It Takes Time

Four or five years ago,  I bought this eight foot trellis and had a particular vision of vines climbing up it and all around it, all the way to the top.

Every year, I tried.   I know one year,  I tried with morning glories,  but the heat and other elements stunted the flowers and they never really made it up the trellis.  So that was one failed attempt.

I know for at least two other years,  I bought and desperately wanted climatis plants to climb up my trellis.  I have in my mind's eye a beautiful deep purple prolific climatis that completely enveloped a post in our front yard in a previous parsonage house.    I've never been able to replicate that.   Now that I think about it, that particular location was very shady, and I have no such shady spot in our current home.   So that was several more years of failed attempts.

This year,  I decided on the garden as a possible location, and thought I might try pole beans.  From previous years experiences,  I know that pole beans are very hard to find.  Mostly the garden places carry bush bean seeds,  so there was a challenge there,  but I figured if anyone had pole bean seeds, it would be Agway, and indeed they did.

So this year,  the particular vision I had with I bought this tall trellis has been fulfilled.  I see several life lessons here.   First, sometimes it takes time for a vision to reach fruition.  Second,  you can expect failure on the way to realizing the fulfillment of the dream.

The trellis is just a metaphor here for life.  It applies to all things, really.  If at first you don't succeed,  try, try again.  


All of this reminds me of a favorite saying of mine:  


Success is never final;  failure is never fatal.  It is courage that counts.

Out of Sorts

Today we visited the Farmer's Museum in Cooperstown.   There are many displays and buildings.  One leisurely walks around the lanes and visits the barn, the shops, the 'doctor's office', the apothacary, the church, etc.

One of our stops was to a small printing shop.  There a man in 18th century clothing was working on assorted print jobs, and he talked with us for a while about many of the words and phrases that have come into our language from the inside of the print shop, and specifically,  from the labor intensive work of typesetting, which is the way printing was done in olden days.   The metal plate letters are very tiny and have to be manually put in place on a board to construct words.

One of the phrases the printer told us about was 'minding your p's and q's'   I guess it is easy to make a mistake when picking those tiny letters out of their respective boxes and putting them in place, usually backward.   Lower case p's and q's look exactly the same and are easy to confuse.  The same is true of u's and n's.

Another interesting tidbit was about being 'out of sorts'.    A box or tray of "a" letters, or "r" letters, of "z" letters is called a sort.   Here is the way the printer described it:   For a typographer to be working on a job, say a wedding invitation, and to run out of sorts, or not to have any more "r's" is the most frustrating thing in the world!!  That frustration gets translated into "out of sorts",  which we still use in our language today, though typesetting went out long ago, thankfully!  It took hundreds of hours to set up one page of a book.

There were an assortment of domestic and agricultural tools and implements on display.  Gerry, of course, wanted to 'talk plows' with anyone who would listen.  

As for me,  I was just very grateful not to live in that century, but in the one I'm in.    If I had lived back then, I'd probably be out of sorts most of the time!

Loss of a Dear Friend

One of my loveliest friends passed away today.  I was first her pastor, then her friend.  Every time I went to see her to keep in touch,  she always said to me:  "I need you in my life."   That made me feel special. But,   she always made me feel special.  I have a pretty good idea that I am not the only one who has benefited from her loving nature.   In fact, anyone who ever encountered her could not miss her enthusiasm for life.

She loved people.  She was without guile, never unkind, always welcoming and positive.  The world will sorely miss this very bright light.

I am grateful for the ten years that I have been privileged to be her friend.  I will be participating in her funeral, at her request,  though I feel inadequate.

She was more than ready to move on to the next stage of her life,  and she got her wish exactly, dying in her sleep, and not lingering too long after the diagnosis.

I will miss her terribly!

No Stress Days

We are beginning to plan for a long road trip across the upper United States for next summer.  Assuming that we do undertake this adventure, it will be our first long trip since my retirement, which by then would be five years.    I reflected on that this morning, and wondered why I am the only person I know who does not love travel.  What I do love is the daily routine and activities of my current life.

For all the earlier stages of my life,  there was always a lot of stress {and trauma!}.  The list is quite long, of various challenges and struggles, ranging from being a single parent living on the edge,  to raising teens and a toddler at the same time,  to commuting to seminary and serving a church and raising a family at the same time, to meeting all the varied and sundry demands of ministry and being on call all the time. Striving for goals, trying to accomplish, busy, doing, hurrying, worrying.

As a child, my family moved quite a bit, because my father's job required it  (ministry).  In my twenties, we moved a great deal because it was required  (military).  In my own ministry, we moved several times because that is what was called for.  So between moving about [more moves than I can count], and traveling a lot in the process,  these things contribute mightily to my lack of interest in much travel these days.   That is because for the first time in my life, I am enjoying basically stress-free days.  And I am settled down in one place in a house I love, a community I enjoy.

When I look around me at others who do love to travel, often they are people who have lived their whole lives in the same location.

It occurred to me the other day when I was doing it, that I was actually enjoying ironing!  What a surprise.  Ironing was something I avoided like the plague in other days of my life.  I love to read recipes, buy groceries, prepare healthy food.  I love to do the crossword puzzle in the paper every afternoon.  I love going slowly into my day (sitting for a while over coffee).  I love playing tennis with Gerry, or reading books, watching Netflix movies.

I do suppose it is time to bite the bullet and go on a road trip.  I've never been in those particular states, though I have been in about 38 out of 50.

When reading about this kind of road trip, they suggested that if one is driving (which we are),  that it is a good idea to take two months.   Two months away from home??

Stress free travel.  (Is there such a thing?)