Spring is here

A few photos from my yard, and of the Young Men and their leaders in my neighborhood who came last night to dig grass out of my flower beds. Yahoo! They were awesome!


What a neglected mess this front step area is. All my flower beds were like that.


A wine barrel full of tulips that I planted last year. I sure am loving the "container garden" concept where I don't have to bend over to weed them.


Yellow tulips beside the front aspen trees


Whitney crab apple tree blossums in the front yard


Ross Maxfield and Young Men at work


Yikes! Look how big that tree root is that was pulled up from around the corner of the house.


The totally awesome Young Mens' crew

Next part of the project is to get my vegetable garden grow boxes built, and haul in a pickup load of good topsoil.

Wisdom for our day

Monday, 20 April 2009

Every time he opens his mouth, wisdom rolls forth… Zen, maybe you remember how much we enjoyed learning in his Sunday School class when you lived here? He always had something thought provoking to say and to remember about how the Savior would have us live. Yesterday was no exception as President David Richards (formerly a stake pres., a missionary with his wife Maryl to the Lamanites a couple of years ago, a temple worker now) spoke about Provident Living in Sacrament meeting.

There are more kinds of addictions than drugs and pornography. Like food, sports, computer time, etc. that take us away from the things that matter most. He spoke of acting on the difference between wanting and needing “things” in our lives. Do we own things or do thy own us? If we go into debt for them; then we are in bondage. Even if we can afford the payments, can we afford the adddiction?

No child should leave our home without knowing how to balance a checkbook. They should have the experience of having a job, even if it is just a paper route, and know how to handle their own money.

Five actions to guide us : 1] pay tithing, 2] spend less than you earn, 3] learn to save, 4] honor financial obligations, and 5] teach your children by your example. “Use it up, wear it out, make it do, do without.” Bishop Sharp remarked that Pres. Richards “is wise beyond his years” . We chuckled, as Pres. Richards is in his 70’s .

Freaky April Weather

What happened to the weather man last night? Must have been trying to get his taxes in on time and then stopped at the local pub.

View out the front door this morning


View out the Heritage Room window


That ol' pony and play house look mighty cold in my back yard


Here comes the sun over the moutains in Alpine... view out my kitchen window


I bet those tomato plants I bought earlier this week are happy I brought them into the living room yesterday. And to think I had a tiny bit of foresight on Monday and gave my yard a GI harcut to start the spring off right. Spring? What was I thinking?? That is Utah weather for you.....

Feeding the baby animals

In response to Sue's blog "Fair spring, where art thou?" I have spent a good part of the day hunting for and scanning some photos to put on my blog, I guess most of what I have of your granddad taking care of animals are in my own memory banks. But I'll keep looking around. I did find this cute one of Jane and I feeding two bum lambs when we lived at the D Ranch, 40 miles north of Moorcroft in northeastern Wyoming, another 12 miles north of Oshoto. (probably 1948-50?) Oshoto is still on a Wyoming map.



The story behind this goes something like this. There was a sheep rancher that lived a little ways from us, maybe 15-20 miles. In the spring, ewes often had twins and not every one was accepted by their mothers, thus the bum lambs. When it appeared that a lamb would need to be fed by a human, he'd call up my dad (yes, we had a phone - of sorts - out there) So my dad would go over and pick up those lambs and as a family - it was probably mostly him - feed them through the summer, and when fall came, would sell them.