Tortoise and the Hare

Because life around our house is so boring, my oldest daughter decided to pick up a few books from the library over her winter break. One of the many books was this delightful number we had heard lots of good things about:

I don't know if she ever found the time to read it, but since she had checked it out with my library card and I was out of reading material, I decided I would hang on to it and give it a read.

However before I started reading it I found another book laying around I wanted to devour and so the book lay waiting on my nightstand. I finally started reading it a week or so ago when I had to renew it with the library. It should be an easy read since it is only 314 pages of good sized print, and the story has been very enjoyable so far. However, I've only been reading about a chapter a night before my eyes refuse to read anymore. I'm sure this is due to too much time on the computer!

Last Friday night as I lay in bed reading, my youngest daughter came and complained that she was out of reading material. This is often the case for her as she is such a speedy reader. She will check out five or six non-fiction books about crafts or animals, as well as two or three novels in a week and ultimately have read them all cover to cover before we return to the library the following week!

And so this week, despite being reminded to check out more novels, she came up empty handed. "Mom, I don't have anything to read!" The poor girl cannot fall asleep unless she reads at least two hours a night. I suggested she take the book I was reading and give it a go. She was excited for us to share a book and have something to talk about together. The next night when I went to bed I had to pull the book out from under her as she lay sleeping so that I could have my nightly read as well. Then last night as I went to bed I asked, "Hey, Where is my book? Do you still have it?"

"Right here, I kept the bookmark in your place for you when I finished."

"Oh, how far did you get?"

"I finished it."

"Huh?! Finished it, finished it?"

Just like that!

I've been reading it in small snipets for two weeks and she finishes it in two nights.
Stinker.

Here is my darling youngest daughter with my Mom making fried apple pies at Christmas 2001.

Cove Fort

Here are some of my favorite things from our little trip to Cove Fort on President's Day. There are a few more pictures on the side bar and there is a little button where you can see captions of those photos.

This is one of my many photos of the entrance and exit to Cove Fort. I loved how you can see straight through to the back and the also see the trees inside. I read a tutorial about changing photos to black and white and then tinting them and I decided I had to give it a try. This was my attempt with a red tint. I tried blue, yellow, orange and turquoise but this red was my favorite.

I took this photo because I loved the crockery, and the 5 lb loaf pans. Oh! Is that a coffee grinder on the mantle? There were also a lot of beautiful dutch ovens on the ground. I'm not sure why I love this stuff so much!

I also love boxes and containers, and I had to get a close up of this sweet box. I don't know what it is for, but it looks like you could put a candle in it and it would glow.

I loved looking at this laundry area. I wouldn't want to work there, but it's fun to look at. I have seen a drying rack like the one on the wall but I can't remember where so I had to search and found one similar to it at this website, but I think this wall rack is pretty cool too.

I love this photo of my dear husband because it is genuine. He doesn't like to smile for photos and will make faces or try to look stoic and he has such a nice smile. I have very few of him with a real smile.

Here is another attempt at tinting a photo. I wanted it to look old, and then I noticed that I AM IN THE MIRROR with my camera! It kind of takes away from the time period. . .oh well.

The majority of the photos I took were of these three beautiful trees. I love the lines of the naked branches and the contrast of the wonderful blue sky above.

The curves of the branches are just breath taking!

And don't even get me started on the bark!

The deep lines. . .

and you can find fun shapes and spooky faces within the bark. . .

And the lava rock of the fort is really cool too! I took a number of shots of it but am only including this one.

I LOVED these handles on the main doors. The workmanship is beautiful!!!

Apparently the craftsman who made them lives near the fort and had come by the day before to share his experiences with the new Visitor Center President and his wife.

Look at how cool this lock is!

And sadly, I didn't get a picture of the best part of our trip - the Visitor Center President and his wife - Elder and Sister Baldwin. Elder Baldwin was a judge in Salt Lake City, and so of course my dear husband knew him. I can't take him anywhere and NOT find someone he knows! The Baldwins were the best guides a person could ask for. They are new to their calling at Cove Fort and are still learning some things but very enthusiastic and we found lots to discuss. Such a wonderful couple and I was very disappointed when I returned home and found I had not taken a picture of the two of them! I will have to write and ask Sister Baldwin to send me a picture and see if she tried the recipe for No Knead Bread I left with her!

Note: Sorry to those who receive my blog the minute it publishes because I accidentally hit some keys that published it before I had written anything! Sorry for the repeat!

New Background

Recently I became very tired of the old background on my blog and decided to design something new. I came up with something similar in colors (since I love turquoise), and proceeded to install it into my blog. However, what I actually proceeded to do was make a mess of things! Thanks to a few emails with my dear friend, Ali, and a side remark in a video clip I found on youtube, I am now up and running. However in the process of messing everything up, I decided I didn't like the new background either and so I went back to Adobe Photoshop and designed something totally different! This one is in greens and browns. I love it. I still have to make the background as wide as the page - but I can fix that later - once I finish this post, there is sewing to do!

In the meanwhile, take a moment to look over my new look and let me know what you think! If you are reading this through facebook, or an email, click on the link below to see what I am talking about.

http://somethingcleveraboutnothing.blogspot.com/

Walking in Vaughn's shoes

A long time ago (about 26 years ago actually) in a land far far away (Jamaica to be exact) a beautiful maiden met a handsome-young-prince-of-a-man-with-an-awesome-British-Accent. Her beauty overwhelmed him; his accent and good looks made her swoon and the rest, so they say, is history.

However, before this handsome-young-couple made history they met and became friends with Vaughn and Mary Soffe. Vaughn and Mary were lively, exciting, fun and loved everyone they met. They had come to the land far far away from a small corner of the world known as Murray, Utah, to serve a mission. Less than a year later, the handsome-young-couple traveled to Utah and married. Due to many circumstances beyond their control the handsome-young-couple found themselves unemployed and homeless in Utah. Vaughn and Mary quickly offered the handsome-young-couple a room in their delightful apartment above the Jenkins-Soffe Mortuary. The handsome-young-couple soon found jobs and their own delightful apartment just one block away from Vaughn and Mary.

As the young couple spent more time with Vaughn and Mary they learned many wonderful things. It turned out, that Vaughn and Mary were not only wonderful people who owned a respected business, but that Vaughn had been the Mayor of this small part of the world, and had served on many boards. Because of Vaughn's activity in the community and winning personality it was difficult to travel anywhere without meeting someone who knew Vaughn and Mary.

A few years later Vaughn and Mary accompanied the handsome-young-couple on a trip back to the land far far away. They visited old friends of both couples, and several tourist sites, as well as the family of the young-prince-of-a-man-with-the-awesome-British-Accent. Everyone had a wonderful time. On the way home from Jamaica the two couples visited Epcot center in Florida and of course Vaughn ran into people he knew. Mary assured us that no matter where they had traveled in the world, Vaughn inevitably ran into someone he knew. Vaughn passed away in 2004 at the age of 91, but we are sure he is still meeting and greeting people he knows in Heaven.

Over the past few years the beautiful young woman, who is now a beautiful middle-aged woman, has realized that her not-so-young-prince-of-a-man-with-the-awesome-British-accent has followed in Vaughn's shoes. He has not been the mayor of any city, but has served his community well and he cannot seem to go anywhere without running into someone he knows. This past weekend, the not-so-young-couple escaped from their family for a few days of relaxation and continued to run into people the not-so-young-prince-of-a-man-with-the-awesome-British-Accent knew: At the Burger King in Nephi, he ran into a Salt Lake City Bailiff and his delightful family. At the Tai Pan Trading store in St. George, a man he had prosecuted in court. The man wanted to tell the not-so-young-prince-of-a-man-with-the-awesome-British-Accent that he felt he had been treated fairly even though he lost his case and was pleased that the not-so-young-prince-of-a-man-with-the-awesome-British-accent had been very nice to him. And finally at Cove Fort (a remote fort in Millard County Utah built in 1867 or 8) he ran into a former judge he knows who is now serving a mission at the Fort.

It seems the not-so-young-prince-of-a-man-with-the-awesome-British-Accent is indeed following in his mentor's shoes, and they aren't such bad shoes to walk in, but they are certainly hard to fill.

I'm a Spring Gardener

A few years back a friend gave me this fun journal.

Because I love to plan you would think that I had spent the last four years filling up every page! I suppose I had good intentions as the first year I started out with this diagram of what I would like to plant where.
The next page dated May 19, 2005, journals what the weather was like that spring (very wet, causing the weeds to take over before I had a chance to get my hands into some semi-dry dirt (oops, I always tell the kids to call it SOIL, not dirt). I suppose I was writing this down so I could justify why I hadn't gone into the garden earlier in the spring! I also tell about my plans for what plants and supplies I need to purchase. Another page has a to-do list, and about 10 days later I made another entry telling that I had installed my drip system and the plants that were actually planted (not always the same as the plan), I also jotted in (without dates) notes to myself, telling me what I needed to do the next year: "Lemon cukes were very tasty. Corn was fabulous! Want to plant lots more! Didn't eat many of the Half Runners - kids weren't too excited by them. Didn't get too many green peppers - they were shaded by tomatoes."



The journal has sections for Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter so that ideally I can chronical each step of the process, noting when I planted, when I received the first fruits of my labor, my successes and failures, weather prediciments and the amount of food I actually grew. And if I were really smart - keeping track of my expenses as well to see if I grew any $64 Tomatoes (funny book!). If I continue on the path I have started I will never need to use the Summer, Fall and Winter sections of the book. It seems I am a Spring gardener. . .

Plans for my 2006 garden (actually I think I wrote this up after it was all planted). 2007 is missing altogether and 2008 has a few sparse entries. I know I put in a garden both years, but since I didn't document everything I have no proof to say I really did!

2007 is too long ago to remember for me these days, but I have vague memories of 2008's garden; deliciously sweet grape and cherry tomatoes, as well as a few slicers in sandwiches and paste tomatoes in salsa. I remember surprising the family with cucumbers, carrots, and green beans for dinner. And now that I think about it, I think there may still be some carrots in the garden. I have pictures of the two youngest and I carving the pumpkins I grew by the side of the house. And how can I forget the endless amount of zuchinni we had because I planted four plants instead of the usual one! I wanted to try yellow squash this year, which is just a yellow zuchinni, and so I ended up with four plants, and I don't have a desire to repeat that adventure again. I sure hope the seagulls out at the landfill enjoyed the ginormously oversized zuchinnis I sent their way! Although we did discover that we LOVE grilled zuchinni, and as it is getting on to spring I should be making more zuchinni bread to use up all the shredded zuchinni I stored away in our freezer!

So, here I am in 2009 and it's time to plan, plot and get excited again. Although it is a bit earlier than my usual journal entries of May 17th, so I could write my plans down in the Winter portion of my journal and get some use out of those pages! This year I have decided that the tomatoes have been rotated every which way they can in my usual garden so I will put them on the side of the house where the pumpkins and zuchinnis were last year. I will probably put in pumpkins there too and they will take everything over and not give the tomatoes any light, so maybe not pumpkins too. I've been thinking about doing corn again because it is so delicious, but it just does not produce very much for the space it takes up, and the farmers market has wonderful corn for a great price. One of my girls wants us to grow bird house gourds, which could go in the front yard. Every year I try to grow peas because I LOVE how these taste fresh from the garden and I either get out there too late in season, or the slugs eat off the plants. I think I will have one of my beds dedicated to spring produce so that I don't have to worry about where I will plant summer items. I've been wanting a strawberry patch for years, but I'm never quite sure what area I want to give up to grow strawberries as they need a permanent location. Maybe I will have to make a fresh bed for strawberries. And I need to put in a couple of new fruit trees because the peach trees I have won't last for many more years (I've been saying that at least 3 years so it must be about time for them to die). I want a nectarine tree and a prune tree (yes prune not plum - they don't grow all pruney on the tree, but more like a dark bluish purple plum). And it would be so nice to put in a permanent area for raspberries too. They make such a lovely jam! Fresh jam is so much better than anything I find at the store. And then again with all these plans maybe I will need to have my head examined!

I love PLANNING my garden

Perfect ideas.

Planning.

An ideal version of what I want to accomplish.

*joyful sigh*

I LOVE PLANNING.

Everything is perfect in the planning stages. There are no weeds in my garden plans; no disease, no fungus, no critters or "bad" insects. There are only lovely bumble bees and lady bugs, a dozen varieties of beautifully ripening tomatoes and crisp green beans I eat straight from the vine. Perfectly sized (and in control) zucchini and cucumbers. *deep sigh of contentment*

Today the snow is falling. It's beautiful as I sit in my nice warm kitchen and plan of a perfect spring. I might even get to plant my perfect garden once spring arrives.

IF I get to the soil before the bind weed does.