July's first Thursday

The hollyhocks at the front of the yard are blooming. I really love these kind of old fashioned flowers...and so do the Japanese Beetles. We have a terrible time with them every year...they eat the hollyhocks, the rose of sharon, the green beans...We seriously need to invest in the milky spore, but it's not cheap. It creates a network of underground fungus that kills the grubs of the JB, thus preventing infestation. Forever. It spreads and spreads... They are showing up now, those JB's...

We had a summer salad buffet for the potluck at tonights meeting. I picked cucumbers and snow peas and onions and basil and kale and mustard for the salad I brought. I also put grape tomatoes, 4 kinds of lettuce and spinach in it. The speaker was excellent, the attendance mediocre...bad time, I guess, right before the holiday weekend. Still in all, we had a good time.

I go tomorrow morning for the knee xrays and will be glad to have that done. The darn thing is making me limp and now causing my hip and pelvis to hurt...from walking funny, I'm sure. It will be good to have it over and done with.

All the little towns around us are having 4th of July doings...here in Bunker Hill, one of the local county government guys is going to read the Declaration of Independence. Another little town is having a street dance and music festival, and here in Bunker Hill we always have a 4th of July parade. I have to wonder how many people even know what the Declaration of Independence says. lol

Feeling really grateful, tonight, for having been blessed to live in a country whose ideals are relatively magnanimous. For all the things wrong here, there are a lot of things right. My sister and I were talking the other day about our dad...and I was telling her about how he and I used to fight like crazy about the VietNam War. She is 10 years younger than I am, and of course, remembers nothing. lol My dad fought in WWII, in Europe. He was a true blue American, like many people of his generation. He always felt like he could trust his government to be honest with him, to always do the right thing, to tell the truth. By the time I was a 16 years old anarchist, lots of things had happened that were a sign of times changing. He was heartbroken when all the truth about Watergate came out...the truth about the war, and he apologized to me later in life, and said "I cannot believe that they were lying...you were so right about it all along" And he meant it. He would always say, [in these arguments] "I fought for my country! I love America!" And I would say "If my country were attacked, I would fight too! It was a whole different thing!" I really miss my dad...he was a wonderful man and he was really very openminded about things. And (like me) the older he got, the more mellow he got.

Anyway...lol. This weekend is going to be busy. I'm looking forward to it, but even more to Sunday, when it's all over. lol

A few of the things I'm grateful for:

*Liberty
*Freedom from the drink
*Optimism
*Love
*Good memories of me Da
*Hollyhocks
*A nice sleigh bed with clean sheets
*A snoring, farting lovely man to share all these things with!

Sleep well, and dream dreams of peace...

Namaste.