weeds to gardens

When there was still a little wild around the edges of fields, nature was full of adventures. Blades of grass taut between your thumbs sounded like an oboe. You could "smoke" dried lily stems. Maple seeds floated down like helicopters.

Milkweed (see pic) was everywhere, a favorite home for the Monarch butterfly. Milkweed was a weed growing in hedgerows and ditches. Now Amishland National Park (Monterey's environs) is intensely farmed to the last inch. When we put in the butterfly garden, milkweed was one of the plants put in.

The "milk" is merely the hairs attached to each seed. When the wind catches them right, they get one little thrill ride to where they will grow next year. You spread by flowing with nature. Change the economics and you change milkweed. Change a US president and you change milkweed. It could go the other way, too.

politics and freezers

After the 3rd Obama-McCain debate which showed Obama in a slightly better light than McCain, and after the Phillies won the game that gets them in the world series, it's back to politics as appliances.

Boxy freezers make me think of Nixon and Krushchev debating over cold war races in home appliances. So passe. I'm gonna bet that the old freezer we had to let go because the inside lid insulation was broken away from the lid past the duct tape patch it up quotient, was entirely built in the US of America by union labor. I'm gonna bet that the new Frigidaire (on cart) was mostly fabricated in China.

But, hey, we're doing stuff for China. And who listens to whose music? Pic at 10 a.m. today, their permission.

politics, money, and scarecrows

Maybe it's all scarecrows. But at market this morning I saw all the recent headlines up close. There are the Obama and McCain tables the day after Palin gets embroiled in the brother-in-law cop firing and McCain's rallies get nasty. There's the friendly scarecrow and pumpkin cookies at the bakery stand, signalling the fall season. And across Penn Square, despite the tailspin money markets, Lancaster's biggest building project keeps chugging along.

Menno House, the romance began

If you take our romance back to the origins, you get to Menno House in New York. The house itself celebrated its 50th anniversary three weeks ago and we went. Here (photographer unknown) we take our seats at the Saturday evening outdoor banquet.

At my left elbow is David Wenger, one of our friends in the dating days. At his left is John Rempel who was pastor in a later decade of the Manhattan Mennonite Fellowship, the church which now owns Menno House.

When we met there in 1976, it was owned by the eastern mission board and used to house volunteers and students.