WEEDS!

Wild Tiger Lilies

[Does your calendar say it's July? Mine, too. So why, I wonder, am I seeing an August landscape as I travel around NE Indiana? Today's post could have been written yesterday. But never mind what the calendar says--it's August on the ground.]

Weed: n. A plant considered undesirable, unattractive, or troublesome, especially, one growing where it is not wanted in cultivated ground.

Uh-huh.

Weeds make a good metaphor for “undesirable, unattractive, or troublesome” parts of our lives.

Consider, for example, a broken ankle. Or, if you prefer, a sprained wrist. Nothing too terribly disabling, but definitely undesirable, and probably unattractive (my wrapped ankle looked twice its normal size), and thoroughly troublesome (hopping is a darned slow way to get anywhere).

Something less physical? Okay, how about a too-full calendar, making it difficult to find wiggle-room in your busy life?

Or an unexpected happening—emergency surgery for appendicitis, sudden death of someone you know well, storm damage to your school/church/home?

Weeds.

Mustard

Every community has a business that specializes in weed control or weed eradication. They come in, and, for a generous donation from your bank account, wave their poisonous wands, and your lawn is—or will become—weed-free.

Don’t get me wrong—I love seeing my green grass uncluttered by dandelions in various stages of undress or clover creeping from corner to corner. Beautiful as these weeds are, they attract bees, and bees seem to like me more than I like them.

But I do wish I could like weeds. Along the roadside as I drive to Fort Wayne, I see fields of mustard, long swaths of chicory, clumps of tiger lilies, trumpet vine doing its invasive thing on somebody’s old shed. I actually love Queen Anne’s Lace and wild purple coneflowers. And sunflowers, wild or domestic, always make me smile. Maybe their distance from my life as they flourish along the highway makes them more acceptable.

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I’m not crazy about the weed metaphor in my life. I can’t hire somebody to come in and spray chemicals on my life to remove all the physical, mental, emotional, and psychic problems and frustrations that assail me. But after all, I’ve learned, they’re part of Life.



Chicory--great in coffee

If we look at the upside of weeds (I assure you there is one, for at least some of the weeds), we can see they may have positive uses.

Did you know:

·         Wild mustard is edible?

·         Chicory root dried and ground makes a coffee substitute? Or added to ground coffee, makes the signature chicory-coffee of New Orleans?

·         Red clover can be extracted into an herbal remedy? (Also bees love red clover, and help themselves to the nectar for later transformation into honey.)

·         Queen Anne’s Lace is also called wild carrot, and parts of the plant are edible?

Queen Anne's Lace

·         Dandelion leaves, snipped early in spring and wilted in vinegar and bacon drippings, are tender and sweet?

·         Dandelion leaves after maturing making a wonderful salve to use for itching insect bites?

·         Sunflower seeds feed birds?

So far I’ve not found anything edible about wild tiger lilies or trumpet vine, though both are lovely to look at. Maybe that's their reason for being, to add beauty to our lives.

Red Clover

Consider the places where weeds literally grow: along the roadside, in abandoned fields and yards, in gardens (flower or vegetable). My Grandpa Jenkins must have spent a lot of time and energy keeping his humongous garden clear of weeds so the vegetables could grow and mature. As big as the garden was, he used a hand-plow, walking behind it and pushing it between the rows. His big straw hat kept his head cool. Weed control had to be a never-ending process.

Weeds in our lives may be less visible. Bad habits, neglect, lack of consideration for another . . . we don’t want these characteristics, but they may be lurking in an abandoned corner of our lives.

Too bad personal weeds aren’t as readily seen as roadside weeds.

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Do you have weeds in your life? Are they poisonous? Or merely irritating? Do they cause you to be less than the person you were meant to be?

Weeds. They’re everywhere.

Blessings,

Thursday's Child

Trumpet Vine - offering a sip to a
hummingbird

 ONCE UPON A TIME . . .

[Summer is a time for reunions--family, school mates. This summer I've been reliving memories--looking back at my life, and at the lives of my children and friends. I have new neighbors who aren't part of my memories yet, but the ones who have moved on are still with me. Our church has lost members--moved to another city, changed churches, died--and those of us who are left remember them in prayers and in our conversations with each other. Following are thoughts published a few years back, memories of times I might have forgotten, but thankfully I have not.]

I am 9 1/2 years old. I’ve spent the summer with my dad while my mother went with her new boyfriend to Las Vegas to get married. When she and my new stepfather come home, my dad delivers me to a house in a town I’ve never lived in before; it is the home of my new step-grandmother, a woman I immediately adore. We three, the new little family, live upstairs in the big attic room of Grandma Randolph’s house while our house, one block east, is being wallpapered and painted. In a few weeks we move again, into what I come to know as our house.

Our house, which is rented, has big rooms, with high ceilings. My bedroom is in the front of the house, with French doors leading into it from the living room. It is bright and sunny and with the high ceilings has an open and airy feel to it. I love it from the moment I see it.

Thinking back on that house, it was only four big rooms: two bedrooms, living room, and kitchen, with a bathroom featured by a claw-foot tub; and a side small room I never discovered the reason for, but probably another little bedroom that we used as storage. There was a long back porch off the kitchen. Possibly a basement, but I don’t recall going down into a basement in that house. So, scratch the basement.

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I am 22 years old, the mother of three children. We—my husband and the three children—have just moved to a city I’ve never lived in before, though I did visit once for a couple of days. The house is rented, furnished, and it has two astounding, wonderful things about it: an automatic dishwasher and a spinet piano. We can afford beds and pots and pans and clothes; I have never believed I’d have a dishwasher and piano so soon.

That house has a basement and an upstairs, and an attached garage. My son learns to walk in that house and we put up gates to keep him from exploring stairways. The gates do little good.

In that house I watch TV while I iron, and on November 22, 1963, I see our president being assassinated. At that moment I become two people—one watching, and disbelieving, the horror of seeing someone as important as the president of our country being shot while on a campaign trip; the other person observing the children who play on the floor under my feet, keeping the cord of the iron away from interested fingers, answering the telephone when I get a call about the TV story.

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I am 36 years old. The organist at my little country church tells me a law office in the county seat has a vacancy for a legal secretary and I should apply. I go to the interview, sort of as a lark, to see what kinds of things people ask when they interview you. It is unlikely, I think, that I’ll get the job—my background is in English and French, I will soon sit the Master’s written exam for an M.A. in English Language and Literature, and I’ve been around the block enough times to recognize the value of a degree in English: You can either do anything or nothing. (Garrison Keillor is right on the money with his jokes about English majors. My mind is considering whether I’ll be better off working at McDonald’s.)

So I go to the interview, trot out my credentials, which look pretty anemic lying there on the polished desk of the new junior lawyer. Experience? (Rearing children, reading, cooking, doing laundry, driving like a madwoman to get to class on time 30 miles from my home . . . .) Can I type? (Wow, something I can do!)

What really got me the job was the fact that I could spell. They didn’t know that for certain, but they assumed I could if I was practically a Master of English. (It’s true, I could, and can, spell well.)

It was the first “real” job I’d ever held. And I managed it for another 30 years.

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I often hear people say, “In another life”—meaning, not reincarnation, but who the person was at, say, age 9 or 22 or 36. Do we really remember being that person? Or do we remember things we did? People we knew? Events that happened (perhaps)? (Or did they?)

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So much advice is written today about how to keep our memory sharp; how to increase memory (as if we were a computer and could add another 64 Mb in a little chip). How to keep from losing memory (put it in a little bag and tie it to our belt? Put it in our safe deposit box at the bank? Stick it in a box and put on a good tight label telling what it is, and add the date and our initials?).

I’m all for memories. But sometimes, it seems to me, too much emphasis is put on what we remember. Why should I remember every street address and telephone number where I lived during the years from, say, birth to age 20? (An impossible task—I moved 20 times in 17 years.) Or how to make white bread without a recipe? Or who wrote that book I used to read every single year? Or what cupboard holds the cereal bowls?

Maybe it’s about what is personal to me . . . to you.

I remember Grandma Randolph, who treated me like the little 9-year-old girl she never had, always had time to talk to me, even though she worked away from home, and who helped my mother alter the new dresses that didn’t fit my summer-plump body.

I remember people who were kind to me when my mother died—Aunt Dessie, Mom’s oldest sister, took me, her 15-year-old niece, to her favorite dress shop and bought me a tweed suit and silky blouse to wear to the funeral. I wore those lovely clothes for years and years. The suit was a color I now know as mauve, with little flecks of blue and grey. I think Aunt Dessie also bought me a pair of white gloves. (All my clothes had been destroyed in our house fire six months before.)

I remember going into surgery in Indianapolis, nearly three hours from my home, not knowing anyone in that vast hospital except the eight people—family and friends and clergy—who had come to be with me and pray for my wellbeing.

I remember losing a large measure of my innocence when someone shot and killed our young president.

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Today we celebrate our memories: personal ones, collective family memories; shared and unshared. Good memories, that we're happy to take out and stroke because they make us remember good times. Bad memories, yes, I celebrate those; they tell us something about who we are, how we coped (or didn't), what we might have learned about ourselves, about life, and living.

We need our memories: They are the stories we tell—to ourselves and to each other—and thereby connect us together.

 

CELEBRATING INDEPENDENCE

I’ve never lived in an oppressed nation. Wars for independence from a government that restricts freedoms from its citizens have passed me by. Citizenship was granted me when I was born in Charleston, Illinois, USA.

Because of where I was born and grew up, I had freedoms that came naturally—were taken for granted by me, as well as by most of the people I knew—such as:

·         Freedom to worship – when, where, and if I wanted to

·         Freedom to learn – school was compulsory until age 16, but learning can take place anywhere, with anyone, on any subject

·         Freedom to be – the person I became might not appeal to everyone, nor even to a majority, but it’s the person I was allowed to be, or claimed the right to be, and so it is who I am

·         Freedom to change – here’s the one I like best (well, sort of best) – change comes to everyone; it’s inherent in our very being: we are born helpless and dependent, we grow and learn to separate ourselves from others, we become the adult on whom others depend, then we grow old and dependent (perhaps) once more, and then we die. If anyone claims not to change at all—I’d like to see that person. Actually, I’d rather not, because a person who doesn’t change is probably dead.

·         Freedom to express my opinion, if I want to – guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Bill of Rights of the United States of America. And we’ve all read or heard of instances where someone’s opinion was dangerous and caused untold misery; where claiming protection under the right to freedom of speech was used to ill purposes. But I, and you, all of us, have the right to express ourselves – with the caveat that we don’t hurt anyone else. Perhaps our forefathers assumed we’d know that, common sense being in greater supply back in the day.

These Freedoms are what today give us – all of us – the independence so many fought and died for in the 1700s, and continue to fight for in the 2000s. It doesn’t have to be a bloody battlefield fight; it can be as close as your local food bank – the free summer lunch program for school-age children – the rescue mission for men and women who have bottomed out and yet find a place where someone loves them and wants to help them come back from addiction, abuse, and a sense of futility and worthlessness. It can be in your own family – a child who needs a helping hand, a grandchild whose employment ends and who needs a place to live, a spouse who suffers from depression or a medical problem and who needs acceptance and the knowledge that someone cares enough to stand by them.

Independence isn’t just some high-flown, abstract concept – Independence is a sense of self-worth, which leads to a sense of being connected to others – and ultimately, Independence is trumped by our dependence on a divine being (whoever we acknowledge that to be).

Thank you for allowing me to express my opinion. Yours may be different, based on your experiences. But you still have Freedoms. Guaranteed. Give thanks for them. And--don’t forget them.

 

 UNDERLYING ASSUMPTIONS

Chain-O-Lakes 
State Park

When we were growing up, we heard many subtle--and not-so-subtle--messages.

Today I want to explore some of those sayings we heard over and over, but only good ones. Positive ones. Like these:

• every cloud has a silver lining (1912 song)
  
• keep your sunny side up (words from a popular song-1920s)
• never give in (Winston Churchill's famous message-1941)
• find a 4-leaf clover, have good luck (1927 song)
• look on the bright side (no particular era)

Did you notice? Every one of these has a built-in assumption: that there's a good thing going--somewhre. Even Churchill's "never give in" assumes that we might be entertaining just walking away and letting the chips fall where they may; but he says, "Never!"

I'll be #1 to admit--sometimes the first reaction I have to a situation that throws me for a loop  is, well, to put it nicely, negative. Can I see the good in a bad situation?

For example, let's assume bad news came in the mail today--say, a notice that my electricity is going to be cut off due to non-payment of my bill. Really!?! Not true! I yell. Not true! And I know it's not true because my utility bill is on automatic payment with my bank. And with the city. Hard to find my sunny side or the bright side, or any old silver lining. Because my first reaction is to yell--and that elevates my BP several notches, my heart rate increases, and my fists are clenching and unclenching at an alarming rate.

(Only slight exaggerations in that paragraph, folks. Not to worry.)

Or what about this: Severe thunderstorms forecast for today, starting at 10 AM and continuing through 2 PM--high winds--damaging hail possible . . . . And there's supposed to be a bright side here? I don't think so. Yes, I know we need the rain--but high winds bring down limbs; and hail damage--with our cars sitting out on the street (not much off-street parking in this neighborhood) we'll be looking at insurance reports, repairs, perhaps renting a car--you get the picture.

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Like the leopard, I doubt that I'll change (all) my spots, but I can have a go at some attitude adjustment. Some of these suggestions are going to sound silly, but read through them and you may find that some resonate with you.

• dial back on instant response mode until I get the whole picture
• talk to somebody else--get a second opinion
• and while I'm heading down a dark, nasty rabbit hole, stop reading past the headlines when news comes up on my phone (headlines are disturbing enough, never mind the details)
• find some "good news" options--CNN has a weekly feature called "The Good Stuff"--and it's nearly guaranteed to get you thinking positively about life in other places
• look for books written by people who can laugh at themselves (Erma Bombeck was superb at this and she wasn't the only one)
• other books that may be worth a smile/giggle/guffaw come from folks who make their living making people laugh; last year we read Betty White's autobiography--short little stories (only a couple of pages) and always with a laugh along the way

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So if you're feeling short-changed in the four-leaf clover department, look for smiles elsewhere.

And remember, you don't have to laugh all day long. Or even every day. Your goal should be to get out in the light of day. While you're at it, smell the roses. Or the espresso. Or the herbs in the neighbor's garden. "Lighten your day"--in more ways than one.

I'll join you!

Blessings,

Thursday's Child

Note: Today's photos were taken by Jan Roser at Chain-O-Lakes State Park in northeast Indiana. Thanks for sharing, Jan!

Chain-O-Lakes
State Park

 HELLO, SUMMERTIME!

how about a picnic?

Did you do something wonderful to welcome the new season? 

We thought it over, here at Thursday Child's, and came up with . . . FOOD!

Summertime Food is an animal of a different color/stripe/shape. We look for these feelings:

• is it cool?
• is it tasty?
• can it be made in practically no time a-tall?
• will the recipe make enough to keep us in this Whatever-It-Is for more than one sampling?
• is there enough to share (in case we can get out in our 100-degree Heat Index)?

We found some things we thought you might like--not all are food, though, so you'll have to adjust.

basket without a handle
simpler to make

 On the Food Scene:

• How about chicken salad? It's quick to fix, if you limit the ingredients to chicken, mayo, and pickle relish. Serve on crisp leaves of Romaine, toast, tortilla chips, or just eat it barefoot. (For those too young to know, that means, "as is," with nothing on it. Or under it. You can still wear shoes and eat chicken salad.)
• And if you don't have a roasted chicken on hand, use canned. Works great!
• Are you a fruit lover? Lots of go-o-o-od fruits in the markets these days. I love the look of a watermelon fruit basket, but don't want to put in the effort to make it. I'll eat what goes in it, though, in a heartbeat. Just grab some grapes (any color, so long as they're seedless), berries (we like blueberries and raspberries), whatever cherries are ripe now, whisk them through the running water, drain on some paper towels, and you have what folks put in a watermelon basket.
• We made some fudgsicles! Not hard at all, and some take only 4 ingredients. One recipe called for some minimal cooking. I won't print the recipe here because we started with a recipe from the Internet, had to make some adjustments to fit our current ingredients, and ended up with a product we both like but would adjust again when making it another time.
• If you want to find a recipe online, type "homemade fudgsicles" in your search engine. You'll probably get a ton of possible goodies.
• We've already decided to make the berry-yogurt frozen dessert--also made into bars or "sicles"--we'll report on those when we get to them. In the meantime, we have 10 more fudgsicles taking up space in the freezer.

Lifestyle Changes:

If your lawn is suffering like ours, and you get out the sprinkler to give it a soak, consider standing close by and letting the artificial rain soak yourself. Looks goofy but feels wonderfully cooling! (If you care about what the neighbors think, do this after the sun goes down.) And while you're cooling off, remember how much fun this was when you were a kid.

Our greatest summertime tip is very simple: Slow Down. Our Heat Index is holding around 100 degrees . . . anything more active than a tortoise is probably too fast. (I wouldn't be surprised to find tortoises just sink back into their shells and wait for the heat to pass.)

Remember the old song? "Summertime, and the livin' is easy." Let's go with that.

Blessings,

Thursday's Child

COLORFUL LANGUAGE

Don't get excited--nothing untoward here. Today, Thursday's Child is going to look at some colors in language. Ready? 

But first, if you have a box of crayons--any brand, any number--you might want to get it out and look at the contents while we tiptoe through the list.

Here are some common American English phrases that use colors:

Beet Red - color of one's face when embarrassed

In the Red - bad news for your bank account

Yellow through and through - you didn't want to be that!

Out of the Blue - never saw that one coming!

Feelin' Blue - not a good place to be

In the Pink - much nicer than feelin' Blue

Green around the gills - something upset you

In the Black - the way you want your bank account to be

White Knight - everyone needs one of those sometimes

Browned Off - not quite a full-on fit/tantrum

Brown Nose - you definitely don't want one of those!

Black out/Brown out/White out - we've got them all sometimes, when the weather goes wonky

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Hope these reminders tickled your memory a bit. One of these days, we'll look at some songs that deal with colors--so put your thinking caps on!

Blessings,

Thursday's Child

 BAD DAY? STAY TUNED....

If you've ever had a really bad day--what a friend of mind calls a crap-sandwich day--then you might find some relief with a visit from Thursday's Child today.

Let me say first--yes, I, too, have bad days--always have, probably always will. BUT! They're not the end of the story. They just happen. To you. To me. To everybody. (Don't let anybody try to put one over on you and say they never have a bad day. Just smile, pretend you didn't hear, and change the subject.)

So if we all recognize that bad days will happen, no matter how we hold our mouth or what little sayings we tell ourselves to chase away the bogies or where we go to hide in the dark under a big cover until it all goes away--never mind all that. There are actual things we can do to make a bad day less bad. Ready?

LIVE - go ahead with your usual life; on a bad day, you'll no doubt have bumps in the road, winds that pick you up and toss you around, rain that never stops, no matter how much you pray (remember Noah? 40 days and 40 nights? what we have is a drizzle to his troubles). And you'll discover--and billions of people before us have discovered--that the road will smooth out, the wind will die down, and the rain will stop. Maybe not all at once. Maybe not for several more crap-sandwich days, but it will all go away.

• You have to trust me on this one--I've lived long enough to have it happen many, many times. The technique is: Hang in there!

LOVE - yep, even on a bad day, you can find something to love. A movie on Netflix? A book you got for your birthday and wanted to start but stuff got in the way? The new dog who came to live with you because you know you have enough love for it and that's what it needs right now?

• Here's a thought--go through a drawer or box of your stuff that you haven't looked at in, oh, these many moons/years/decades--don't do anything with it, just look at it. If it's not a bunch of cool stuff you like "just because," then leave it and get out another one. Eventually you'll find something--a love letter from a friend, a dried up bunch of flowers from some little guy or gal in your family who thought you could use a pretty posy, one earring (left from a pair) that recalls a special event where you lost the other one, or maybe even an old diary or journal you'd forgotten about, and when you start reading it, you're transported back in time to who you were all those years ago.

LAUGH - it doesn't have to be a true bad-bad-bad day; it can just be a day when you'd rather not be checking in at the hospital for a 15-minute procedure that will take up most of your day (due to leftover anesthesia in your system). On such a day, here are some humorous (in my opinion) thoughts to get your brain on another track:

     (Sign on the window when I checked 

     in for the above 15 minutes of 

     oblivion)

• “My mother always used to say: The older you get, the better you get, unless you’re a banana.”
  —Rose (Betty White, on The Golden Girls)

• “I want my children to have all the things I couldn't afford. Then I want to move in with them.”
  —Phyllis Diller

• “You know you’ve reached middle age when you’re cautioned to slow down by your doctor, instead of by the police.” —Joan Rivers

And if you're so inclined, here's one you can share with your grandchildren:

    Knock, knock.....

    Who’s there?

    Water.

    Water who?

    Water you doing telling jokes right now? Don’t you have things to do?

But if all else fails, go back to bed and get up on a better day.

Blessings,

Thursday's Child