Category Archives: Family

Family, Garden

Home Alone

Leave a comment

62  bar steep rise 29.98 3mph NEE dew-point 47  sunrise 6:08  sunset 8:28  Lughnasa

First Quarter of the Corn Moon  moonrise 1533  moonset 2334

Kate’s been gone since Thursday morning.  I miss her.   There’s always a certain frisson being home alone, for a bit, but it fades and then missing her kicks in.  We talk things out, watch each others backs, fill in each others life.  Happily married, I’m happy to say, 18+ years and counting.

Bumped the irrigation system up to 150%.  The rain has been scarce to none.  We’re in a severely dry period.  The grass has begun to turn brown, even with regular watering.  The crops need water now because many of them come to maturation in the month of August and early September.  Having our own well is a blessing when it comes to irrigation, it means we don’t have to worry about drawing down the city wells or abiding by their sprinkler rules.  Even so, I wonder about the water table and if our use of the sprinklers and our neighbors affects the city as a whole.  Don’t know enough about hydrology to know.

A few of the Olympic events were on TV, but women’s soccer, the early rounds, and volleyball do not draw me.  The sports I enjoy are the track and field events. Even there, the participants are, for the most part, unknown and will not become visible again until the next Olympics.  I suspect I’m not the only one who does not enjoy sports where the narrative line has no visibility most of the time.  One of the things I enjoy about football is the back story I know from years of paying attention.  Almost none with the Olympics.

Up too late. Again.

Family

The Pre-Season

Leave a comment

66  bar falls 29.87  0mph S dew-point 59  sunrise 6:07  sunset 8:30  Lughnasa

First Quarter of the Corn Moon  moonrise 1326 moonset 2226

The Vikings.  Tavaris Jackson looked improved, just as the pre-season hype has it.  The first string defense failed to impress, though Jaren Allen showed his quickness.  Pat Williams did not play tonight, so that made the run defense a lot weaker.  Berrian, Wade and Rice showed some promise as receivers and Maurice Hicks as a running back.  It’s true.  I can’t hide it.  I enjoy watching football.  There, I said it.

Talked to Kate.  She had Gabe and he cooed over the phone.  Ruthie was asleep.  Humphrey, as Ruth calls her, had a lump, had it biopsied and it came back cancerous.  That meant oncologists and surgeons today, so Kate got to watch Gabe and Ruth while the daycare lady went to the hospital.  Kate was ready.

Faith and Spirituality, Family, GeekWorld, Great Work, Writing

Just When I Discovered the Meaning of Life, They Changed It.

Leave a comment

64  bar rises 30.00  0mph NNW dew-point 60 sunrise 6:05  sunset 8:32  Lughasa

Waxing Crescent of the Corn Moon

Just when I discovered the meaning of life, they changed it.  George Carlin, RIP

Kate takes off tomorrow for Grandparent land.  In our world that means Pontiac Avenue in Denver, just across Quebec Avenue from the old Stapleton Airport now enjoying a rebirth as Yuppieville.  She will visit with Gabe whom she hasn’t seen since his birth and Ruthie.  Ruthie runs up to her and says, “Grandma!”  Enough to make a grandparent keep coming back for more.

An electronic distress signal has sounded three times since I came down to make this post.  It finally dawned on me that it might be my cell phone.  Yep.  It needs juice and has used some of its last to tell me so.  Good boy!  Since I have a computer, a UPS, a router, two printers, a weather station and a modem all close by, it took a bit to sort out.

Writing has occupied me three days in a row full time.  That’s draining, at least for me.  I’m about 3/4’s done, perhaps a bit less.  As always, I have learned far more than I can compress, in this case even into two presentations.  There is a tendency to use all of it, or at least try, but that makes the piece turgid, reportorial.  It needs to have drama and depth, not breadth and length.

There is a cosmology kicking around, a soteriology, an anthropology, an ethic, a tradition with an American twist and the energy to work on it.  This is the stuff I tried to get at when I took the Paul Tillich course a couple of years ago.  Not yet finished.

And, to finish this post, an alien reaches for the sky.  (our wisteria)

wisteriareach500.jpg

Family, Garden, Weather +Climate

Integrated Pest Management

1 Comment

78  bar falls 29.68  2mpn NW dew-point 65  sunrise5:57  sunset8:40  Summer

New Moon (Corn Moon or State Fair Moon)

NOAA awakened me with its trademark ululation, alerting me to the thunder storm watch declared for Anoka County.  Such notices are rare in the morning, mostly coming in the late afternoon as the heat of the day punches up cumulus clouds into congestus, then into the anvil shape of the thunderhead, sometimes 5 or 6 miles high.

This allowed plenty of time for Kate and me to conduct our family business meeting.  This included Kate’s announcement of the fourth large quarterly adjustment in a row.  She works hard and gets compensated accordingly.  She’s off right now having lunch with Penny Bond at the Istanbul Bistro.

Last night while checking the crops I found an infestation of aphids in one corn stalk’s tassel.  After checking others and only finding the one, I ripped that one of the ground and moved it far away.  This morning I found another tassel with a few aphids, this one I squeezed between fingers and thumb instead of discarding.  I’ll check it again, but I imagine that fixed it.

Watching for disease and pests is an important part of gardening.  Another important part is not overreacting. I used to overreact, head straight for the pesticide or fungicide.  Since then, I’ve learned that plants can sustain damage with no harm to their overall purpose.  The trick is to know when the balance shifts from the plant’s natural defenses to the invaders.  Even when I react, I almost never resort to pesticides (I use cygon on Iris Borers in the spring.).  Instead I look for hand removal, plant elimination or measures such as squirting with high pressure water.  That approach has served me well for the last four to five years.

Integrated pest management (IPM) encourages this kind of response.  Good cleanup in the fall, creating a soil and growing condition favorable to healthy plants and either starting or purchasing strong plants also goes a long ways toward a manageable pest and disease environment.  These are also part of an IPM strategy.

Family, Memories, Travel

Scene of the Crash Bar-B-Q

Leave a comment

78  bar steady 29.79  1mph SE dew-point 65  Sunrise 5:53 Sunset 8:44pm  Summer

Waning Crescent of the Thunder Moon
This is a few of the 50+ Ellis clan who attended the 2008 reunion at rest on the back porch of the Baker’s Texas sized house and property.

ellis727500.jpg

The reunion entailed a good deal of eating and the usual amount of what have you been up to.  A few of the more memorable updates for me follow.

Jean Cate’s son Jeff and his Brazilian wife, Danielle, move to Brazil in two weeks for at least ten years.  They’ve lived in the states for some time, but after the birth of their beautiful son decided he needed immersion in Brazilian culture.  Jeff doesn’t speak Portugese, but said he’s gonna right to work on it.  The impact of the line of demarcation effects our family.

Many people had retired including Dan McGregor who, this September, will watch from the side lines as school starts without him in any of his many coaching assignments:  basketball, football, tennis, golf, and several others.  We were all a good bit grayer than the last time I attended the reunion in 2000.

Jane (Stephens) ran a family meeting in which Aunt Dorothy and her husband Harley Brown were remembered.  They both died over the year since the last reunion.  Aunt Dorothy had a phenomenal memory, all agreed, recalling family facts long after others had forgotten them.  She died at 100+ intellectually sharp up till the end.  “She proved you’re never to old to learn.  Yeah, And never to old to get married!”  She and Harley married when she was 90 or so.  Harley was a world recognized expert on riffle beetles.  Riffle beetles capture oxygen and work with it below water.  He was a fun and funny guy.

We agreed to have the meeting next year the third week in July, place undecided.

I became interested in Ellis history.  We all know a good bit about the Spitler side of the family, but not much about Elmo Ellis and his family.  Apparently Lloyd Ellis, son on Henry Ellis, Elmo’s brother, has come the last few reunions and has some considerable history.

A few stories reveal a good bit.  At one point Elmo and Jenny gathered their children on a train from somewhere in Oklahoma where Elmo had work as a farm hand.  Their destination was Mustang, Oklahoma, sort of the family seat of the Ellis and Spitler families.  In Ada, Oklahoma Grandpa Elmo got off the train and none of his children saw him again save for Uncle Charles.  He had a glass eye, losing one eye while fighting a grass fire.

Those who knew him a bit said he was charismatic, charming, but “never got down the working thing.”  He was a rich kid who ran through a sizable inheritance.  Family.

Mike Simpson, a former petroleum engineer and owner of an oil and gas services company he recently sold, gave me some tips on looking up information about our land in Pecos County.  He thought the fact the guy wanted to buy the land meant he knew something, too.  The oddity is that the best website is the Texas Rail Road Commission which handles all oil related permits for the state.  They apparently also control all matters related to trucking. Go figure.

Before I sign off today I wanted to mention a couple of other interesting sights along the way to Mineola.  There were 2 Beer Barns.  At the Beer Barn there are two truck sized drive through bays, somewhat like a coin operated car wash.  The trick here is that you can drive in, buy your beer by the case, or, as the sign said, Get Kegs To Go and they load it in your vehicle.  You don’t have to get out.

At a major intersection on Highway 80 there was a vendor wagon with a sign that read:  Scene of the Crash Bar-B-Q.

Family, Memories, Travel

“If it’s not at Brookshires or Walmart, we can get it in Tyler.”

Leave a comment

68  bar rises 29.75  0mpn ENE dew-point 63  Sunrise 5:53  Sunset 8:45pm  Summer

Last Quarter of the Thunder Moon

As you can tell by the lawn mower postings, I’m back from Texas.  No handy computer down there.

Confession:  We had no problems with the airline.  I loved the plane, a small Embraer with a single aisle and two rows, 2 seats to a row and plenty of legroom.  Left and landed on time.  Since we didn’t check anything, no extra fees.  Carrying no electronics and all the liquid stuff in the handy quart bag so security was as painless as possible.  The rental car was cheaper than advertised and we got a PT Cruiser which was at least an interesting compact.  This experience was enough, given my basically positive experience on the flights to Hawai’i, to make me rethink my “never fly unless absolutely necessary” pledge.

With two of us along things always go smoother because we can divide traveling chores, so that’s part of it, but, in the end, it was ok.  Not pleasant.  Barely worth the cash.  But OK.

We spent the weekend encased in East Texas heat and humidity.  97-99 during the day, cooling down to around 80 at night.  Since we were not hiking or picking peaches, it was ok, but both Kate and I find the heat enervating, unpleasant at best.  The Bakers, Carol and Charyn, have a huge home on considerable acreage outside Mineola, Texas.  A former executive for Bell Helicopter, Carol exudes a charming, Texas style hospitality.

Once, long ago, I took a train through east Texas on my way to visit Uncle Charles, Aunt Berta and their daughter, Charyn.  This was at least 50 years ago, but my memory of it is fresh because the pine trees and the hills surprised me then, just as they did this trip.  When you leave Dallas and head out toward Mineola, the road takes you through flat, reddish tan countryside.  Somewhere around Grand Saline (yes, a big salt deposit there.  I asked.  Morton has a big mine.) the flat begins to roll and the reddish tan countryside has forests of pine and oak.

The drive on Highway 80 runs through Forney, Terrell, Willis Point, Grand Saline, Elmo, Fruitvale and Mineola.  On beyond Mineola 80 hits Big Sandy.  I love the names of these towns.  There are fruit orchards along the way, peaches, apricots and others I could not identify.  Even with the salt and the fruit and truck farming, these towns all look worn and tired, as if the promise of the past had not quite come to life.

Mineola is different.   It has antique stores and quaint restaurants, Mineola Mercantile, for example, which is a restaurant and stuff store.  This is a small town like Long Lake, Stillwater, even Anoka surrounded in the countryside by large properties protected with iron gates protected by keyed locks.  Horses are everywhere which helps explain the iron gates.  This is the good life far enough from what they call the metroplex, Dallas/Ft. Worth, that the people who live here can feel rural with many of the comforts of upper class life.  This includes a Brookshire grocery which is equivalent to a Minnesota Bylery’s.

Carol and Charyn said, “Anything that’s not at Bylery’s or Walmart we can get in Tyler.”

I’ll report some more on the reunion tomorrow.

Faith and Spirituality, Family, Our Land and Home, Travel

A Certain Inner Doldrum

Leave a comment

68  bar steady 29.98 0mph SE  dew-point 56  Sunrise 5:48  Sunset 8:50PM  Summer

Waning Gibbous Thunder Moon

Thump.  Thump.  Pause.  Thump.  Thump.  Thrudda Thrudda Thump.  Bang.  Thump.  Thump.  Most of the time it is quiet here.  At night the quiet becomes complete, with the exception of tonight.  One of the neighbors must have had left overs from the 4th.  Strange sounds at night make you wanna know what’s going on.  Kate went out back and I went out front.  Saw nothing.  Either of us.  Both of us concluded fireworks.  A suburban July nighttime mystery.

The tone of my last few posts has trended down.  My inner barometer falls, not steeply, but it does fall.  Why?  Midsummer blahs.  The whole weight thing.  A certain inner doldrum.  Maybe a change in my spiritual life.  This is the realm of melancholy, not depression, and it usually precedes a creative period.  As I fall deeper into my interior, it is as if my gifts and energy fall with me, not in a negative sense, but as preliminary to a harvest.  When I pull inward, my outer affect often declines, but the interior feeling is that of gathering my resources, marshaling them into a coherent whole.

The weather in Minneola, Texas has 97 and sunny as a theme for the three days we will be there.  97 is cooler than past reunions.  The last time I headed to Oklahoma for an Ellis reunion it was 107 the whole time I was there.  That’s hot.  We’ve gotten notes about what to bring to help defray the cost of food for 36 adults and a gaggle of kids.  Charles Paul, that’s me, gets a pass, but Kate and I will pick up something once we get there.

It just dawned on me yesterday why my name was Charles Paul or CP on both sides of the family.  My dad’s brother was my Uncle Charles and my grandfather Keaton was Charles Keaton.  A diplomatic choice of names by mom and dad, but it left each side with a need to differentiate between two of us.

Family, Travel

Enchanted

Leave a comment

77 bar falls 29.99  0mph NE dew-point 60   Sunrise 5:48  Sunset 8:50pm  Summer

Waning Gibbous Thunder Moon

The caterpillar does all the work; the butterfly gets all the publicity.  George Carlin, RIP

On Friday Kate and I take off for Texas.  The idea of flying leaves me cold, though after 2 long trips in June, driving does not seem much better.  At the moment traveling has a lugubrious feel, I want to stay home.  Work on the UU history.  Read about novels.  Write Superior Wolf.  Tend to the garden.

Every since our flight back from Istanbul, long enough ago that I can not recall the dates right now, flying has had a curse on it for me.  9/11 and the subsequent security measures only reinforced the curse.  Partly as a result of the shutdown and general suspicion engendered by 9/11 airlines went through a rough patch financially.  Their attempts to dig themselves out of the hole only made flying that much more unpleasant.  Long flight delays.  Sitting on the tarmac for hours.  No food.  After all that, the price of oil skyrocketed.

Flights, at least once delayed, have disappeared.  Layoffs and mergers.  Money for checked bags, for using frequent flyer miles.

This is a downhill slope that happened to coincide with my disenchantment.  Before Istanbul flying did enchant me.   I loved to fly when I worked for the Presbytery and in the years after with Kate.  Getting to the airport signaled the beginning of something special.  Read, eat, watch the earth slip by below.  It was magical.

Today I dread even a short flight to Texas.

Every once in a while I get into to a travel doldrums.  Like now.  I decide I want to explore Minnesota, maybe Wisconsin and Ontario.  Or Anoka County.  The metro area.  Or just stay home.

Still, family means showing up as I wrote before and it is my turn to show up at the Ellis family reunion.  So, we’ll take a plane ride, riding on a jet plane.  But, I will be back again.

Family, Our Land and Home, Travel

Vineland Place

Leave a comment

74  bar steady  29.89  4mph NNE dew-point 64   Summer, warmish and stickyish

Full Thunder Moon

Ah, the power of suggestion.  Especially from a spouse.  Spent an hour and a half clearing burdock, nettles, black locust, burrs, climbing wild cucumbers and virginia creeper from the site of the soon to be firepit cum family gathering spot.  An area in which everything has been removed invites the emergence of those plants whose seeds or rhizomes remain in the soil.

Over the last few rainy, hot weeks nettles have taken nourishment from the former compost heap to grow large, reaching for the sun and laden with formic acid to prevent uprooting.   The wild cucumber which climbs, then produces lacy transparent fruit liked the compost as did the virginia creeper.

While yanking on the long above ground runs of vine and pulling out their equally long runs of below the soil surface roots/rhizomes, I decided to change the name of our property from 7 Oaks, named for the 7 Oaks on the hill outside my writing room window, to Vineland Place.  I have no idea why, but our property is the ideal happy home for vines:  wild cucumbers, Virginia creeper and wild grape.  The wild grape in particular grows vines thicker than my upper arm (OK, so I’m not Ahnold, but still).  We have nurtured a wild  grape that has chosen the six foot fence we had put in the front after Celt began climbing the fence to go greet the neighbors on walks by our house.  At 200 pounds Celt, an Irish Wolfhound, was not a pleasant surprise, though in manner gentle and loving.

As the CO2 level rises with global warming, it favors vines.  I do not recall why.  I could not help but recall this piece of trivia as I drove through Alabama, Mississippi and Lousiana where kudzu has a presence akin to an alien invader.  It grows over lower shrubs and covers the entire highway easement up to the drainage ditches on divided highways.  In more than one case I saw old homes, uninhabited (I think), shrouded under the green of this conqueror vine.

Jon did many projects around Vineland Place when he lived here.  One of the early ones was to cut back the large grape vines that had begun to strangle the oak, ironwood, ash, elm, pin cherry and poplar that make up our woods.

Faith and Spirituality, Family, Great Wheel, Writing

Writing Makes Its Own Space

Leave a comment

66  bar steady 29.79  3mph NNW dew-point 63  Summer night, rainy day

Full Thunder Moon

We had rain and storm, tornado warning and tornado watch.  A full thunder moon day.  The rain poured down, drenching the lily blooms, forming small rivers on the wide leaves of the acorn squash.  While I read the first chapter of the book on the Western Unitarian Conference, the rain drained from the sky and onto the azalea, the begonia, the several amarylis and a bed full of hosta.  Reading a good book while it rains or snows pleases me, makes me feel at home, in place.

Kate harvested beans tonight, a few onions, too.  I used the onions with some beets I bought at Festival, delicious.  We also had a few early sugar snap peas and wax beans.  Some fish.  Some pasta with pesto made from hydroponic basil.  An evening meal.

Kate works this weekend, as she does every other weekend.  Ten days in a row, a long stretch, but she likes the four days off it gives her.  We pretend she’s retired on those days.

The Minnesota UU history piece has begun to take shape, get bones.  When there is a subject matter to master before I write, it usually takes me a while before I get a gestalt, a feel for the whole.  Once I have that I know where I need more information, or that I do not.  At that point I can sit down and write, usually in one setting.  A few days later, after its cold, I go back, reread and edit, revise.  Then I’ll put it away until I need to present it.

This one has been a bit unusual in that history requires a certain precision and accuracy with details, chronological sequence, names and places.  This means the material that I use to illustrate and make my points must get reordered to fit my needs, yet remain accurate and true.   It’s part of what I love about this kind of work.

When I have this kind of work, it pushes out everything else.  The writing work makes its own space in my life, creates openings and time for itself.  Just like this blog.  It happens each day, two to three times a day and often I do not recall having written here.  The breadcrumbs, though, are there, laid down in words and postings.