The Prized Treasures

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  “Will the prized treasures of today always be the cheap trifles of the day before? Will rows of our willow-pattern dinner-plates be ranged above the chimneypieces of the great in the years 2000 and odd? Will the white cups with the gold rim and the beautiful gold flower inside (species unknown), that our Sarah Janes now break in sheer light-heartedness of spirit, be carefully mended, and stood upon a bracket, and dusted only by the lady of the house? . . . .   The “sampler” that the eldest daughter did at school will be spoken of as “tapestry of the Victorian era,” and be almost priceless. The blue-and-white mugs of the present-day roadside inn will be hunted up, all cracked and chipped, and sold for their weight in gold, and rich people will use them for claret cups; and travellers from Japan will buy up all the “Presents from Ramsgate,” and “Souvenirs of Margate,” that may have escaped destruction, and take them back to Jedo as ancient English curios.” Jerome K. Jerome, “T...

Exciting days

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These days are certainly getting exciting . . .

We just finished "Nick at Night", our VBS program at church. The format was based on John 3, Nicodemus visiting Jesus at night; however, the delivery of the program was patterned after the Nicolodeon game shows. The entire event took place on Wednesday evenings at the downtown public park. We had live music, lots of kids and plenty of games. I don't think many people went home very dry each night because of all the water games played (I made certain I was one of the dry ones).

Last night was so hot that with the heat index, it was about 110 degrees. Though I was sweltering, I kept the water flowing! The station I was in had no shade, so when I moved to get out of the sun at one point, one certain individual thought to be helpful and dumped a bottle of ice water down my back. I just about went into shock, to say the least.

August is just around the corner! I am teaching a Sunday School class more regularly now and some final decisions are being made as to our permanance there. I start teaching "Christian Ethics" on the 16th and "Pilgrim's Progress" on the 21st.

I am getting excited also about getting the Fall garden going. I would like to plant some 16" rows and mixed rows instead of single rows to increase our yield. I am settling into doing a salad garden as opposed to a full vegetable garden--though I would like to plant a fuller garden in the spring. Right now I am wanting to get lettuce, kale, radishes, carrots, cabbage, spinach, snap beans and perhaps some winter squash in the ground. If I get that much in, I will be happy. I think I missed the chili season, but cannot find anything stating it could not be a late summer/fall vegetable. Thinking about pumpkins, too.

Am loosing the battle of the summer squash bugs right now, but tomatoes are coming in nicely!

Poor astronomy this summer--either too cloudy at night, or the bug swarms were too much. Maybe those were clouds of bugs . . .

Oh, and congratulations to STS-114 on their successful launch. Happy flight and safe return ladies and gentlemen!

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