The view from here

One of the things that I have loved here in Oregon is my yard.  I had lots of reasons to be really worried about my yard--we had a nice big lot in NC that provided us with lots of green and lots of privacy and I liked both of those things.  As we looked at houses here we realized that while most houses had a lot of green, few houses actually had privacy.  In fact we were horrified to hear that new homes in our part of Oregon are being built with 14-15 homes/acre!

But back to our yard.  Most of the homes that we had looked at had other homes right behind them.  One home had the high school right behind it...I was not sure that was a good trade off.  But our house is in a relatively unusual setting.  It has a much older home behind it, one that sits on 1.1 acres instead of the 1/5-1/6 acre that is the norm for our neighborhood.  Not only does this property have tons of trees that are right behind our fence, but the house itself is on the other side of our neighbor's house!

The north side of our backyard borders another piece of property for 15 or so feet and we can see that house from our yard, especially when the leaves are off of the deciduous trees in the winter.  We are hoping that operation bamboo will address this issue in coming years, because I really like the feeling of not having anything/anyone back there.  Russ and I love to sit out on the deck and read or chat and enjoy the hummingbirds and flowers and feel like we're almost alone in the world.

PS--we changed out the sprinkler heads in the back of the yard so that they would spray in a whole circle instead of just getting the grass.  This will make it possible for us to grow more flowers back there which is of course my plan.  Flowers, flowers, flowers.  But one thing we didn't expect is that now we have a permanent watermark on the fence.  It's not too attractive, but I tell myself that as the clematis grow they will cover much of it, and hopefully we will have other tallish flowers that will cover the rest.  It's certainly worth it to keep those flowers alive!

The Price They Paid

Over the last few weeks I’ve been slowly making my way through “The Price We Paid,” a non-fiction book about the handcart pioneers.  I’ve ended up reading it in bits and pieces, so it’s effect has accumulated gradually.  Yesterday I was out shopping for much of the day and had lunch by myself at Panda Express.  I had anticipated this possibility and wanted to be able to read more so I took the book with me and read it while I ate.  (A bad habit I am not succeeding at breaking myself of…) 

As I read I was certain that if people in the restaurant were looking at me they would be sure I had some kind of problem—the look on my face could only have been horrified as I read more and more details about the terrible conditions that the Martin & Willie handcart companies experienced. 

And then within a few seconds the look on my face changed…as I tried to hold back the tears that threatened to escape.  One of the passages that really touched me deeply was describing the death of John Linford in the Willie company.   He had been ill for much of the journey across the plains and eventually had to be pulled in a handcart.  His children attributed his death to starvation.  Before he died his wife asked him if he was sorry they had undertaken this journey.  This is what he said,

“No, Maria.  I am glad we came.  I shall not live to reach Salt Lake, but you and the boys will, and I do not regret all we have gone through if our boys can grow up and raise their families in Zion.”

How can you not be moved by that kind of stoicism and faith?!?

I’ve blogged before about growing up without pioneer ancestors of my own, about not really caring about the pioneers besides getting to sing some fun primary songs about them every summer.  This book has reminded me of how much my feelings have changed as an adult and how grateful I am for the sacrifices that were made that bless me today.

I firmly believe that the church as it exists today would be entirely different if it were not for the movement of almost the entire body of saints to a relatively isolated area where they could worship and learn and grow away from interference and persecution. 

I am so grateful for their sacrifices and their examples.  Ffor being able to read in their stories that having the gospel of Jesus Christ in their lives was worth making sacrifices for.   That the short term pain and inconvenience was more than offset by the eventual blessings.  I am grateful for the price they paid.

Happy pioneer day!

Flowers you will NOT see growing in my yard

There are all sorts of fun things blooming in my yard.  And more to come.  But I have noticed a few flowers that we will not be bringing home.

First: the weird

Seriously, this flower thing looks like it’s an alien. 

At least that one has a pretty color to it.  Unlike this one, that has nothing to recommend it.  Meh.

Or these, which look like a goth plant person went crazy in the plant lab…such a waste of potentially pretty flowers!

These lilies which in their regular colors (white or yellow) are divine, but this variety was almost black.  Blech.

This has been a public service announcement brought to you by someone who cares that you have nice looking flowers in your yard.

A new favorite flower?

For two years now I have missed my favorite North Carolina flowers.  I’ve missed my mandevillas because they were a summer staple for me for the last 15 years—always at least one but sometimes more, blooming like gangbusters all summer long.  Sigh…

And I’ve missed my gerber daisies because when they did bloom they were so great and provided such great photo ops.  I’ve planted a few gerbers here but they are very limited in colors because they get some kind of disease here.

I often buy plants from the 50% off clearance rack at Lowes, and last year I bought some dahlia tubers.  I had no idea what they were, but the picture looked promising.  They turned out to be HUGE yellow flowers, so heavy that I had to stake them to keep them upright.  I enjoyed them enough last year that this year I bought more at Costco.  I’m still waiting for most of those to bloom this year, but already I can tell that I might have another favorite flower.  In most places in Oregon you have to pull up the tubers to over-winter them so they don’t rot, but in our back yard the towering evergreens sheltering from behind the back fence kept off most of the rain and prevented these from rotting. So I have great hopes about them coming back. (My plants get to over-winter in the ground.  Or die.  That’s just how it is.)  Here are some pictures from the back yard right now.  I can’t wait to see the rest!

My what big eyes I have.

I spent the last week at girls camp.  This is, in and of itself, fodder for several blog posts.  But today I want to talk about what I did (and didn’t) do at camp.

I was in charge of the service rotations every day—a total of 3 hours per day for 4 days.  I went up on Monday morning so I was there for 24 hours before any of the girls arrived.  In light of these facts I took with me:

• 5 magazines
• 3 books
• 4 books on my tablet
• materials to prep the gospel doctrine lesson I was teaching yesterday
• my computer so that I could catch up on blog posts
• my computer so that I could work on a new blurb/blog book
• my computer so that I could work on a North Carolina book.

What I actually did at girls camp:

• prepped for gospel doctrine lesson
• read 1 book

Do you know what this feels like?  This feels like I am perpetually living my life with eyes that are “bigger than my stomach.”  I am perpetually falling short and perpetually frustrated.  Sometimes I think the problem is in my performance, but more often than not I think the problem is my inability to plan time well—in this case knowing how long each of those things would take, how much of each day the basics of living would occupy, and how much “extra” time I would actually have.   I’m not sure what the answer is.  I think it’s always a good thing to have more books with you than you can read, for instance.  (Because the opposite is unthinkable!)  It’s always a good thing to have more projects rattling around in your mind rather than be unable to think of anything at all to do.  But I do think it would be a healthy thing for me if I could inject just a little reality into my life.

 

And while I’m thinking about this…I wrote up a rest-of-the-summer “wish list” a little while ago.  I’m fully aware that I can’t get everything on this one done, but at least I have a good list to choose from!

Cooking lesson

When I woke up Russ was teaching Jenna how to make a ham & veggie omelet.  Made my heart swell with happiness!  (And not because I was going to eat the omelet.)

An existential crisis & tender mercies

In the last few months I’ve had a lot of great travel adventures and spent a lot of time with wonderful people that I love.  It has been terrific.  These trips had a primary objective of spending time with the people I love and a secondary objective of helping me prevent/deal with seasonal depression and they were entirely successful.

But there was one unexpected consequence.

The combination of spending this time with these awesome people and the fatigue caused by traveling caused (let?) my tired brain to start thinking about all of the wonderful qualities I’d just witnessed and from there to begin to feel that because I didn’t _____ like this friend, ______ like that sister, and was sure I would never ______ like another friend, I was never really going to be any good.

On the one hand, the rational logical hand, I knew it was ridiculous.  But when you’ve been traveling and are super jetlagged it’s sometimes hard to make your brain let go of the ridiculous because it makes So Much Sense in that tired unhappy brain.  So I went through my first few days home with a cloud of “I’m just not much good” hanging above my head. 

By the beginning of this week I was starting to emerge from the jet-lagged fog.  My rational mind was working hard to ignore the tired pity-fest that had been going on and I was making some headway. 

And then, like a one-two punch, out of the blue I received two messages from two lovely people.  Both of those messages commented specifically and lovingly on things that they had observed as strengths in my life.  It was like a slap in the face, only the good kind.  These messages stopped me in my mental tracks, said look here, you are not anyone else, you are you, and you have some wonderful strengths.  It was like balm to my inadequate feeling soul and I instantly felt a course correction inside of me.  Isn’t it amazing when someone says something that may feel totally random to them and it is exactly what your soul is needing?  I am very amazed, and very grateful.

So thank you my kind friends for your words that meant more than you could know.  I can only hope that someday I am able to help to someone like that…