“The RoseBouquet”

There’s lots to do all week, but I guess the more fun things to describe to you are what I do on Saturdays. I had another very productive Saturday this last weekend. The weather was gorgeous. A perfect Indian Summer day! I would love to see another two months like that.

I dug up my potatoes, harvested the squash and zucchini (found a couple of biggies I hadn’t noticed before) and chopped up all that greenery to dry up for compost. I tossed the potatoes to the grassy side of the yard and let them dry off in the sun the way Dad would have. Later in the afternoon I put on his thick rubber gloves and sat on an over turned pail to dust the potatoes off and put them into pails. The 10 gallon pail was not quite full. I’m afraid I’ll have eaten in just a few weeks.

The pail of stabbed or injured potatoes I gave away to my neighbours. (Joe had been hunting and gave me some fresh venison, which I shared with my brother Tom, in a Sunday supper I took to his place).

I also dug up my dahlia roots to save for next spring. Fortunately they have multiplied nicely, which means I’ll have more plants next summer. I only got two flowers from this year’s growth. I brought them inside to put in a bowl for my dining table.

Just now I had a call from someone who helps his relatives farm out in the country. They are waiting for a week of dry weather so they can finish harvesting about 10 more quarter sections of crops. This makes me realize that I did well to get my whole harvest done in one day.

This next Saturday I hope to see how much of the garden soil I can turn over with a spade to work the compost and peat moss into it. Where the potatoes grew the soil is much softer and looser than the rest of the garden, so growing potatoes was s good move. But it will take more effort, probably over several years, to get the kind of rich garden soil and flower beds that we had in Hague.

Lest you think I only work hard on Saturdays, let me assure you I’m busy all day every day through the week.

My mornings are full with devotional journaling, writing, a promotional hour, and some renovations on my own sites.

My afternoons are for answering emails, although lately I’ve begun to think of that also as my time when I deal with my clients, potential customers and friends. My public relations section of the day. When one of my clients emails that they’ve found some typos on their site, I stop and quickly correct that, or whip up another page for them, or whatever. This means that I rarely get all my emails answered each day.

On top of that I’m trying not to get too peeved when some of these ‘clients’ send not just one but four or five emails at a time! Some folks can only think one thought a time, and they dash off an email for each one! I know if I answer each one, the emails will multiply like amoeba, so I take the extra time to combine them somewhat. But then often, these people answer only one point and ignore the rest.

I realize this kind of thing happens sometimes, but when it becomes a normal pattern… I have to resist the temptation to be a bit sharp.

Monday, Wednesday and Fridays, I drop my work at a certain time, bundle up warm, sling my backpack with lunch on my back, and walk for 25-30 minutes to spend an hour with the staff at the Western Tract Mission office. Sometimes I can help someone, but if nothing else, it helps me feel part of the ‘family.’ The actual work I do for the mission I do from my computer at home.

Oh yes, my evenings are generally dedicated to larger clients’ sites. However, I try to reserve Tuesday evenings for correspondence and friends, if not preempted, and Friday evenings for bookkeeping and paying bills, and administrative stuff.

You may be scratching your head wondering, when do I ever take time for a social life?

Well, I learned years ago that if I sit around waiting for friends to have time for me I will get antsy and frustrated. So I made a schedule to keep myself as busy as I can stand, and when a friend wants to connect with me, I just have to bend or squeeze my schedule to make room for them. That doesn’t happen that often, so I have learned to delight in small connecting moments, even if only by email.

This is probably the weakest part of my life. In depth relationships take work and both quantity and quality time! But I’m also dealing with a need to support myself and earn enough to be a generous giver - my goal in life.

I’ve heard that there are quite a lot of people who love to read cookbooks as bedtime reading. Nothing scary there, and it makes for sweet dreams. Maybe you already have a large selection of cookbooks. Would you like some rare and unusual cookbooks?

I can tell you where to find some that are over 100 years old. They are being converted to digital e-books so they are sold at very reasonable prices. You can pay with your PayPal account, and be downloading the e-cookbook in a matter of moments. If you don’t care to read books on the desktop or laptop, simply print them out. Then you can take them to bed with you.

You’ll find these e-cookbooks at JustGoodCooking.com

Have you ever walked in a mall and seen a vacant store unit, and begun to daydream about what you would like to sell there if you should lease that space?

Would you think, “Hey, I could set up a little bookstore and sell cookbooks!”

Or would it be, “Kitchen gadgets! I’m always looking to buy kitchen gadgets, and appliances, and some of the best ones are hard to find or have to be imported. That’s what I would sell!”

It is such fun to daydream like that. But do we rush to find the administrative offices of the mall and sign the lease papers in the next week or two? Not likely. Because we know that for sure, would eat up a lot of our time. We simply don’t have that kind of time in our lives. Unless, of course, you are between jobs or careers and really looking for a new full-time commitment to such a venture.

Maybe you want to adjust this daydreaming to finding the perfect mall where everything you want is available, and at rock bottom prices. Better still, if you didn’t have to walk such long distances between your favorite shops - now that would be a delight!

Psst. Let me tell you where to find that mall.

In fact, I know where you can sort’a own a mall with over 1000 stores! I promise you - no lease papers to sign or pay up!

Some of these are popping up that charge you a monthly fee of $29.95, but I’ve found one that is free to sign up for, (and in no time you’ll feel like you own it).

How does it work?

Well, let’s say you want to buy some cookbooks for your compulsive bedtime reading habit. I go to my mall address online, MyPowerMall, and I put “cookbooks” into the information booth blank. Up comes a notice that I’ll find them under the sections; Books/CD/DVD - Misc -> Books -> General books.
Food & Drink -> Gourmet
Food & Drink - > Groceries

So I go for the first category, and sub-categories, in moments I discover and at Book Closeouts.com (when I right-click and open a new tab on my Firefox) I discover “The American Country Inn and Bed & Breakfast Cookbook (Volume One)” by Kitty and Lucian Maynard, for $5.99, which is 74% off from the regular price, $22.99. Whoa! What a deal!

Another shop called bookbyte.com has less of a discount but thousands of cookbooks to choose from.

Now if you “own” this Power Mall and decide to purchase from these stores, you would later get a rebate of 7% for each purchase.

Going back to the mall’s main page, we can check out Food & Drink, and the sub-menu for Gourmet… Ah, here we come to Hickory Farms, and find they are having their annual Barn sale with 50%. You can also get 15% off your entire order if you enter the provided code number. All this besides your mall rebate of 7%? My - oh -my!

Are you addicted to chocolates? You’ll want to see the chocolatesource.com shop, and if you are a teas devotee, you’ll be intrigued by all you find at adigio.com

Okay, maybe you can’t afford gourmet things just now. Let’s turn back and look for groceries.

Hmmm.. one online grocery store for the greater Philadelphia metro area, Genuardis.com

But let me tell you a secret that Ginny Dye, the Founder and CEO of MyPowerMall has shared with those of us who own a mall already. She’s working on a new PowerMall debit card, that allows you to tank up your account for it with cash, and then you can go grocery shopping with the debit card, and get your great mall rebates afterwards. When the debit card account runs low, you can transfer money into it again, and go shopping - again and again! This means you can get deep-deep discounts and rebates even from stores that are not part of the huge official MyPowerMall system.

If you only want to go shopping for yourself, and get the larger rebate checks, you want to sign up for the Personal Mall at MyPowerMall. If you’d like to recruit others and get a small percentage of their profits too, then you want to sign up for the Business Mall at the same address.

Remember, if you choose the Business Mall you want to commit some time to spreading the word about this and treating it like a business venture that can pay you a handsome return as time passes.

There’s really so much more to this, but I suggest you go to this link and listen to Ginny explain it. She has all the answers down pat.

MyPowerMall

Saturday was a a wonderful Indian summer day. Sunny, warm, and yet with the taste of autumn in the air. A perfect day to make that garden shed really mine. A teen age girl had volunteered to come help me after her morning youth group meeting, so in the morning I did a bit of cleaning inside and then went out to start carrying my garden tools and scrap lumber into the shed.

Close to noon I realized that I better get the paints ready so that when I had picked up Chelsea and brought her over, we could get right to the painting of the shed. I brought up a number of pails of paint from the basement and opened and stirred several. Finally I decided on the pail and a half of stain for the first coat. The other amounts were smaller and might do for trim - or if I should get carried away, then maybe to decorate it like a gingerbread house.

This stain looked like a thin grey soup, and the wood drank it up in the first coat Chelsea and I gave it. We decided there was enough of the stain to do a second coat. This one stayed more on the surface and made the shed glitter as if we were painting with silver! Wow! I felt quite pleased.

Later it dried to a plain grey. Still it did wonders for making the shed look more perky and clean. We went into the house for a cookie break, and Chelsea showed me her photos of her trip to Egypt this past summer with Teen Missions.

After Chelsea’s Mom came to pick her about 4:30 or 5, I went back out and although the light green outdoor paint was quite lumpy I decided to try it on the trim on the back of the shed. Well, it gooped up the brush quite a lot, but it would do, I decided, so I finished the job.

I’ve added photos to this page, 903-garden-shed.shtml

In a way I had hoped there might be time to dig up my potato crop too, but as I was about to start I could hear Dad scolding me for trying to do this so late in the day. He would always insist on digging up the potatoes early in the day, brush them off and let them dry on the grass until the end of the day, so that they wouldn’t have moist soil on them when he brought them in for the winter, as that would pretty well guarantee some potatoes would go mushy and bad.

I marvelled that just memories of what Dad would say or do could guide me now. I decided to dig up just one small pail of the purple potatoes for use in the kitchen. Mainly because I wanted to see how big they had grown. I dug up two plants and had a good pot full, (which I cooked on Sunday in the crock), but they were only half or a third of the size Dad usually grew.

Mind you, he liked to plant them in April, not mid-June as I had done this year.

This morning I see that the trees all around have golden leaves. We’ve had some touches of frost and it is high time I harvest the garden for the winter. But this week is so busy it will have to wait until this next Saturday. Basically it will be my potato crop, a number of green squash (I guess they can ripen in the house), and my dahlia roots. I have two dahlia blooms!

The tomato plants grew to a good size and have lots of blossoms, but it’s too late to expect any fruit from them. Too bad. Well next year I will start my garden earlier again, and have a bountiful harvest of everything.

Yesterday, after weeks of waiting, my inheritance came in the mail. Well, the portion left over after the loan/advance I got so I could put a down payment on this house was repaid, with interest, of course. I need to go pay off my lawyer for his help in this house deal, and take care of several other things, like car repairs, and I hope to buy a SiteBuildIt! (SBI). That’s something I’ve been wanting for years and years!

Reading the 5 Pillar Reports for affiliates of SiteSell products and going to check out the forums I’ve read enough testimonials to know that this SBI thing could just about have a guarantee on it - except of course, that people are so different; you do have to bring your brain and ideas and motivation for this to give you success. I believe I can make it pay off handsomely, and now I hope to prove it. By Christmas I hope it gives me a good steady income.

(In case you have no clue what I’m referring to, go see SiteBuildIt!)

My Power Mall looks like it is going to take off and bless, not only me, but a number of others. I’ve finished all the training lessons now, and think I grasp the concept. I hesitated at first at the idea of recruiting churches, charities and non-profits and telling them it would be a fund-raiser for them. Most of those people have no idea about promoting and recruiting others. It would just mean heaps more work for me.

Then one day last week as I was writing up short descriptions of each of the sites I labour on with the intent of promoting them, it came to me that with little more effort than that, I could be putting banners for MyPowerMall on their sites (most of them are non-profits), and if/when visitors would click on those links and follow to the MPM site and watch the video, eventually, after a while this could grow for them. I’d benefit too, eventually.

So I wrote three of these mission people to explain the proposition to them. All three accepted the idea gladly. I got one signed up yesterday, and need to hurry to do the next one today as that pastor in Tanzania is impatient now to see some results. Guess I’ll have to give him some prayer and marketing assignments to speed things along, eh?

Have you ever roasted marshmallows over an open fire? Well, I’m like the person who is usually at the fire with several branches on their stick, and they are trying to roast a bunch of marshmallows all at once. (I only eat one, and then I swear those sweets off again). But I’ve been thinking that my effort to work at a number of ministries and business ventures at once is sort of like that. Will I succeed? Watch right here to see my progress.

Feedback? Yes, I want to share this sweet note from last week’s issue;

You are one remarkable lady.
Glad you got this shed.
It is boon.
Glad too for the information about how you dealt with the computer problem.
Good thing the Lord equipped you with such a goooooooood brain.
The impossible seems to be ordinary in your life…
And we know why!
Yo! shirley

This one came the week before from the USA:

I LOVE the wallpaper. Creativity always wins my vote! You cannot imagine how much I appreciate seeing photos of your new home and I wish you so much happiness there.
Love,
Gerry

Say, did you miss my PowerMall link the other time? If you just want to shop and let me have your rebates go to; MyPowerMall/mall If you’d like to get one yourself and have a Personal mall of over 1000 stores where you can get rich rebate checks back, or, if you want a Business Mall (one where you shop AND you invite others to join for zippo), then you start at MyPowerMall/Biz/Home

I do recommend that you don’t lose your head and go crazy shopping online. Remember to practice wisdom and discernment. It won’t hurt to pray about your purchases and to shop around. You may well find a much better deal. It always pays to be a sensible, frugal shopper. And doing your comparison shopping ahead of time online can save a lot of wear and tear on you feet and back!

Ecclesiastes, a book in the Bible written by King Solomon, has this in chapter 11:1-2 “Cast your bread upon the waters, for after many days you will find it again. Give portions to seven, yes to eight, for you do not know what disaster may come upon the land.”

I recognize this injunction as a call to generosity. We are to give food to the multitude (we’ll get a return one day it promises) even if we don’t know where it is going to end up. We should divide up what we have to share with others. Seven is a number of perfection, but here it adds to go on beyond that, and give still more.

Now here is a strange tie-in. That sentence goes on to say, “…for you do not know what disaster may come upon the land.” The reason we are to give so generously is because disaster may come to our land, our property? This verse seems to be presuming that if we are generous now, whenever our time of need arrives, others will be generous to us. Almost as if we should be giving now as insurance for when we need help.

I recall just now that this was Joseph’s wonderful plan in Egypt. The Pharoh’s dream was a warning that seven years of plenty were coming, but after that seven years of famine. By setting up a plan to save and distribute the abundance, they were able to survive the famine.

A couple of hundred years ago, the Mennonites devised a plan to care for each other that way. They paid into a fund when they could afford it, but when disaster came, they were helped out of that same fund. Since then insurance plans have been built on the same model, albeit more commercial in nature.

Back to a personal lifestyle of generosity. Another verse in Proverbs says that if we give to the poor we have given to God, and we will never be beholden to Him. That is, God will find ways of repaying us for looking after the poor and needy, so it is perfectly safe to be always generous at every opportunity, for God will always repay us - or, if disaster strikes, others will rush in to meet our needs.

Knowing this should knock every caution and fear out from under us, and give us great liberty and joy to be generous. Our main problem should be to know where and when and how to give, and how much, so we do not toss our resources around carelessly, but think and give like God does.

This is my desire. This is also the reason I’m working on a site called Generosity-Alive.org. It’s basic premise is to help those who are choosing a lifestyle of generosity to discover where there are worthy causes and projects that need some help right now, and encouragement about how to give wisely and graciously and tactfully.

I suppose to that end it is good first of all to learn how to be a gracious recipient of gifts. It makes for more thoughtfulness when giving to others. The manner of giving should not be demeaning or rude.

I received yesterday a very special gift. A used garden shed was delivered to my backyard.

My friends, Helen and Wendell, a couple that work at Western Tract Mission, are getting a new garage built in their backyard. But they already have several small buildings and by city ordnance, they are only allowed so many, thus they offered to give me their small garden shed.

Hey, sure! That would be great. It would give me a place to store my garden tools, and some lumber and I wouldn’t have to try to squeeze it all into my already full house. Yesterday Helen called to say that Wendell was hiring a flatbed truck and driver to deliver it to me. I opened the back gate and went inside to work at my computer while I waited. It was about 4:30 when they came into the back alley.

I tried to be helpful, but I also had my camera with me. Since I haven’t had time to get an article ready…I’ll whip up another photo story.

There! That’s done. A Gift of a Garden Shed

I gave up most of my newly scheduled writing time last week to producing a press release on behalf of Western Tract Mission, and emailing it to 16 newspapers to announce this week, that next week Monday we are doing a huge mailing blitz to send a gospel booklet out to every mailing address in 10 cities in Saskatchewan.

But then over this last weekend I have been tied up with a computer crisis. I will probably describe it in greater detail in my Linux Learning Curve blog, which I write every other Thursday morning. (http://BouquetofEnterprises.biz/eAction/archives/category/linux-learning-curve/). However, I’ll try to give a short version here.

On Saturday, between doing cleaning chores inside and out of the house, I usually do a backup and update my computer. Those take time, so they can do their thing while I’m doing other stuff. This time I did my upgrade first and noticed it was delivering a new kernel. There was a note to reboot, but I was busy so I put it off all day. Forgot about it in fact, until Sunday morning when I tried to open my computer for my prayer journalling.

What?! Not able to login? What’s this screen full of error messages?

I didn’t have time to deal with all that, so I shut the computer down and hurried off to church. Later, about 5 PM I decided to find out what was up.

I was able to get to a login screen, but only get into my older SUSE 9.3 operating system which is on the second hard drive. I dug in for some hours of research on those error messages. The SUSE 10.1 edition I had installed last fall was just locked to me. Finally, about 11 PM I went to bed, when I realized I was too sleepy to make good decisions. Because I’ve lost files in the past because of hasty decisions, I was trying to be patient and deliberate in the things I tried.

Yesterday I went back at it right after breakfast. I tried various things I had learned the night before, including repairs from the installation DVD. When I found myself going in circles, I logged back into the older working system, and did more research. I even brought my meals to the computer to break this deadlock the sooner.

Well, I took time to go out to welcome the garden shed when it arrived. But then I was back at it. About mid-evening I came to the conclusion that the computer wouldn’t let me fix anything on the older primary hard drive. When this computer was given to me several years ago, the owner told me the hard drive (10 GB) might go on me. I had no problems with it. It was bigger and faster than the 6.2 GB drive that came with the computer I bought in 1999, and which started my online adventures. But a few years ago when high speed came to Hague, and I realized that this computer had the required ethernet card I decided to transfer the 40 GB drive I had bought for the older computer to this one, and make this my main computer. Up to now I’ve had no problem running at least two operating systems on here, (and now I’m VERY glad I did!)

My solution in the end, was to re-install SUSE 10.1 again, but make sure all of it, especially the bootloader, were on the bigger newer drive. I guess the old one is old toast now. But whew, all of that took me until 12:35 am last night! I went to bed rejoicing that I was able to keep my personal files untouched for both systems through all this. I just have to find time to change font sizes in all areas back to what I like. Maybe a bit of other fine-tuning.