‘Tis the season for thinning our apple trees. I head out with my handy little scissors in the morning and for every bunch of apples (usually 3-5), I cut off all but one. They’re still fairly small at this point. Lots of times it’s an easy decision when one brute bully beast of an apple is surrounded by puny little fruits that are barely making an effort. Sometimes, though, there’ll be 2-3 good-sized apples in a bunch and it seems like cold-blooded fruitricide to send some of these hurtling to their doom. I keep reminding myself that it’s good for the tree, good for the fruit, good for the harvest and therefore, good for us. Every apple I remove gives the tree more energy to pour into the ones that are left. It’s a useful image to contemplate when I think about what the Lord has to do in my life to make me more fruitful and to give me a better harvest. I don’t want to get in the way of what the Master Orchard Keeper is doing, even if it means removing what I think is good fruit.
I can only do so much at a time before my arm starts complaining, the old tendinitis giving warning: stop now or you’ll be sorry.
To read about a dark time in the life of our apple trees: Woe Has Come
I might have to thin this post out in the morning.
This is a glorious time of year. There’s fresh green color everywhere that makes you glad to be alive; things are growing, budding, fruiting, and teeming with life. Glory to God in the highest!
Roses at the grocery store caught my eyeThe Michael planter (named after my uncle) with moss rose hair this yearThe Betty planter (named after my aunt) whose moss roses are in bloomThe Mary planter (named after my mom) with buds ready to bloom
Whatever else is going on in your world, spring always tells the story of life after death, of green and fresh resurrection, of budding hope and of a Savior who died so that you can be fruitful and teeming with life. Glory to God in the highest!
We drove to Sanders, Arizona, staying at a little mobile home unit behind somebody’s house out in the boonies. It wasn’t a very long drive, so we stopped at Monument Valley to do the driving trail tour.
Many western movies directed by John Ford have been filmed in Monument Valley, by the way, including, “The Searchers,” “Cheyenne Autumn,” and “Stage Coach.” John Wayne referred to Monument Valley as “God’s Treasure,” which from my point of view is mete, right and salutary.
Evidently part of Forrest Gump had been filmed there, too, since we saw a signs for Forrest Gump Hill shortly before arriving at MV itself. I’ve only seen Forrest Gump once and it was about a thousand years ago, so I don’t remember much from it. Next time we watch it, I’ll be on the lookout for Forrest Gump Hill.
Forrest Gump Hill is on the right
Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park is owned by the Navajo Nation, so it isn’t considered a National Park.
You could get guided tours, but we figured we’d get as much as we wanted out of it by doing the self-guided driving tour on something they were calling a road. This kind of driving is apparently called “off-roading.” Oh my goodness – I’ve never been on such a bumpy road. If my head hadn’t been attached, it would have fallen off. I could hardly wait to get off that road, but it was one of Kris’s favorite experiences, so “vive la difference.”
We stopped at all the turnouts, as well as taking the side spurs to places of interest. The East and West Mittens, as well as the Three Sisters, were probably the most iconic sights.
A mitten – let’s call it West Mitten since I don’t remember which was which.And this is East Mitten – looks like a teapot to meThe Three Sisters! (I’m confident about this one)
One of the places we stopped along the driving trail was called “John Ford’s Point.” A very sad looking horse stood out in the sun waiting for people to hire it for a short ride. I exchanged a sympathetic look with the beastie before we moved on.
John Ford’s Point with a rando posing on itThe price options are hilarious (to me)An iconic western scene – the bird wheeling in the sky
We bumped and jolted our way along the rest of the trail, stopping at the Rain God Mesa and Spearhead Mesa and a couple other places to do the Tourists Taking Photos routine.
I think this is Rain God Mesa – don’t quote meSpearhead Mesa?
It took us about 2 hours to do the 15-mile trail, partly because of all the stops and partly because we had to drive very slowly over the sandy, rocky and rut-filled road.
Thanks for joining us on our Southwest Tour – more to come!
It’s a mush with a room; It’s a pale little ghoul; It’s a fungus amongus; It’s a toad with a stool. Some of them fill you; Some of them kill you; What odd little critters To put in your fritters.
Paintings copied (more or less) from things I found on Pinterest. The whimsical poetry is my own, for better or for worse.
The third place on our ticket wasn’t going to open until 6:00 p.m. so we consulted our maps and decided to make our way to the port. Have I mentioned how hot it was getting? There was no air conditioning at either museum, so as we made our way to the port as soon as I saw a sign for “La Cremaria,” I veered off without even warning Kris. Gelato is my friend.
We wound our way through more narrow streets and eventually came out to a large, busy and festive-looking section of town at the port. We walked over to the famous aquarium and decided to give it a pass for the time being. The tickets were fairly expensive and we were both feeling a little bit of “tourist fatigue” after the two museums. I walked over to a shady spot to rest while Kris looked over the information about the aquarium. When he rejoined me, he mentioned that some guy had tried to give him a little carved item, which he had to refuse several times. That seemed mystifying and we joked about how it was probably some sort of hidden drug cache that he’d track to our home town to reclaim.
We walked farther on down the port and while Kris went over to look at large reproduction of an old ship, he was approached by another man trying to give away a little carved item. Kris refused a few times, but this guy was more persistent and managed to find out that Kris spoke English. Kris was making his getaway to return to where I was when the fatal mistake occurred: the man turned around and saw me. “Oh, is that your wife?” he said cheerily, and you could almost see the thought bubble forming over his head, saying “I have found the weak link!” He came over and pressed a small wooden elephant in my palm, saying, “This is a gift for you – I am just giving it away today. I am from Kenya and we are here raising money for our country, but today is our last day and I am just going to give this to you.”
I was a little dumbfounded, but said thank you, uncertainly. He then pressed a little wooden turtle into Kris’s palm with the same speech. We were trying to make the best of an awkward situation, but didn’t really want to take these “gifts.” He asked where we were from and when we told him the United States, he beamed with pleasure. “Oh, I love America! I live in New York and I love it there!” He was all smiles and pleasantness. “Yesterday I was selling these for 35 euro each, but today because it is our last day, I give them to you free. No charge. Do you have children?” We told him yes, and this sent him into another frenzy of activity with little decorative strings that he tied around our wrists with a strange little ritual involving each of us blowing on the string, kissing each other and then him tying it on. Awkward! How do we get out of here?
He reassured us many, many times that all of this largesse was absolutely no charge, just out of the kindness of his heart. We were getting restless and trying to move away, when the other shoe dropped. He got out a third carved item and said, “And now I give you this last item, no charge, but if you could give us something, anything, to help our country we would appreciate it. It doesn’t matter how much – anything will help.” I was desperate to get out his clutches at this point and began to open my purse, thinking it would be easiest to give him 5 euros as a fee for letting us go. But Kris stepped in firmly at this point, taking us the harder, but better route of refusal, stating that we weren’t going to take the items since it now obligated us to give, rather than making our giving be something we chose to do freely. He was nonplussed and continued to look cheerful, saying “Don’t be vexed with me – these are gifts, no charge, no obligation. Just give whatever you want, no matter how much!” Kris eventually took all three carved items and placed them carefully in the man’s palm. The man looked at me, as if to say, “Are you really going to let him do this?” but we broke free at last. It was really an unpleasant interaction, as it always is when you feel forced to appear impolite. It hung over us for quite a while…
The previously planned post petered out due to gardening activities. I’ve got a few random photos that have been sitting around in my file, so let’s see what I can make of them before I toddle off to bed.
For starters, I like it. Not sure why I left it unused in my blog photos file. Let’s just admire it and move on.
Fake snow geese are like fake news, except for the obvious differences. You should know what they are (the differences, I mean).
The frog sits atop the be-flowered hand and spews forth a fountain of flowing water. I can see why this one has lingered in the forgotten photo files. Not much to say.
It’s confirmed: your cat sleeps most of the time. Also, just how complex is a cat’s brain? I’m thinking that a creature that sleeps 70% of the time hasn’t very many complex thoughts.
Prickly stickly. Did I mention that I’m tired?
Finally, a thought worth sharing: GOD is a REFUGE for us. Amen and Amen. Good night and good night. May all your blog posts be deleted in the morning.
I went lap swimming today and decided to commemorate it with a sketch.
Stick figures are underrated, aren’t they? When you can communicate so much with a stick figure, where’s the motivation to draw something more precise?
Someone gave us some morel mushrooms recently (the first we’ve ever had). I thought I’d do a hasty sketch of a couple and then paint it, but the hasty sketch took me a long time – morels are fairly complex little dudes – and it became a full-fledged drawing. (I feel like writing a story: How Drawings are Born from Sketches. But I digress. As usual.)
Tomorrow I’ll follow up with a charming poem about morel mushrooms. Stay tuned!
Story Idea: How a Blog Post Becomes Deleted in the Morning.
21,975 steps…that should give you an idea of what our day yesterday was like. Actually on Kris’s phone the number was over 26,000 steps, a figure I’m inclined to believe is more accurate because my phone was in my purse, while Kris’s was in his pocket.
“It’s 9:00!” The day started off with Kris suddenly waking and making that shocking announcement. We’d been subliminally aware that we could hear the sounds of dishes clinking in the next room (the breakfast room), but hadn’t expected to sleep so late. Breakfast here is between 8:30 and 10:30 a.m so we were still well within the bounds of propriety when we came in around 9:15. We met Allesandra, who greeted us with a friendly “Buon giorno,” but who also speaks fairly good English. From the many items available we filled up on granola, yogurt, fruit and muffins.
By 11:30 we were ready to explore Genova and had studied carefully the map that Giovanni had given us the day before with his notes and circled items on it. Like Christopher Columbus so many years ago, we were going to explore the unknown (to us) and expand our horizons. Some of the narrow streets are pedestrian only, lined with smooth bricks, and were already populated by many people out for a stroll.
We had decided to head for Piazza de Ferrari, one of the bigger piazzas (squares), about a 15 minute walk. When we arrived and saw the spectacular fountain, we did what any tourist would do, we took photos.
It was already really hot, so that water felt great. Don’t worry – I won’t be putting all our photos from yesterday in here – just a few to give you a flavor of what we saw. There were a few young men strategically placed around the fountain with selfie sticks trying to get some business, but we declined, “No, grazie.” In fact, this was a phrase that we had to employ quite a bit throughout the day.
We regrouped by checking the map and decided that if we’d come all the way to Genova, we had to find the Christopher Columbus house. It wasn’t far from where we were so we set out and although the street system seemed almost like a maze, happened upon it fairly soon. It was a very small and ancient looking structure, just remnants preserved from the original house. Perusing the printed poster outside the door, we discovered that if we purchased tickets to 3 different historical places at once, we’d save money on going to all 3 separately, only 8 euros apiece. Why not? We went into the cramped little ticket room and the ticket man asked us a question, holding up 3 fingers. “Yes, 3!” That was easy…until he only charged us 6 euros total instead of the 16 we were expecting. Hmmm…. He spoke some English, but it still took us 5 minutes to sort it all out with him finally understanding that we wanted tickets to all 3 places. Never did figure out why he held up 3 fingers the first time.
We went up the narrow stairs and found two small rooms, one of which was roped off and held a table set for a long-ago dinner and the other was empty except for a small video display on a wall and a stone relief sculpture of one of the famous 3 ships on another wall. I watched the 5-minute video in the hopes that I’d understand some of it, but unless you count understanding one word of every 100 or so, it was pretty much a wash.
Onward! The next place was a museum of Saint Augustine, so-called (we found out) because it was housed in an old Augustine church. We submitted our tickets and were relieved of our bags, a confusing moment as the ticket lady asked for our bags and we stared at her trying to figure out why she would take all our worldly possessions from us. This is apparently some security measure – she gave us a number token to claim them after the self-guided tour and gave us a tour guide in English.
The place contained a lot of recovered fragments of architecture and pottery from hundreds of years ago, and as we went up and around, a lot of statues and then paintings, also recovered from various sites. We must have seen dozens of “Madonna Con Bambino” sculptures and paintings, apparently a very popular subject. In many of them, the baby Jesus was holding some sort of sphere; sometimes Mary had one too. What was the significance of that? We couldn’t figure it out.
Kris pointed out that Mary bore a striking resemblance to Buzz Lightyear in one of the sculptures – see what you think:
We were almost the only people there and I was taking photos occasionally until a somewhat scruffy looking old man came up and told us (I think) that we weren’t supposed to take photos. Oh well…
After our morning at Arches National Park, we had lunch and then drove over to Canyonlands National Park and stamped our passport, etc. By this time I was SO TIRED. We decided we would drive to the overlooks, take photos and skip any hikes. In short order we stopped at Buck Canyon, Grandview Canyon, and then Schafer Canyon on the way back.
At Buck Canyon, a family standing next to me spotted a cute little mouse just below where we were standing. I’d been getting photos of wildlife such as chipmunks at Arches, which Kris had been teasing me about. I get the point, but can’t seem to resist.
Cute!!
Anyway, as we were leaving the overlook, I told Kris about getting a photo of a mouse, and to ward off any teasing, said, “Panoramas out here are a dime a dozen, but who else got a photo of a mouse?” Speaking of teasing, earlier that day, Kris told me that I was looking very European, which mystified me. He went on to explain that European people often like to wear black. I was dubious about this and accused him of making it up. Anyway, I took a few jabs at that comment here and there as we saw people wearing black tee shirts. “Oh, look, more Europeans!” Kris had the last laugh because it turned out there were a lot of tourists from Europe and other lands wandering about.
When we got to Grandview Canyon, I became fixated on some tiny cars below that were slowly driving the White Rim Drive right around the rim of the canyon. I was wondering, first of all, why they were driving so slowly. The answer to this question was made manifest to me when we went to Monument Valley the next day (a little foreshadowing for you). Secondly, I wanted to know if the drivers would stop and get out where the road went closest to the canyon rim. Many tourists came and went, admiring the view of the whole vista while I looked through my telephoto lens at the little narrative that was going on below. Sure enough, when two cars finally made it to the rim, the teeny tiny drivers got out to have a look-see. Now I could finally tear my attention away from that and move on.
At the Schafer Overlook, we were standing with a small group of people who were fascinated by a car and bike making their winding way over the Schafer Trail, another rough road with switchbacks down below. I asked a few questions, since it seemed that our little group was “in the know” about this trail. One of the guys spontaneously decided to drive the trail back to Moab. “Wish me luck!” He called out as he left.
We drove from there to the R-pod (the Air B&B we were renting) and then back to Moab for supper at the Moab Brewery. Good stuff.
My husband tells a funny story about when he was a youngster. His dad was coming to pick him up at home and take him somewhere and his mother told him, “Don’t forget to ask your dad to pick up bread while you’re out running errands.” “Okay!” he said. “Make sure you tell him,” she reminded him again as the time got closer. “Okay!” he said. When his dad arrived, Kris went out to the car to meet him, saying under his breath, “Bread, bread, bread…” but as soon as he opened the car door, he said, “Hi Dad!” and completely forgot about the bread. Ha ha! We’ve had lots of “bread, bread, bread” moments over the years.
So, today my friend Julie was coming to my house for a good old-fashioned tea party. She had requested that the felt animals and co. make an appearance, so I put them out on one end of the table. I had put a lovely crocheted item out on the table that one of my grandmas had made, topped by a beautifully embroidered table runner that the other grandma had made. I got out our best dishes. On the menu: scones, lemon curd, jam, Devonshire cream, two kinds of cheeses, strawberries, mango lassies and, of course, TEA. “As soon as she gets here,” I said to myself, “I’m going to take a nice photo of the whole thing and get a good photo of me and Julie as well. I can share them on my blog!” But once she arrived, I went out to greet her: “Julie!” and it was a “bread, bread, bread…” moment. All thoughts of saving the moment for posterity with my camera were gone.
We had such a wonderful time: good fellowship, telling stories, remembering fun moments from our childhood, laughing together, occasionally become Verklempt together, rejoicing in our shared faith…and that was the whole point anyway.
After she left, I took a photo of the felt creatures, who sat and watched us with interest while we were eating and behaved with great decorum.
I’ll probably delete this in the…bread, bread, bread…
Lynniebeemuseoday 