“The RoseBouquet”

My favourite uncle and aunt came to visit on the weekend. They arrived by bus at noon, so I brought them home and served a cold salad and make up your own sandwiches lunch. Then I took them on a tour of my office here, and the whole Western Tract Mission building.

For supper we picked up some Kentucky Fried Chicken and went to the Kinsmen Park beside my brother Tom’s apartment building. He joined us and we had our supper together in a lovely spot for shade and breezes as it was generally quite a hot day. One of the few we’ve had this summer.

We were not far from the merry-go-round and the little train ride, so we could watch kids and families enjoying them.

Suddenly Tom said, “Look! They are going to blow up some hot air balloons over there.” We cleared our table and went off over a grassy hill to watch. None of us had ever seen this before so it was a very pleasant experience. I had forgotten my camera (how could I?) but Uncle Henry had his, so I figured I’d get some from him later.

There were two giant silk balloons blown up with hot air, some people busy with ropes to close up the top, and then let them go upright. We watched as people jumped into the baskets and then suddenly, soundlessly, they lifted off and floated away into the bright western sun.

Unfortunately, when we got home, we discovered that Uncle Henry’s flash must have been set to on, for all those photos were just whited out. Nothing really to see. I tried to put his camera chip into my printer so I could maybe doctor them up on my computer, but then it fell into the printer and for the longest time we couldn’t get it out. Eventually I turned it on it’s back and managed to retrieve that slim little item out with some tweasers.

They went to sleep in the neighbour’s camper and I got to sleep in my own bed. Everything worked out so well.

We didn’t get to many of my work projects because Aunt Freida said they had come to visit, not to work. Uncle Henry phoned some cousins and we all met at the Granada for lunch on Saturday. We lingered for two hours over it and told many stories Afterward we rested a bit at my place and then we had a strawberry cheese cake I had made, before I took them back to the bus depot to catch the 6 p.m. bus. It was a lovely little visit.

My one big disappointment was that I kept forgetting my camera in my backpack that I take to the office everyday. I have absolutely NO photos to show for this visit!

With all this pinching off days for visitors and other events I seem to be getting some holidays by the drip-by-drip method. I took Friday off for my uncle and aunt’s visit, and this week I’ve been taking evenings off to go to the big annual missions conference in Waldheim. It only runs from Sunday to Wednesday, but I do enjoy hearing the various missionaries’ reports, and seeing their display tables. (We have one too for WTM, but I let Joe and Penny take the lead in looking after it).

I’m taking this afternoon off too, to go celebrate my friend Kathy’s birthday. That’s out near Hague where I used to live, so I thought it would be easiest to go pick up “cracks” at the egg farm, and then give Kathy some quality time, teaching her things she can do on her linux computer - especially in the way of powerpoints, etc. From there I plan to drive on to Waldheim for tonight’s conference meeting.

You notice that I have been careful to save my Tuesday morning to write this RoseBouquet though, eh?

Incidentally, I want to welcome some new subscribers, some of which have joined since I sent out the notice to Connie’s AngelWatch list about her death a week ago from last Sunday. I trust you will enjoy this weekly blog/ezine and RSS feed. I know how many ezine edition subscribers I have, but I can only guess from my visitor STATs how many people have bookmarked my blog and visit it faithfully every week.

Do STATS interest you? Shall I toss out a few?

In the month of June visitors were down, but there were 1743 unique visitors, making 2793 visits to http://Ruthes-SecretRoses.com.
84 of them stayed for over an hour to look around and read! (Yum! I love these numbers). The blog (a sub-domain) had 531 visitors, of whom 49 stuck around for over an hour, and 63 stayed from 30 minutes to an hour.

Now I also prepare each issue as an RSS feed with links to the blog. That quiet little page had 384 visitors. Assuming that number are included in the the actual visitors to the blog site, I will only venture to guess that I had over 530 readers of the RoseBouquet, with the ezine edition that makes just about 600 readers per month. Wow! That just blows me away!

Here I thought I was writing to just a handful of dear friends/roses in my friendship bouquet.

Since I have friendships on my mind today, and am starting with some new friends today, it seems sensible and wise to provide some links so you can get better acquainted with me.

First, I have some pages up that describe in more detail how I feel about the value of friendship and mentoring. You may want to visit these links; Friendship

There are even some forms you can fill out to tell me more about yourself - one way to speed up our getting acquainted process - and when you do that, you will get an immediate responder telling you how I answered those same questions. Start by reading this page first and following the link at the end of the middle column. Let’s Get Acquainted. I have made a number of new friends this way.

Another thing you can do is look for all the About Me, or Author links on my websites. Each website has one, and each one describes me a little differently. I’ve always teased that there are as many facets to me as a diamond, but you would get a more rounded introduction to me if you can find all those “About me” pages. Links to my other sites are usually at the bottom of the page, but I scatter them around too.

This friend and I have been prayer sisters since way back since about 1994 or 95. We try to get together to at least celebrate our birthdays in July, though it seems harder and harder to find time that suits us both to get together more often.

When my Mom was sick and dying and I could hardly leave the house, Kathy came around at least one evening a week, and we would share our concerns with one another and pray for one another. I prayed all day and often curled up in a chair to scribble in my prayer journal, but sometimes in that kind of situation, you just need Jesus to come in the form of a friend with skin on, so you can touch one another, cry and pray together.

I had one other friend who did that during that time, but she turned away from God and me afterwards. But that makes the fact that Kathy and I still pray for each other daily all the more precious.

I managed to write a new poem or ditty for her birthday card last night, I’ve got a hanging basket of flowers for a gift, but in this case, I want to give a gift of time too. Time to help her learn something she needs to know for her business plan. Any time spent together is always special for us. I hope I can really bless her!

May you never tire of hearing from me that you need to work at your friendships if you want them to bloom and be beautiful. I confess I’m not always the best example since I spread myself rather thinly among all my friends. But I do value them and remind both you and me to make an effort to prove it.

On Sunday morning when I came out the back door to go to my car for church, I was surprised to find a huge tree branch lying on my garden and blocking my path. Whoa! Where did this come from?!

I managed to step over rows of vegetables to the right (in my yellow patent dress shoes) and get a better look from the other side. It appears that during the night this large branch broke up way up near the top of my biggest tree, and fell down on the electrical wires to the house, and from there bounced around and landed - in what is the spot in the garden where it could do the least damage.

It was so big however, that I knew I’d never be able to carry or drag it away as it was. I was grateful when I realized that my electrical wiring had not been torn apart, for that might have caused a house fire, and that it really was not going to waste the better parts of my gardens. So I went off to church.

Yesterday after supper I was changed into work clothes and went out to see what I could do about it. I fully expected that this could take me several evenings to clear up and might use up the time I normally allowed for watering the garden.

It turned out that the smaller branches on it were really quite dry, dead twigs and sticks. They broke off easily in my hand. So I began to break and gather up an armload and then I carried them to the shady spot behind my shed, thinking that I must find someone who needs kindling for camp fires. Lots of ‘em! The big heap began to shrink as I carried away one armful after another.

Suddenly a stranger called out from the street over on the other side of my neighbours, “Hey, you need some help there?”

I looked over and decided he looked harmless enough, and seemed to be sincerely interested, so I explained that it had fallen down sometime early Sunday morning, and that I was just doing what I could. (I was hoping my neighbours might come out to help). This man offered his help, and I decided to accept, so I opened the back gate for him.

Suddenly the breaking off of branches was going much faster. I mentioned that I had an electric Skil saw but wasn’t sure if I dared use it. I thought I also had a handsaw. He suggested I go find that, and he’d cut it down for me. I had to hunt it in my basement because I’d re-arranged things … but I came back out with it, and the man who introduced himself as Chris began to cut the thicker part of the main branch down. Parts of it were as thick as my leg.

I considered running in for my camera but he was done in no time.

A lady stood by the gate watching, and he said it was his aunt. He was going to take her out for supper at the Granada across my back alley. I went to speak to her and she said, “Oh, it’s just his nature to be helpful.” She didn’t mind waiting at all.

I was amazed. I still had time left over to water the gardens and flowerbeds after that.

So when did a stranger last stop to help you out?

Summer brings all kinds of unusual experiences doesn’t it? I’ve often said that when I can’t take time for a vacation, vacations come to me in the form of visitors. That is always a great treat for me. And yes, it costs me a bit of effort, but I make time for them.

On Saturday a third cousin of mine who lives in England came by for lunch and a visit until after 3 pm. That was nice, but I sure did hustle a bit to get my baking and housecleaning done before she arrived.

This week Friday my uncle and aunt from Castor, Alberta, are coming to visit. They will stay until Sunday morning. Although my uncle is legally blind, I’m sure he’ll offer to help around the house and yard, and so I’m making a list of little projects we can work on. My regular schedule will have to be set aside.

I was wondering how I would provide beds for them, as I have only one single bed myself, but I prepared some foam mats on Saturday after Sandra left, and yesterday my neighbours offered to let me use their camper as a guest house, so I’m sure I’ll be able to host them comfortably.

Yesterday was a rather unusual day, in that I made a housecall to help a client with her laptop computer that has been giving her problems. We stayed at it until 1 pm. Then I called my friend Shirley, and spent lunch time with her. I didn’t get to the office until 2 pm.

When I got home, as I mentioned above, a stranger came to help me get rid of the fallen tree branch.

Then I phoned Charlie again to check on Connie, only to learn that Connie passed away at 3 am on Sunday morning. I find myself missing her today, even though I know she is safely in Heaven, and enjoying some closeup looks at angels. Angel stories always fascinated her. I’m also wondering what kind of things I can do to encourage Charlie. He’s rather distraught and feeling helpless. He himself had been a patient in hospital a few days as they discovered he is diabetic. I find myself missing Connie today, but Charlie is used to leaning on Connie for decision-making, and he needs some encouragement.

When finished here, I want to see if I can find a copy of Connie’s mailing list and notify her internet friends since Charlie knows nothing but nothing about sending emails.

I have also inherited her website, and will have to see about looking after it.

My friend Aruna sent a link last week for a crazy, but easy little game to play online. It’s called Circle the Cat. You can find it on this page; Circle the Cat

After a while I wanted to find out who it is that thought this up or presents this. I ended up on Grandma Fath’s website. I don’t know if she is really a little ol’ lady or not, but I found that she does some fancy web design work, (crystal flowers on her main page) and she had plenty of links to other games, and inspirational things.

Normally, I don’t care for games or take time for them, but I enjoyed making the flower garden too, on this page;
Flower Garden

Anyway, I’ve played long enough. If you have time to hang out there, you may go to Grandma Faith’s Website
Something to occupy your bored kids or grand-kids, right?

Today I’m sending a virtual Bouquet of flowers to dear Shirley. I popped in on her unexpectedly yesterday, but she quickly warmed up a lovely meal for me, and served me a fine meal on her good china. She even brought out a lovely layer cake with one of the layers being of ice cream. Yum!

Shirley had offered me a nice-looking tub chair for my office which had remained unsold at her garage sale. Between us we loaded it into the trunk of my car, and tied it down with a rope.

This generous friend has a super tender heart and often helps out down-and-outers (and up-and-outers too). She opens her heart up to receive anyone, everyone!

Oh, and Shirley is also a great animal lover!

How many weddings are you invited to this summer? Some years the count is quite high and other years hardly any or none.

This year I was only invited to one. Our pastor’s daughter, Julie-Anne was married this past Saturday. Naturally, it’s hard for a pastor and his wife to pick and choose whom to invite in a congregation of 250 to 300 people, so they had the ceremony in a beautiful cathedral downtown on Spadina Crescent. Right across the street from it, is a lovely riverside park that follows the curving river all the way through the city. The best groomed part is right there by St. John’s cathedral and up to the old Bessbourgh hotel. So the reception was to be a picnic in the park.

But Saturday was a rainy day. It rained early in the morning, and I thought it could clear up yet by 11 for the ceremony, or for sure by 12 for the reception. No, it kept drizzling all morning.

On top of that the wedding ceremony was delayed. The guests began to visit with one another, and wonder what could be the problem. I overheard Doug behind me say, he was going to have to go out to feed the parking meter again. I turned around and said that I didn’t think they checked the meters on Saturday and Sundays. He insisted, and since I had NOT fed my meter, I started to go out, but met an usher in the aisle, so I asked him. He agreed that the meters were fine on Saturday. I sat down again.

Doug got back from feeding his meter, and said it that it does say right on them, Mon.-Sat.

(Sigh) What to do? Well, the wedding didn’t seem to be happening yet, so I went out and found no ticket on the windshield, even though I’d already been parked there for an hour, but since I hate to break the law, I put in 1.50 for another hour.

When I got back to my pew, I overheard from the people behind me, that the hold up was that the flowers had not arrived yet.

Suddenly there was a flurry of activity as the photographers, and video-people got back into their places. at 11:43 the wedding finally got under way.

The groom and his men looked handsome, the four bridesmaids were lovely, and the petite little Julie-Anne looked radiant and dewy-eyed. Her Dad was beaming and had great joy in performing the marriage ceremony. It was all over in half an hour, and then pastor Robin went back to the microphone and announced that the reception was going to be back at our own church, in the gym. All were invited over there for sandwiches and cake.

The receiving line was outside the cathedral, and just then it wasn’t raining, but I felt sorry for all those girls and their bare shoulders.

My friend Anna needed a ride to the reception, and we had heart-shaped sandwiches and tiny pretty cupcakes there. It was somewhat chilly in the gym too. I hope the bride and groom were not too disappointed in the weather for their day.

Isn’t there a proverb about blessings for the bride that it rains upon? Do you know how it really goes?

As I mentioned last week, my goal for the next while, is to finally complete the updating of my websites, and then move full-strength ahead to monetize them. So it gave me considerable satisfaction yesterday to be able to finally complete the updating of the book reviews in the Sharing Library on my site

I want to create some store-like pages with links to about three different online stores. I don’t know how long that may take, but then I need to hunt for any overlooked pages to update, and after that I hope to move on to more work that calls for writing of sales copy.

Did you know that people who can write a good sales letter make heaps of money for that skill? When you get that junk mail in your regular post, and you rip open this big colorful envelope with a personal-sounding letter, and some glossy pages about the product they want to sell, plus the reply envelopes, you can be sure that somebody got paid thousands of dollars just for writing that friendly letter that seems to anticipate and answer all your questions.

The same applies when you follow a link online and come to a webpage that looks fairly plain, with nice big font, and it sounds like a friendly personal letter to you, explaining the great drawing features of this product and how good you will feel owning it, and all those testimonials from other customers who bought it - then, once again, you can be sure that someone with a wondrous skill with words got paid a handsome five or six figure income just for writing the text on that webpage.

Sure, you could go take some courses to learn this, but if you know me, you know that I’m likely to learn this skill from free info that I find online. Well, and just plain practice. Practice makes perfect!

Naturally, I intend to filter all that I learn through my grid of good ethics and morals.