it in carefully, then go over it myself and correct it even more carefully. Then when we do the side-by-side comparison there are still errors. Maybe that’s kind of like life. We try so hard to straighten out our lives, remove all the errors (i.e. sins) and be certain we are doing well. But when we compare our lives with what the Bible says God wants… oh, oh… we don’t measure up so well. That’s why it is important to be sure we are doing life God’s way or one day we will stand before him thinking we are pretty good only to discover the truth.

After Doreen and I got our portion all corrected we stared a new Old Testament summary. This one is Mixteco Jamiltepec. There are a lot of Mixteco languages. I am guessing it is one for each village or area. This one is in southwest Oaxaca State. I just looked it up on Google Maps. Typed in “Jamiltepec, Oaxaca, Mexico.” A link on the left let me switch to street view and I started taking a tour of the area. I can’t read Spanish so I downloaded a translator app for my iPhone and began “reading” the signs. Very interesting.

Speaking of computer sites. If you want to see and hear this language (or any language). Do this: go to www.scriptureearth.org. On the left side scroll down to Mexico. Click on it. Then scroll down to Mixteco Jamiltepec. Click. Then you will have lots of choices: read, hear, download, etc. You will hear the New Testament because we are still working on getting the Old Testament summary on line. It is a sight like this that a resident of Jamiltepec (or any other language) can go to to hear the Bible in his/her heart language.

After the “big snow” had melted Joyce and I went to Western Night at the Center. It is basically an excuse to get together to have fun without working. We ate cowboy stew, listened to some good western jokes, and sang some old, hooky western songs. It was fun, kind 0f.

This is most of our keyboarding team. A few were missing. Sharon, our team leader, is in blue, 3rd from the left. The lady with white hair in the rear left is Cathy Marlett. It was her parents that translated the Seri language. She was born and raised there and loved it. Her husband, Steve is to her left. The lady sitting on the left is Trudy. She is 82 years young, comes every year and is the life of the party. So…. that leaves me, the only other male, peaking over a couple shoulders. I am affectionately known as the token male.

I discovered my phone would take panoramic pictures. This is my keyboarding room. I would be on the computer at the left. Jackie is next, Donna is far right and Doreen is on the right. Actually this picture is distorted because Doreen and I are back to back. Jackie is from Oregon; Donna and Doreen are from Canada.

This is another panorama, from the balcony after our recent “blizzard.” Actually they posted blizzard warnings for I-10 south and east of Tucson – only the second time in 20 years for southern Arizona. The mountains are the Santa Catalinas.

If I were to move down here – and I am NOT – but if I were I would have two requirements: a view of the Catalinas and a large, really good telescope. Enjoy.

We work but we don’t work much

Maybe I should talk  about the weather. It changes faster here than it does anywhere. The first part of last week we had rain mixed with snow. Two inches of snow was predicted for Tuesday morning but it didn’t happen. What DID happen was that for about 5 or 6 mornings in a row I had to scrape frost (ice once) off my windshield!!! I know, I know, I could do that in Oregon. In fact I wouldn’t do it in Oregon. I would wait for it to melt before venturing out. I don’t even have an ice scraper in the pickup. So I start the pickup early, burn up a lot diesel, melt some of the frost, then use my Shari’s VIP Card to scrape the rest.

Then about Thursday it began to turn nice. We had 70* or so weather – short sleeve shirt weather – over the weekend. Nice today but clouds moving in. Now they tell us a cold front is escaping from Canada, will bring high winds tomorrow, and rain/snow Wednesday. Oh well. Such is life in the winter.

Wednesday morning all the keyboarders went over to my cousin Jim’s office for an overview of the typesetting process. We all wanted to see what happened to the pages we so carefully typed into the computer. Jim is one of the typesetters. That is the old term; now they are called compositors. So he showed us in a very quick modified way what he does to turn our pages into a book. It is very interesting and depends greatly on the computer program he uses.

I finished keyboarding my section of Náhuatl  (pronounced Naw – watt) later that day. I thought I was going to start a new book on Thursday but Sharon (our “boss” – she doesn’t like to be called that) realized the very last section of Nahuatl had not been assigned. So I photocopied those pages and started on a different computer. It is hard for me to shift from one keyboard to anther but sometimes it is necessary. By the way, we photocopy the pages because it is a lot easier to see the text enlarged and flat rather than in a book constantly trying to close. Then I copied some pages for another person. Then I helped correct some pages. Finally I got back to the computer. As far as keyboarding, it was a very unproductive day – about 4 pages!

The Mountain View Assembly of God Church was our choice for worship yesterday. It is rather small but by far the friendliest church we have been in. It is only  a couple blocks from the Center.

Today is President’s Day and is a holiday at the Center. So we played tourist. We went with a lady from Washington State to see the old mission church just south of Tucson. Mission San Xavier (pronounce hav ee air) del Bac was built in 1797. It is… well, I guess the word is  “interesting” to see what is important to those who built it and who worship there. No,  maybe the word is sad. I mean no offence to the Catholics but there is so much superstition. At one end of a side room is a life size representation of St. Xavier laying on his back. People pin notes, pictures, objects to his clothing in supplication that he will help them with their problems. Most of the objects are small legs or arms (like charms) or other body parts representing the part of the body that needs healing. People bow, cross themselves, and kiss the head. They lift the head three times. It is said that if they can do this they have a good heart. I watched all this happen.

The “body” is at the far end of this room just below the dark statue. By the way, there are 50 statues in this church.

This is the front. There are carvings of lions on each side of the altar. The whole room is rather dark with lots of echoes. Also, lots of candles representing prayers. I guess it is easier to light a candle than to speak directly with God.

The church is called “The White Dove of the Desert.” It can be seen for many miles. It is a “working” church in that they have regularly scheduled services here.

So from this “beautiful” (in a human sense) but rather dreary (in a spiritual sense) place we went to the Titan Missile Museum. Did you know there were 54 Titan II Missile silos in three locations during the 1960s, 70s and 80s. Eighteen were in the Tucson area, 18 round Little Rock, Arkansas and 18 near Wichita, Kansas. All were dismantled and the silos destroyed except this one which was preserved as a museum. Here are a few pictures as best can be taken in confined spaces.

The missile in the silo ready for launch. Just kidding. This one could never be launched – no fuel.

The warhead looking up from level three.

The whole thing looking down from the top (through a Plexiglas canopy).

The control room. There were a lot of “fail safes” to keep a missile from being launched accidently or maliciously by a rogue technician. One of the keys to actual launch is in the very middle of the picture on the top row in a small round window. The other key is to the left out of this picture. Both had to be turned at the same time.

And finally, me standing next to the warhead. In this little black thing was enough energy to destroy 900 square miles. Kind of scary. This was all cold war stuff. The concept was to have enough power to destroy the Soviet Union and let them know it. Meanwhile they had enough power to destroy us and we knew it. So no one started anything. Well, there is a lot more to the cold war than that, but I don’t have the time.

So in the space of 4 hours we went from a fingers crossed hope that God would show favor to a fingers crossed hope that our power would convince them not to use theirs. I don’t know the moral here but I prefer the faith model. We don’t have to “prove” ourselves to God. We simply trust him because he said so.

Blessings.

Snow!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We woke up Saturday morning to about 2 inches of snow!!! Very wet snow. It didn’t last long but it necessitated my getting up, getting dressed, and brushing off the awning. Cactus with snow is pretty but seems kind of ironic. We have been here three different winters and it has snowed once each time. Like they say around here, “It IS winter.” After a nice warm week it has turned cold, near freezing at night and only into the 50’s during the day.

Each week is different and interesting. I starting keyboarding a new language. It is an Old Testament summary of en el náhuatl de Guerrero, an area in central Mexico. Some of the words are very long –22, maybe 24 letters. This is one of them: oquimahuistilijquej.

I also corrected the section of Seri that I typed earlier. It was also typed by a fellow keyboarder. She and I sat down at a computer that had a special program to compare our work side by side. If there was a difference, the program highlighted it. Then we looked at the original book to see what it really should be. We made the correction, poked a couple keys and it went to the next discrepancy. We corrected that and moved on. Etc. Etc. Etc. Yes, we had to make “several” corrections. But I was pleased with our work.

The ladies had a High Tea Thursday afternoon. Sort of High. But they had fun. While they tea-ed I worked. When they finished, Joyce and I went home early. It was good to rest with no keyboard in front of me.

At the top I showed you this area with snow. Here is what it looks like without snow. The road in to our home away from home is to my back. Can you see the black arrow just to the right of the end of the road? It is pointing to our RV. Just to the right of that is Jim and Joyce’s house. They are almost at the end of the road – only two houses beyond theirs.

Today we attended worship at St. Andrews Presbyterian. It is large – very large. Rather liturgical, with  a choir, children’s choir, hand bell choir, and a very good sermon. It turned out to be a nice day – probably low 60s, warm sun.

I’ll close with this interesting picture of a saguaro cactus from the National Park. Have a great week.