10th novel, a masterpiece

the last day of June

"One benefit of summer 
was that each day we had
more light to read by."
~Jeannette Walls, The Glass Castle

Ahhh...

Adriana Trigiani is awesome,

wonderful,

and so is "The Shoemaker's Wife."

Epic! Read it.

-----

A feel-good book which is inspiring and uplifting, and a good escapist read. It is difficult to resist turning the pages as the events and difficulties facing these characters seem relentless. But the story doesn’t feel contrived and this may be due to the fact that it’s based on real life; it’s the story of the author’s grandparents.

 

This is a traditional, good, old-fashioned, charming, love story. It’s a family saga which extols the virtues of loyalty and devotion, and the value of friendship. It is a tale of being far from home, living out the American dream, and hard work winning through. Its characters show how to stand firm in the face of adversity and always to have hope. Catherine Larner (link)

Burley

Well, it's almost Mom H's birthday - tomorrow she turns 88. Seems like each summer around the 30th of June Kent and I are here to celebrate with her.

We drove up yesterday and immediately Kent gave her her birthday card,



then they posed for a picture. We hadn't been in the house fifteen minutes. A quick welcome to Nana and Pa's for all of us.



The hot afternoon wanes. I love to watch sprinklers in the fields around here - they kind of cool things off.



Always, the view north across the fields - this year, sugar beets.



And across the street - as long as we can't smell them - the neighbor's cows are kind of quaint to watch from the front windows or driveway. I hear them bawling in the evening when the windows are open and later as I try to go to sleep.



This morning Kent and I walked the new river walk along the Snake river. Here near the entrance on the Heyburn side are boat docks and a view of the road across the river. Kent used to love to glide under the bridge in a boat with friends taking the lowest spot through and ducking their heads.



It's about 6:15 and cool - Kent walks with his hands in his pockets, but I love it. The sun is like glitter on everything.



Tributary or canal? Don't know - love the reflections in the water and the glitter (still) of sun!



The river's on our right downhill a ways from us and here's an overlook to where we've come from after a good walk.



Slow stream or another canal kind off the beaten path...



... and you know me with pictures - gott'a get the inanimate objects. "Dumb as a fence post?" I guess, but what'd'ya think? I think cool!



He's always ahead of me a little and I snap away and he tolerates it.



It's the light that's so fun to play with!



So we had one whole other side of the river walk for Kent to show me and he had to, well, use the facilities. He forbore taking advantage of the outdoors so we drove across the bridge you saw in one of the first pictures to Burley's Botanical gardens up the road a way, a plot about a quarter of an acre, just that, planted in front of a parked train. There are facilities. There happened to be, too, water running from a hose at the back into a ditch which, when Kent heard it or saw it, he turned off. Saved the city countless water $$$ - though I declaimed as we got in the car to leave someone will be coming to check on the progress of filling up the ditch (right?) and will be dismayed. Anyway, here I snapped flowers as he managed his waterworks.



And we returned. To the Burley side of the river now,



and the sun is an hour further up, warming us at 7:00 a.m. So gorgeous! See the islands in the river? Remember I posted a poem by William Butler Yeats with images, The Lake Isle of Inisfree? This reminds me of that, looking out.



I crouch to snap this purple beauty - ah, thistle.



And can't resist, standing again, this vignette of the Snake river as we turn to go.



Oooh, I guess too many pictures... but they make me happy. 'T'was fun!

The Price of a Miracle

Here's a story, an anonymous parable, some may think is true - Kent heard it last week in the preparation meeting prior to his shift at the temple, printed it from the Internet and read it to me, The Price of a Miracle (link). Snopes says there's no basis for it in fact, but it's tender and I decided to turn it into verse. You can compare the poem below with the story at the link above.

The Price of a Miracle

A little girl went to her room and pulled a jar from a shelf
And poured some coins out on the floor, counting to herself.

Carefully now and three times yet - the total had to be right.
Then placing the change back in the jar and twisting the cap on tight

She slipped outside and walked six blocks to the corner Rexall’s Drug.
And went up to the pharmacist and gave his coat a tug.
Now what do you want, the druggist asked, annoyance in his tone,
I’m talking to my brother here. Go on, leave us alone.

I want to talk about my brother, she answered him right quick.
I want to buy a miracle – he’s really, really sick.
His name is Andrew and something bad is growing inside his head.
My daddy says only a miracle can save him now, she said.

We don’t sell miracles, little girl. The pharmacist was gruff.
But I have money to pay! she cried, And if it’s not enough
I’ll get the rest. Just tell me now - how much is a miracle, please?
The pharmacist’s brother went to her and bent down on his knees.

What miracle does your brother need? He touched her trembling chin.
An operation my daddy can’t buy, so I’ve brought my money in.
And how much money did you bring? he urged, nodding his head.
One dollar eleven cents, she whispered, two bright tears unshed.

Well what a coincidence, smiled the man. How wonderfully strange...
Exactly the price of a miracle! A dollar eleven in change.
And he took her money in one hand and took her by the other
And said, Will you take me home with you? I’d like to meet your brother.

Now here’s a good man visiting his brother’s little town,
A Dr. Carlton Armstrong, a man of much renown,
Experienced at preserving life, his hands holding off death,
Holding hands with a little girl, herself holding her breath.

Let’s see if I have the miracle you need, he said, at large.
And indeed an operation was completed free of charge.
Her mom and dad had long despaired this child would be lost.

That surgery was a miracle! But… how much would it have cost?

The story ends with the little girl considering herself,
And thinking about the empty jar sitting on her shelf.
She knew the price of a miracle. She knew it, and she smiled.
One dollar and eleven cents and the faith of a little child.
Me June 28, 2012

How fair is a garden amid the trials and passions of existence.

We were supposed to be at Red Butte Gardens right in the middle of June



if we were going to see roses in their prime. We were having a wedding then.



So we got there today. Not too bad.



Oh my goodness Kent's head swiveled when he smelled "rose" all of a sudden. He leaned in to this plant and breathed way deep, then called me... I about had to get up on tiptoe. We've neither of us ever smelled such strong scent off one rose before.



Saw beautiful flowers and full shrubbery and shady cool trees. Can't believe how beautiful the place is.



In the 90-degree heat how fabulous to see the purples of lavender across the gardens which cools the place visually - and smells wonderful. We pulled on a few little blooms and inhaled the scent from our fingertips. Bees covered the plants and made soft slow sounds at their work.



Aren't these pretty?



Espalier (looked this up on Wikipedia though I remembered the word... do you?) is the practice of controlling woody plant growth originally for the production of fruit by pruning and tying branches to a frame so that they grow into a flat plane against a structure such as a wall, fence, or trellis.



A surprise, Asian and Bartlett pears on these trellises.↑↓

Smooth hydrangeas. This plant's name, below, for real. Pretty big blossoms, huh. And oh the shade feels good!



You can't see all that well but here's a tree loaded with hanging seed pods. Very pregnant very happy tree.



Ater walking awhile we rested under this pergola near one of the ponds watching a mother duck and four - no five, here comes one zooming across the pond leaving a wake - ducklets around her.  And love these tall soft grasses. (Of course there are cattails everywhere.)



And I never can resist a real close-up, though I often don't know what I'm grabbing a picture of. This is breathtaking to me. Simply beautiful.

One of the most delightful things

 about a garden is 

the anticipation it provides. ~W.E. Johns

Rumbi fun

Went out to eat with Synthia and Matt tonight at Rumbi Island Grill.

Too sunny this picture at 8:10 at night,
sorry Synth (and it's your camera!). And gee,
Kent should'a taken off the sunglasses;
and kind'a close up, right?

Looks like I stashed my Rumbi rice bowl
in my cheeks. I have jowls! We had a blast
and we're going to do this again.

It's on the calendar for October now,



right after Matt gets back from two months
in New York.

Smoke

There was haze over Denver this morning as we left to drive home on I-25. Not as thick over the city as you see below (picture from a couple of weeks ago), but evident, mainly now from the fire burning south near Colorado Springs.



Many in the area are worried about the fires burning north of Denver near Loveland. Saturday driving there for the kids' open house looked about as bad as these pictures from the Internet. Erin and Kent and I watched the thick smoke cloud as we drove north for over an hour being borne steadily to the east by wind - which has in the last couple of days laid down smoke simply everywhere.



We did about 60 or 70 miles through what you see here ↓. From about Loveland north to Cheyenne and on I-80 halfway to Rawlins.

We're sick for the folks whose homes have burned, for the companies and men fighting the fire, and communities under the pall of smoke. It's spooky.