“The RoseBouquet”

Fortunately, he worked had the last few days and especially yesterday to get
our crops in. All that is left is two short-short rows of carrots and half a
row of beets. However, these veggies both have a reputation for being sweeter
if they experience the first frost, and being underground they won’t be damaged.

I was pleased yesterday while I was making supper that Dad even brought into
the garage the heavy stoneware pots from the deck or porch, in which I had
flowers growing. I’d planned to do that myself after I finished the supper
dishes.

On Saturday I harvested and had to wash, and spread out to dry, my calendula
(remember I made ointments of that for Christmas gifts last year), and the
basil, and the fennel. That’s another great herb with a licorice scent.

I recall years ago, getting some fennel and honey throat lozenges when I had a
hacking cough. It was wonderful stuff! I need to find a good recipe for that
now. It’s got to be online, right?

Yes, I’m working around my email sending problem, and getting back to my work
routine. Oh, how good that feels! I have really missed my busy work pace on my
many projects over most of September. Who needs holidays when you have work
that you love, right?

I’m a couple of emails from being all caught up with the backlog. It is just
slower having to copy and paste into different web-mails to answer them, but it
works.

I’m back at renovating this Ruthes-SecretRoses.com site, and am nearly done
with the Arbour section. I’ve improved the template some more, so I really will
have to go back and touch up the pages done in the past.

I think I need to tackle the Sharing Library next, but that is much bigger.
Here’s hoping that goes smoothly. There’s still the RoseBouquet section to do,
however, there I’m not adding pages like I used to, so it’s more of an archive
of old ezine stuff. Then there’s the Gifts/Resources section; I want to revamp
it completely, and I believe I’ll add a shopping cart or store. It will make it
much easier to sell my e-books, and even give away the free ones.

What do you think? There’s only three months left to this year - do you see me
finishing all that before the end of 2005? (My own faith is wavering a bit).

I’m bursting to tell you something else too, that has come up as a strong
possibility for next year, but I better keep my mouth shut until it’s for sure.

Sorry, the second film is not full or developed yet, so no photo story this
week.

______________________________________________
The RoseBouquet is now a weekly blog. blogs.Ruthes-SecretRoses.com/
(You’ll need to register as a user to make comments at the blog. Registering
helps me screen out riff-raff who fill the comments section with garbage).

You can also get The RoseBouquet as an RSS feed in your news Reader. Just
paste in this link; ruthes-secretroses.com/RoseBouquet.xml

Or subscribe to it as an ezine; Ruthes-SecretRoses.com/sub-ezines.html

Tess, a subscriber, asked this week, that I explain some of the terms I’m
throwing around. I’ve promised to do that, but haven’t had time to work up a
full article. Mainly though the point is that I’ve switched away from Windows
as my basic operating system and am using SUSE which is the Cadillac of the
more than 57 varieties of Linux. This means I’m using no-cost programs you may
not have seen or heard of before.

However, just this morning I learned of a new one put out by Google that is
offered gratis to Windows systems-users, and it looks like a great one to
download to work with your pictures. picasa.google.com/index.html
It’s takes only seconds to download and install. It quickly locates all the
photos you’ve ever stashed on your hard drive, helps you to make albums, and
slide shows or movies out of them, and to create gift CDs to give to others…
or turn them into jumbo posters. My imagination is really clicking along now!

If you are still using Windows… you might want to look at this!
picasa.google.com/index.html

The O’Brien sisters are the first new friends the heroine of my novel makes when
she starts her adventures in the city. They remain loyal to her throughout the
story.

Because they came to my imagination when I was a young teen, no more than 12
or 13, I have lived with them a long time. At first I seemed to experience things
through their eyes. I learned to explain my faith to others by explaining it to
them.

Ruthe meets the younger sister, Muriel, first when she goes driving up and down
the streets to look for someone in need. After rescuing the 15 year old
auburn-haired teen from a dreadfully embarrassing situation and taking her
home, our shy Mennonite country girl ends up meeting their mother.

When Mrs. Pearl O’Brien is dying, Muriel calls on Ruthe again at a crucial time,
but Ruthe drops all to rush in to help her find Cathy.

Ruthe soon observes that the sisters are opposites in many ways, but both are so
eager to learn more about the Christian life from her, that she ends up in their
home any time she can work a little visit in between her shifts as a telephone
operator. Always she is greeted with loyalty and high regard.

The O’Brien sisters have two brothers, also totally different, with different
effects and relationships with Ruthe, but we won’t go there right now.

Muriel lives in the shade of her blonde sister, Cathy, who is an extroverted
party-animal who wants to have fun, make sure she marries well, and likes to
tease and pit her boyfriends against each other. Well, at the beginning, this is
how it is.

Once they learn to trust Christ as the only way to God, and discover that Jesus
is a real and constant Friend they can talk to at any moment, there are some
leveling changes. Cathy seems to grow up and becomes a responsible chatelaine in
their father’s home. She’s very tactful in social situations.

Muriel watches Ruthe’s innate ability to identify with and counsel underdogs,
and decides she wants to be like that too. She sets her heart on learning to be
a social worker.

Ruthe has a passion to seek out people in trouble and before long she’s meeting
others and her life gets divided into many little compartments, as she honours
the confidences her wide range of friends. However, the O’Brien sisters are her
constant and loyal friends.

In fact, when she begins to compare her friends to roses, she decides that these
two must be yellow ones, for she read somewhere that yellow ones stand for
faithfulness and loyalty. In her mind, they are teaching her, not only a lot
about city life, and how the richer folks live, but constancy in one’s
relationships.

……………………………………………
To read sample chapters of my book online, start at
RSR-index.html

To order the e-book to download and read on your computer;
orderpage.html
(or if you email me, we can make a deal and I’ll send it to you on CD).

To order the softcover paperback from Booklocker use;
Booklocker

I was describing my mis-adventures with the email “sending” feature to my
friend Kathy on the phone. I mentioned that I was chalking off these last two
weeks as holidays, since I wasn’t getting much work done, just studying and
researching and trying to solve that problem. Originally I was only going to
take off the time when my niece and her daughter were here as holidays.

Kathy suggested that I call all that research and learning time my Education
Week(s) and keep the holiday designation for the time I would be able to enjoy
my guests. So that’s what I am doing. I’ve been on more than a week and a half
of “Education and Training” leave, and four days over the last weekend -
Thursday evening to Monday evening, as Holidays at Home.

Since several friends have indicated that they love my photo stories, I’ll tell
you about my adventurous Get-Acquainted time with my great-niece below.

I think I just summed it up above. I’m not sure you really want all the
technical details of the pros and cons between KMail, Mutt and Pine.

I have been suspecting that the problem lies in that KMail uses SMTP and Mutt
and Pine use something called Sendmail, but SMTP and Sendmail do not play well
together. If one is in use the other refuses to operate. I haven’t been able to
confirm that yet.

Right now I’m able to Receive emails for all my addresses except my ISP and one
of my domain mails that I use just for the Linux Users group I belong to. I
have a feeling that’s because those are the ones I tried in Mutt and Pine. They
did show up there, but not any more.

However, I can send on all my other addresses by simply going to the web-mail
interface, and copy-pasting in the email I have received, and answering it
there. This is rather time-consuming, but I am truly desperate to get back to
my usual work schedule for at least my mornings and evenings. So I’m starting
to answer emails that require one, and if I have time to spare in the afternoon
block of time, I go hunting for answers to my questions on the Internet.

I have no new pages to report on the Ruthes-SecretRoses.com site because of all
the above, and entertaining our dear guests over the weekend. I also had to go
to the city yesterday for a committee meeting at the mission. However, today
I’m looking forward to getting back to work! I MISS the sense of accomplishment
when I get some new web pages made, and when I can interact with business
contacts and with friends. I have writing projects to finish, and bookkeeping
to set up all over again.

Like little Elise, I’d like someone to pick me up and move me forward just
because I’m reaching and throwing my body forward. That just doesn’t seem to
work for us adults though, does it?

A really BIG, arms-thrown-around-you ((((HUG)))) and thank you to those who
have written words and prayers of encouragement! What a blessing to know that
you stand with me in this “learning-curve” crisis. That has given me a large
measure of peace. So instead of fretting, I’m going to work around it, and
trust that the solution is going to show up sometime soon!

Dad getting a rare moment to hold Elise, his great-granddaughter

Elise doesn’t just walk - she runs - continually! She loved to play Hide n’
Seek around the kitchen cabinets. Since our kitchen has two entrances, we
sometimes ran in loops, through the kitchen and dining area, through the living
room, a short hallway, and back into the kitchen again. It was quite something
to hear her shriek with delight when she spotted me!

Ah-Ha! I see you! (She usually stopped and grew quieter for the camera). What a
gladness to be alive, she has!

Elise and me, pausing in our games to rest and laugh.

Even a high-energy kid needs some short power naps once in a while.

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Getting ready for bed - means stuffing your face with apple slices. In fact,
Elise has more teeth than most toddlers her age, and seemed to crave something
to sharpen those teeth on. She’s a fruit and veggie person like Jalise and me,
but her first examination of most anything was with her teeth and tongue,
including the super hard, sour apples we picked in the garden.

Jalise and Elise all dressed and ready for Sunday School on Sunday morning.

When Dad was ready, he joined them for a three-generation photo. (If Elsie had
been here, it would have made it a four-generational photo.

It was at this point my film was full. But later I was able to get one from Dad,
stashed in his dresser, so I started shooting all over again on Sunday and
Monday. Perhaps I’ll have those ready in a week or so.

Remember our purple potatoes? Well, we had a heavy-duty rain on the weekend,
and when Dad checked his pit in the floor of the storage room on Monday
morning, he found a couple of inches of water!

After a bit he called me, as he couldn’t stand stooped in the pit any longer,
taking them out. So I stood on bricks, and leaned down to pick up potatoes
below my feet in the water. I carried about 7-8 pails, enamel roasters,
whatever, full up the stairs, and they are drying in Dad’s workshop.

Meantime Dad goes down several times a day and shovels the water into a pail.
But the pit keeps getting more water at the bottom.

In the midst of carrying them out on Monday, I found Dad backing his medi-chair
out of the garage, with a sack of potatoes loaded where his feet should go.
When I asked what was up, he said he was taking some to the group home for the
handicapped. He’d been meaning to do that, and I guess he wanted to keep his
vow, the failure of which may have brought on this catastrophe.

Actually, we discussed at breakfast this morning, that we don’t have it bad.
Many other folks are suffering much more damage and loss. Others in this area
have more trouble with water seepage than we do, and down south there in the
USA, oh my! We can’t imagine how those folks feel!

We also don’t watch TV so we don’t have those images before us all the time
like many others do.

Hey, last night we took two more bags of potatoes along to the city and gave
them away at the Board meeting I attended. We’re in a position to be generous.
What a blessed position! I can only hope you find yourself in that place too.

My computer saga continues. I STILL have not got my email working right. I’ve
been studying up on Mutt, which I am given to understand is a very powerful
mail client, but it is hardest to learn. It involves a lot of technical know
how to set up.

I got quite discouraged last Friday and was ready to scrap the whole thing and
start over again. But when I prayed about it, I calmed down and ended up doing
more research and checking this and that, and did my backups.

Then just before bedtime I did get an email from the host of my web sites, (and
all the others I’m responsible for), saying that they’d had a hard drive crash.
They would be working through the night to replace it. The sites all seemed to
be up, but suspecting that might be part of my email problem, I shut down and
went to bed, and I did OTHER stuff all weekend. I came back to a place of
trusting God to work out this email problem and putting me strides ahead in my
computer knowledge.

Yesterday morning in my devotions I learned that when God answers us with
silence it is because He has a greater miracle in mind for us. The example in
the lesson was of Mary and Martha asking for their brother Lazarus to be
healed. Jesus delayed two more days before He came. He gave them not just a
healing, but a resurrection from the dead!

I have moments when I’m inclined to think, “Just give me what I’m asking for!”
Mostly though, I’m trying to hold out for whatever the larger miracle is that
the Lord has in mind for me in all of this.

Tomorrow we’ll go to the airport to pickup my niece, Jalise, and her one year
old daughter, Elise. I’m prepared to set aside my “work” to enjoy what days we
can have together. If we spend time at this computer, it is most likely going to
be working with photos, and seeing what we can do with my new graphics programs.

You understand now, don’t you, why this blog entry or issue is rather skimpy?

Normally, I don’t beg for a lot of prayers for myself. But if you’d send up one
on my behalf, to speed things along here to a smoothly working email system, I
would be truly very grateful.

Rosalind, a subscriber in India, wrote last week with a prayer on my behalf,
and I treasure that so much! Thank you!

Dad’s brought in our purple potato crop. It took him two days last week, and yesterday. (Dad doesn’t work on Sundays, and Labour Day was too rainy and wet).

He is feeling quite pleased with this year’s potatoes. Last year he only got one 5-gallon pail full, not enough to last us through the winter. But this time he has 13 pails full, not counting the very small ones, the green sided ones, and the ones he poked accidentally with the fork when he dug. Those I must use up first before we start on the good ones.

Maybe you’ve never seen purple potatoes before, eh?

We’ve grown them for a number of years. Ever since Dad had a room mate in the hospital in the city when he had kidney stones. This room mate told him about these purple skinned potatoes that are pure white inside, grow quite large, and last better in storage through the winter than the red or white potatoes do.

Dad managed to get a pail full from a farmer near Waldheim before the next spring, and they have multiplied to the point where we try not to plant any others - if we don’t have to.

Now question is, how well will they keep in that potato pit in our cold storage room in the basement? It got 3 inches of water this summer, and the wood lining got moldy. Dad figures he’s fixed that, but I fear some mold spores may have stayed behind. Dad can’t smell the mold, so I’ll have to make it my business to check on those purple potatoes from time to time.