Still looking beautiful.

Oh dear, these were supposed to be red and lushious for our salads in August and here we are
at the middle of October and still very green.  At least with all this rain I haven't had to water
them constantly.   Perhaps now is the time to look out my receipe for green tomato chutney!

We are very complex to the end!

We are very complicated people and the more we learn about each other and our bodies and minds the more perlexing it is.
When Mel Blanc, a man of a thousand voices had a stroke he fell into a deep coma; he was taken to hospital and his family told he could not be saved and it was only a matter of time before he would die.
They were also reminded that hearing is the last of our senses to go so they should sit and talk with him until the end came which they did.
He never spoke to his loved ones again but whenever the doctors asked a question softly in his ear he would answer softly but only in the voice of Bugs Bunny his most famous creation.
He died some days later and only lost the voice of his beloved BB a few hours before his death.

Autumn is here

 

These beautiful rose hips in my neighbour's garden reminded me of when I was a child and my mother
would gather a basket full and make jam and syrup.  Any sign of a sneeze in our house and all the
family would be lined up for a spoonful of rose hip syrup which mother told us would guard us from all known germs!   We didn't mind as it tasted much nicer than the stuff other kids got from the chemist.
Mother wasn't far wrong in her judgement (was she ever?) as I now know that a spoonful of rose hip contains 60 times more vitamin C than the average size orange and is the richest plant source available -
it is also used in the treatment of Rheumatoid Arthritis.  What an amazing plant - it spends all summer showing us the most beautiful and sweet scented roses and then gives the beneficial fruits of Autumn.

S Juan del Cruce

You never know.....?

Bart Connor is the most decorated gymnast in the world and has brought many honours to himself
and to his country the United States.
He represented the US at the 1984 Olympics where he met the Romanian gymnast Nadia Comaneci and they married the following year and now run a training programme for future gymnasts.
Bart was a very active child from the ages 2 to 3 years but insisted on  'walking' around the house on his hands more often than on his feet.  Visitors to their home thought he was  a very odd child but his mother never once told him to 'stop it'  -  instead she bided her time and as soon as she was allowed to took him and enrolled him into a gym.......and the rest is history.  Never ignore your God given talents.

My kind of Christianity

                      'So what do you believe in?
               Nothing fixed or final,
               all the while I travel a miracle 
               I doubt, and yet
               I walk upon the water'

   From the poem 'Interview' by the wonderful Sidney Carter
                                                                               1915-2004

Memories and such...

My number 2 son has taken to writing stories of a rather dark nature and  has had a modicum
of success, though not to great riches it has to be said.   Most of his stories seem to me to take place in dark old houses situated in vast and lonely places as certainly these types of tales very often need this kind of setting.  This has me wondering if his childhood memories are of visiting
friends in old and atmospheric houses as we certainly had a few who did live in them.
One of our dearest friends lived on the Pennines in Greater Manchester in a huge and much neglected vicarage.  Charles was vicar of a sparse congregation and a huge, cold church but he and his wife Clare loved it and the people scattered around this bleak landscape.  Clare was a lovely, kind and wise lady who took on the long empty post of 'lollipop lady' which enabled her to get to know every child in the area of the school by their first names and often their mothers too.
Before long many of them were attending events she and Charles organised in church and were
able to be greeted with a hug and called by name.  A stroke of genius!
The church house was huge and they could not afford the heating bills and it was usually freezing in winter and summer so Clare usually kept her 'lollipop lady'  layers of uniform on in the house between duties prompting Charles to to be able to ask her 'Is this the way to the kitchen Miss?' whenever they met in the house. 
They asked us to come up and visit them and told us of the glorious views from their house stretching across endless acres of Pennine moorland but stressed not to come before May as the icicles on the windows did not usually melt until then.   Oh! how we laughed, we thought it was a joke.
They lived very happily there until the diocese decided to close the church and they were moved into a small town but were never as happy and decided to retire soon after. 
I should have taken lots of photographs but digital cameras were far in the future then; but it would have been a great help to our son's imagination.  You never know what experiences might come up again in your future life.   RIP Charles and Clare, you were the best.