Sunday, September 22, 2013

End of Summer and welcome Autumnal Equinox



I guess time just gets away from me most days but the days are so full that I do not feel like writing at the end of the day.
We have had such overcast dreary days here in Sunny Arizona.  Since I came back from Nebraska,  and with the clouds we have had loads of rain.  Probably well over 6 inches of rain and the rainy season is supposed to be over by now.  If the rain keeps up, the native plants will start to have problems because they are drought centered plants.  Another aspect of all the rain is that the wild flowers have bloomed and filled in all the spaces and it is glorious.
I am glad that we have facetime on our Ipad because it allows us to talk to Sara and family and to see the baby.  He smiles now and is a chubby little guy.  Of course he looks like the other two boys and people will just look at the three of them and say “There goes the Friest Boys”. 
We are both involved with the Family History Center and each Thursday we spend 4 hours in the center helping other folks get their family history done.  Some of them come in with valid questions while once in a while we get a patron who is disappointed that there is no magic button to push to get one’s genealogy to spew out of the system.
Autumnal Equinox:  Well, time has passed again – life is over busy these days.  It is interesting to note that up until today we had very hot days and cooler nights, but the weather seems to know that it is the Autumnal equinox and today is was a day to wear a light jacket.  It is like someone just flipped a switch.
Our Maple tree in the front yard has started to change, and with this crisp air now, it will change drastically.  I love the bright reds and oranges and yellows of its leaves.
I have noticed that there seems to be a whole village of spiders who have taken up residence in our back porch furniture.  They have built their untidy webs everywhere and it matters little whether we break them down  - they just reappear.  These spiders have an unlimited supply of web producing glands to keep up doing what they do.  There are loads of little bundles in their webs – these are the stored food supply for the spiders I suppose, but I observed one of the smaller varieties of birds zoom by and pluck a dainty morsel or two from the webs, leaving an even bigger hole in the untidy mess.
David was up for a visit this weekend and we took him and two friends to a nearby lake where we cooked breakfast.  I love to go to this lake and just sit and watch the water birds come and go.  The lake is pretty full when compared to the holiday weekend at the beginning of the summer when the water level was really far down.  The surface of the water was like glass and someone came by in a canoe and the reflection was classic of the canoe, people and trees that are on the opposite bank.  There were Ducks and Geese and some cormorants moving around the lake.  There used to be a Raptor that nested in the trees on the east side of the lake but I do not know if they are still nesting there.  At another lake nearby there is a Blue Heron that is a resident of the shallow edge.
There is a lady here who orders fruit from some farms in Utah.  I ordered Raspberries that were wonderful and some Tomatoes.  These items are ungraded but they are vine ripened and wonderful – tastier than the ones you buy in the supermarket and quite a bit cheaper.  When we were in Maine, Anne, the lady in the archives office, brought us some special tomatoes that were just as wonderful as these ones in from Utah.  I tried to grow tomatoes this summer but because I was not home to tend the plants, they got leggy and they are not producing very well.  All I want to do is grow Zucchini.  I tried to grow them from seed in the garden and the Quail came in and fed on the new green tender plants.  I re-planted them and either the Quail or some other hungry character came by and ate those too.
 The following year I bought started plants but they got eaten off as well.  So I bought Grow-Boxes and managed to get 3 Zucchini and two yellow squash before I left for Lincoln and when I came home there was nothing left.  I have not been successful as a gardener here in Arizona.  I hope that next Summer I will be able to stay home and tend my garden and get some produce from it.
 David took us to Walmart to see what he could find to spend our money on.  He headed straight for the
electronic section and wanted right or wrong for us to buy him an I-pod touch.  He was at his manipulative best - gave us good reasons why - 1. as an early Christmas Present (12 weeks early) 2. so he could contact us by using Face Tme (he has every electronic device known to man on  his person and is a walking ad for Radio Shack.  He has a cell phone but rarely calls us and never answers our calls to him) 3. It does not cost as much as if  we bought it for him at Best Buy  4. he is tired of using Skype ( we have talked to him no more than 4 times on Skype) 5. It has game aps on it that are excursively Apple products and he wants to play those games.
Number 5 is the winner!
We did not buy the device this weekend and next week does not look good either.


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