Horse and Buggy Parking

It's always a bit of a surprise to see a sign...

"RESERVED PARKING Horse & Buggy only"

(Until I see the Amish horse and buggy!)

Weeding

Rainy weather has given me an opportunity for "weeding" - both indoors and out.

One rainy day I started to sort through stationery and cards that have accumulated over the years. I didn't realize I had so many! (In all fairness, a large portion belonged to my mother.)

When I'm done, I plan to take some to my mother's nursing home for residents there to use.

Once the rain stops, I'll also need to get out and weed my flower beds.

Thistles and gout weed have grown well in the rain. Now that the ground is soft, I hope they'll be easy to pull out.

It's so easy for life - and gardens - to become choked by weeds!

Current Knitting Project

I don't knit a lot in summer - but I do like to have a project on the go, to take along when I travel. I hate sitting and waiting - with nothing to do!

My current project is this blanket that I'm knitting in garter stitch squares. I'm trying to knit the squares perpendicular to each other... just to see how it looks.

I begin a square by casting on 24 stitches along the side of an existing square. Inevitably, at corners, I have to knit between two "walls," joining my new square into a second side as well. The challenge is making those "seams" invisible. For some reason, they aren't. I haven't found a way to do it yet.

To quit or to continue?

At first the bulky joins bothered me and I thought about taking the whole thing apart, re-knitting the squares in garter stitch, then joining them by first crocheting a border - in a contrasting color - around each square. That would probably look nicer...

But in the end, I've decided not to fear failure - or imperfection! (It's all a learning experience.) So I'm continuing this way until I run out of yarn...

New Uke

I wasn't playing my green ukulele much over the winter, so I loaned it to my daughter. But now that summer is here, I've had the urge to play it again! What to do?!

I decided to buy another smaller, less expensive one online - to see how it would compare to the other one. One advantage is that it would be more portable, being smaller.

When it arrived in the mail, I had to tune it myself. (The one I got in the store was already tuned when I got it.)

I was disappointed to find that it had plastic strings. (My other ukulele has metal ones.) Would the plastic - "nylon" - ones be easy to tune? Would they hold their tune long? Even scarier, would they snap if I pulled them too tight?!

The first evening was one of gradually testing their flexibility. Eventually I managed to tune it, guided by a battery operated tuner.

Then I got out some of the music I used to play - and had fun! I'll definitely have to get back to playing a bit every day!

A few days later, it's out of tune again- and I can't seem to fix it...

(Time to go shopping for some better strings?!)

Meeting Favorite Writers

When I find an author I enjoy, I try to read all the books that he or she has written - preferably in chronological order. Favorite authors over the years have included Catherine Marshall, Richard Foster, Malcolm Muggeridge, Laurie Beth Jones, Anne Lamott, Esther de Waal, and Kathleen Norris.

Sometimes I am fortunate enough to meet these favorite authors or hear them speak. I met Esther de Waal at a Canterbury, England conference in 2013 and Kathleen Norris at a workshop in Toronto around the same time. I heard Malcolm Muggeridge speak in Toronto when I lived there in the 1970s. I never met Catherine Marshall, whose books meant a lot to me, but I did meet one of her good friends, writer Elizabeth Sherrill, whose books have also been an important part of my life.

(I just googled Anne Lamott - and discovered that she had a speaking engagement in Toronto two months ago. Wish I had known!)

In the past year, I have discovered the books of Barbara Brown Taylor - who is now one of my favorite authors. I've collected quite a few of her books and am making my way through them all. I recently discovered that she is one of the weekly chaplains scheduled to speak at the Chautauqua Institute this year, in Chautauqua, NY. It's a day's drive away... Not that far. So I'm hoping Terry will agree to go.

Take My Picture

My mother is looking forward to her 97th birthday - and to reconnecting with family members who plan to come for the occasion.

Smile, I'm going to take your picture beside these flowers, I tell her when I visited her a few days ago... Unfortunately, she can no longer see the flowers.

She obediently smiles, then closes her eyes... I wonder if she has fallen asleep.

Can you take a picture of me with my mother and grandmother? she suddenly asks.

As I try to understand her request, I wonder if she has been dreaming: Her mother died 50 years ago. Her grandmother 30 years before that.

I wonder... When you lose your sight in old age, like my mother, and can no longer see the world around you... Are your dreams more vivid that reality?

Do you still see the world as you remember it, in your dreams?

Delicious What?!

I can't stop noticing writing irregularities - wherever I go... (I blame it on all the years I had to mark students' writing!)

This restaurant sign in Toronto brought a smile to my face and made me pull out my camera...

So cute!

I wonder how many people come in laughing, because of the sign.