Happy Halloween

If not all, then for most of the last 34 Halloweens I've dressed up, at the least with a mask, and greeted the local gremlins at our door; passing out treats and BOOs. We've seen generations grow up and have begun to see children of the first children to grace our stoop, even a few grand kids. It's always a fun occasion for both sides of the door, for the kids all look forward to seeing what Mr. rel will look like this year. And we pass out the "GOOD STUFF.

This year the tradition baton will pass from Main St. Mo'town to Ward Road, Niagara Falls. We will depart soon to meet in person our newest grand daughter and partake of the Halloween, trick or treat, tradition at her home with her parents for their first Halloween in their first house with their first child.

For you viewing pleasure:

Introducing, the new princess of Buffalo, our gal SAL;

Sophia

10/28/09

Sophia (our gal SAL) is on her way: Kristy went into labor at 1130 pm last night!

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Update:

at 1146 am edt Sophia Aubrey LaRock joined her parents, weighing in at 7lb 9oz, and perfect in every way. Her dad said: I don't usually think babies are pretty, but she really is pretty! ;>)

#186 SHAME

It's a shame when:

writers don't write

Singers don't sing

Lovers don't love

And people aren't

kinder to each other.

Proverbs 10:19 When words are many, sin is not absent, but he who holds his tongue is wise.

Reality is really an illusion.

Albeit a very persistant one.

Albert Einstein.

When imagination blurs the edges of reality.

Happy Birthday

Lady Di. ;>)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J55nUIg2JN4

Happy birthday to my beautiful wife: Diane!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert...Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose from
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked the, and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sand stretch far away.

There's a birthday coming up next Monday. So I'm taking the birthday girl out to dinner at the Brigadoon restaurant tonight.

Last night's performance of Camelot was as magnificent as I'd hoped, and was well worth the loss of sleep and missing my walk this morning.

This play has always topped my list of musicals!!!!!

Happiness is within, not without

No man should go through life without once experiencing healthy, even bored solitude in the wilderness, finding himself depending solely on himself and thereby learning his true and hidden strength.

Jack Kerouac.

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We went apple picking on crisp afternoon in Maitland, Canada.

46 puunds of MacIntosh apples.

I'll be peeling today.................................... :>)

On call today.

Play is the exultation of the possible.

Martin Buber

An observation:

Some say politics is a process: It consists of "social relations involving authority or power;"

I think:

Politics is a disease that turns, otherwise, decent folks into scallywags; or worse.

photos; 1. Bill Rattlecane

2. Rasputin

9 life lessons from the garden
By LAURA CASEY - Contra Costa Times

Craig Chalquist of John F. Kennedy University says that research shows gardening can lift depression, release stress and anxiety, and strengthen the immune system, along with many other surprising benefits. Here are his “nine lessons from the garden” that he has learned through years of working outdoors:
1. Abandon perfectionism.
“When you go out in the garden, the one thing you won’t find is perfection,” Chalquist says. Pests and weeds will invade even the most cared-for garden. It cannot be controlled, and a gardener must live with that.
“It’s an opportunity to look at one’s own imperfections.”
2. Things take time to grow.
Chalquist says gardening requires patience and trust in the powers of growth to keep their own schedule. There are no deadlines, and there is no rushing nature.
“This can be a good lesson to learn,” he says. “You can take the time and ask yourself, ‘What is it that’s growing in my life?’”
3. Detach from outcomes.
“When you plant seeds, you never know what’s going to happen,” he says. Your efforts sink into the ground, sometimes reappearing as new growth and sometimes just vanishing. Put effort into your life, he says, but realize that the outcome may not be what you expect or hope.
4. Everything contributes.
Chalquist says the plant you think of as a weed is actually a pioneer — a hardy, fast grower designed to break new ground for ecosystems to come.
“Even when it needs to be managed, everything contributes. And we know, if you repress part of a system, you often strengthen it.” Every living thing has a purpose, and nothing in the natural world is wasted.
5. Everything self-organizes.
“The ground you walk on hosts fungi that stretch over wide expanses to manage which nutrients go to which plants and trees: Earth’s quiet, weblike nervous system,” Chalquist says. “The wisdom hiding in the ground resembles the wisdom within instinct, intuition, the gut: capable of meaningful arrangements if we allow ourselves to trust and get comfortable with it.”
6. Things decay and die.
Chalquist says the garden teaches that some things need to go away; some old structures should decline. Many can become compost for new forms of growth.
“It is a time where you can ask yourself, ‘What is dying in my life? What needs to go away?’”
7. Trust the senses.
When you taste something that grows in the garden and it’s bitter, you spit it out.
“The garden teaches me that there are things my body doesn’t find nutritious and that I should not let it into my system,” Chalquist says.
You may have people in your life who are like a sour fruit or a bitter herb. If they are tearing you down psychologically, remove them from your life, he says.
8. Nature has multiple ways of doing things.
With pollination, if there are not enough bees, then wasps, moths and other creatures pick up the slack.
“In any given ecosystem, there are multiple ways of getting things done,” Chalquist says. “If we want a community or nation to really work, these one-size-fits-all solutions aren’t going to be the right ones.”
9. Nature bats first and last.
Chalquist says the living world will have the last say after you are done with it. Despite all of our anxiety and doubt, loneliness and uncertainty, the forces of life and the cycles of seasons always have us firmly in hand.

Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see the shadow. It’s what sunflowers do.~ Helen Keller