vid for mum

this vid is for my Mum and my sister-in-law. Please pray for them both as they give and give of themselves until they are both plumb give out. Just listen to the words, Mum. I love you!! Please be okay.
-Rose

another one

One of the most beautiful songs ever and it seems to really capture the feel of our mountains:


this one's for my Irish-American friend as we discuss this kind of stuff lots :



here's the Welsh National Anthem- it's just lovely. I hope you enjoy it!

Oh, well...

Back to the search. DH, having spent quite a bit of time in Poland, says that we do not look Polish.
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I'm still listening to Christmas carols on YouTube- oh, how I love Sabbath! Right now I'm listening to Russian ones. They're lovely. I love the ones from the Middle Ages British Isles, the French ones are just LOVELY, and the most of the Polish ones are just so joyful. And still printing chorded music for my guitar.
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Yesterday evening, we cut down the apple tree (before sundown by a couple of hours) that was right next to the house (dumb place for a fruit tree). I hated to see it go, but rats, man! So we have kaboodles of apples to process into juice come Monday. I'm out of ziplok bags, so I'm praying I'll get the canning part right. We worked our behinds off getting the tree out of the road and the brush to the pile, the apples gathered, and the burnable wood in a separate stack. We ran out of daylight before it was all finished, but most of it got done. And boy, did we all sleep good! It was so great working together on a project like that.
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well, I'm off again. Time to get some food on and do devotion with the kids. I hope we can get all the dogs a good walk in after it cools down a bit. :-) Happy day!
-Rose

Sabbath Musings

this is a Polish lady singing the traditional Polish Christmas song Infant Holy, Infant Lowly.
I LOVE IT!! I hope you can view it. And I think I found what nationality we look like here- the bone structure, shape of face, and even teeth match up with our visages. Interesting. (believe me, I have looked to see which ancestral strain shows up in us as we look not like our cousins much nor like any of the ancestral lineages around here.) Weird things I ponder in my off time, hu?

Also, for any aspiring guitar players, http://gospelmusic.org.uk is wonderful!! they have carols, too.
Have a great day- I may be back later, but for now I'm getting chords and looking up cheat codes for DS' games.
-Rose

To Whomever Dognapped my Puppy

Whoever you are- to dognap someone's puppy is WRONG. To torture said dog is wrong-er. I hope three things for you-
1. that you get struck by lightning (or some other electrical malfunction gives you the likes thereof)
2. that all the river rats in this section of the county find their way to your house
3. that you'll wise up and get your heart right with God- because I'd hate to think the eternal torment that awaits people who torture puppies.

That said, she found her way back home and is severely traumatized and is acting like she has brain damage... I DO NOT understand how anyone can go into someone else's yard and steal a puppy for heaven sake and to hurt it intentionally- what kind of meanness is that?

Skunks I can deal with, but the rats have got to go. Big, icky rats that don't even care if you shoot at them- they keep munching away on apples- it's just creepy. And unsanitary. And I really do hope they go over to the dognapper's house. He or she is unlikely to have any living cats around to keep them at bay- muwahahaahaa. Well, my inside puppies are whining (again) to go out. And now my DS is whining, too- I reckon I'd best get off this computer and get some supper on.

My last post cut off because my computer crashed- harddrive finally went kaputs. We're all better now, though. I hope everyone is well and has a safe, lovely weekend!
ttfn
Rose

Oh. GREAT.

Mmmhmm. Just L-O-V-E-L-Y. Since school is starting early this year, I reckon the back to school bugs figured they would, too. Yep, the jolly-good stomach flu has arrived in SWVA with all those happy returning vacationers. Thing is, my kids are homeschooled- so I guess that's my answer to those who say it's not real school. We get all the back-to-school viruses, so we must be a real school. That is if I can go out in public during the next week... I usually self-quarantine until I'm better. I think it'd be the worst sort of rude to spread this kind of joy around the community.
And, drat it all- I don't time for the flu during this point in the garden season! Too much to do.
Oh, this one starts out with thrush like symptoms (aka/ thrash- that weird tongue coating, burning thing that lets you know your good bacteria has been killed off by antibiotic or virus). Then moves on to the easily fatigued stage with profuse sweating; then the hit-by-a-truck phase, which lasts all the way through both the congested, anxiety attack phase and the sleep for 24 hours straight phase. Then the fun with the tummy begins. I put this on here just to:
a. let you know what joys to expect with school this year
b. say UN-thanks for whoever brought it back home from vacation with them!
Oh, and it makes your head really muzzy- attention span drops, grouchiness comes in waves, fever makes your pillow nasty, and spelling/typing skills drop off.
According to DH, the tummy part lasts for about 4 days. FOUR DAYS! I do NOT have four days to waste- all the bloomin' harvest is coming in! (See, we just thought he was sick because of a procedure he'd had done recently- but it was this.) Thanks dear, for that wonderful kiss you gave me...>:-(

Anyway, today would have been a perfect gardening day. Overcast and cool for a change. And the carrots, radishes, and lettuce are all coming up nicely :-) I love the garden. It's honest.
OH! And soooo cool! We have very alkalai soil here, so we have all sorts of poisonous plants that thrive here (makes for accurate mystery writing). Well, this year a lovely vine started showing up all over the yard. It covers 1/2 of my "natural habitat" that we call the burn pile, but never burn b/c there are too many critters that live there. It has tried to take over my hostas as well as my wood shed. It has beautifully shaped leaves, little purple flowers with yellow stamen things, and these bright, shiny red berries. I knew it wasn't Virginia Creeper, and told the kids it was probably poisonous. Well, after some searching (plant identification on the internet is a lengthy process) we finally found pictures. SO COOL- it's deadly nightshade! I want to get a sample of it and preserve it since it's so pretty. I wonder if it was the long, cold winter that brought it out this ye

Hmph! Banned from the Garden!

So, it's 5:41 and DH has banned me from the garden. I tried to be verrrry careful & pace myself- 20-30 minutes out, 20-30 minutes in- with liquids (mostly coffee. well..). But, the last go 'round apparently the sun was too intense and when DH came home 10 minutes into my break, he got all worried about heatstroke and hospital bills. Now I have to wait until he thinks it's cool enough (which won't happen 'till after dark, I'm sure.) Well, I'll maybe plant that stupid row I hoed by flashlight!
So, today went in: lettuce, greens, parsnips, turnips, onions (white and yellow), lentils, radishes, and carrots. Not too bad! Thanks, God for helping me!!
*
A lovely breeze is coming in... maybe if I finish chugging the Gatorade he got me, my face will go back to its normal milky white instead of redder than my hair. Just call me The Zombie Gardener! ....eerrg...must garden....must garden...unngh...
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ok trying to insert a pic... will it show up here or at the top??? NOPE. I dunno how Lori does it! Put the pics in 1st, then put the words? hmph. Well, I reckon I can kick DS off of the PS3 and play Morrowind for awhile (Elder Scrolls IV). I still want to make a T-Shirt that says, "I'd Rather be in Cyrodiil". ;-)
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And the comment about my weight was simply NOT HELPFUL! What does my weight have to do with tsunamis on the sun? Super nasty, melty solar flares? Hmmm? Piffle! Nada, that's what. DS is skinny as a rail and it was messin' with him, too!
*
I guess I'd better get to closing up those durned Oblivion Gates now... heheheh...
*
ttfn- Rose

Sabatoge by an Anti-Broccoli Crusader!

How could they do it to me?? I was only going to plant the stuff for health reasons! I get almost an entire row planted of what I thought was broccoli and lo and behold, it turns out to be GREENS! Both bags of broccoli seeds had been sabotaged- no broccoli seeds to be found anywhere! DS insists that if he'd done it, he'd have replaced it with something less nasty than greens- which are in his book nearly as bad as the B-word. Who could have done such a thing? Has my cousin hired a Leprechaun to sabotage my fall crop?
we may never know, but as last year, this year it looks like there's going to be NO BROCCOLI!

ADS!!!

:-( "I do not like it Sam-I-Am!"
Somehow I have ended up with giant ads in between my posts and I can't figure out how to get them off of here! It's not the adsense thing, either. So, if there's an icky ad with some bozo's face on it, it was not my idea! Hopefully, I'll be able to remove them. Well, it's back to work. :-)
ttfn.

Mornings, Ick.

Have I ever mentioned that I despise mornings? I really think I am allergic to them. Thanks to my brilliance on having house dogs, I now get to enjoy each morning on about three hours sleep. If I'm lucky, which isn't most mornings, I can go back to the recliner in the air conditioning and grab a little more rest before my day begins. However, on some mornings- like today- there's no going back. BUT, before I get started on the mountain of tasks that is before me today, I decided I'm going to actually sit down and enjoy my cup of coffee.
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Kitchen window sills... they are like an ever changing collage of interesting stuff. This was my sill in March. Amazingly, that scraggly basil is still holding on. That's all that is the same except for that odd jar of spent matches. I reckon I ought to get rid of those since we won't be having a fire in the fireplace as the birds have totally wrecked the chimney. Now I have a cool old glass bottle I found in the garden, a couple of pretty/interesting rocks, a struggling aloe plant in a cracked teacup, a viney plant that I couldn't name for the life of me, and another pretty, yet broken, teacup.
I notice that when I go to folks' houses the window above the kitchen sink is usually filled with happy stuff. Maybe we do that to make the dishes more enjoyable, although I've noticed that most people with dishwashers do the same thing. Here, it's one of two windows that the cats avoid. I wonder if I'd have all the sills occupied if the cats could be trusted...
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And yea, I'm letting the kids sleep in. We've got a list of chores as long as my arm and I figure they'll need their rest. And no, I didn't plant that broccoli yesterday.
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You know, if we had at least one hospitable river bank around here, I'd be so happy. All of them are steep rocks or cut-off banks or tangled brush. It'd be nice to have a decent wading spot or at least someplace one could dip his or her feet in without worrying about snakes, poison oak, or spiders climbing up one's trousers' leg. As it is, the rivers are so pretty to look at and to put amazing amounts of humidity in the air, but not so much on the getting in. :-)
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And woo-hoo! we got all the dogs really long walks in last night while DH was out on a 'preacher call'- he gets quite a few of those. People don't care if he's currently got a preaching position or not. When trouble hits, they call him- and I think it's wonderful. He's good in a crisis and has a strong, steady presence- comforting- and a very down-to-earth way about him that has endeared him to a lot of folks. I love it that God will use whom God will use, regardless who people think He ought to be using. It is one of the things He has done with our family since moving us to this side of the county.
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And my FIL is doing some better, thanks all who have been praying for him and my MIL.
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Ok, well, this cup of coffee is about gone and I need to get the rest of the dogs fed and watered. And get up the apples, and the corn, and finish the laundry, and put the dishes up, and ... well, you get the picture. I just wish it wasn't so all-fired hot! Have a great day, everyone!!
Rose

Dog Days in More ways than One!

As I brush the fur from my keyboard, I am reminded that I was the one who brought all these fun, fun mutts home! So, now we have 6 dogs, 2 cats, and a few low-maintenance fish. :-) And I wanted to add chickens to the lot! What was i thinking??!! I reckon it wouldn't be so bad if there weren't two of them being potty trained at once (the smallest two have been decided to be housedogs). And what with the garden being in full swing, and a dh who likes a clean, clean house- life's just gotten really time consuming since June.

So, after it cools a bit, it's time to get out the rest of the dissapointing corn crop and plant some BROCCOLI in its place. Muwahahahaa!!! DS will cringe, but DD needs it for her wee arthritic hands. And it's actually pretty cool to be able to get two sets of crops in one season. My gardening buddy is stuck in the VA Hospital for the next couple of months, so it's all on me- NEED prayers!!! The kids got their first try at gleaning (where gardening bud harvested his taters and left a bunch over for us), and they had a blast. It was nice not being 'one man alone' up there in the garden for a change. DH was watching the puppies for us, so we had a break to work. (insert flat-look here)

Yep, I am SO looking forward to winter. I may actually have time to read before 5 in the AM- and might just get a page or two in before passing out in exhaustion!

Wee lad, Josiah, has aggressive cancer that is inoperable. The injections they want to give him have a 50% chance of killing him, the cancer has a higher chance than that if left alone. He's only 8. PLEASE, PLEASE pray for him and his family.

OK. Time to read Bible with mis ninos. (We do it in English and Spanish for the 1st reading, and evenings it's English and German- call it summer school.)

Hop Hop Hop

Oh, and for family veiwing, non-insulting and super-cool- MERLIN (the TV show done by folks in G Britain and France) it's available for watching instantly thru Netflix. I really think Lori's kids would like it. (even if I am a broccoli traitor).

love, hugs, and kisses!!

God bless y'all!!

Rose