“The RoseBouquet”

Whew! I’ve just done it! I had wondered whether I dare promise to do my garden photo story pages again this year, but I have had so many compliments on those that I decided to put on a strong push and get one done.

Sunday afternoon I dashed out between showers, (and even some hail later on!) to take photos and to put together a photo story with about 30 pictures of the garden. A few from May when I seeded it, and then just to show how much growth there has been over the past five weeks.

But I had to do some final polishing and fixing on the page this morning and that has taken longer than I had thought. I hesitate … but will tentatively commit to doing another one each month through the summer. Since this was the last week of June, I guess I’ll aim to do another one the last week of July. By then there should be lots of colour everywhere!

Here’s the link to go on a photo tour with me of my garden and flowerbeds,
May - June Garden Photos

Any time you lose the link and want to go back, just head to the site, look for Author’s Arbour at the top, and then the Patio page, as that’s where ALL my photo stories are indexed.

I’m still shopping for new glasses, but it seems each place wants more and more for my extreme Rx lenses. I heard that WalMart had good prices, but I went there yesterday after 5, and they want $580 for the lenses alone. Frames are cheaper almost everywhere.

Now I’m ready to start shopping online and see if that will work. It just takes time.

As for business work. I had a special happy moment yesterday just before lunch, when I was able to upload ten pages for my aloe vera site. Nine of those were NEW pages. Mind you, I’ve worked on them for a number of Monday mornings, so my victory was not for a brief, momentary effort.

These pages are the start of a new section with answers to the questions that people have been sending me as they visit the site. The hub page invites visitors to tell stories of their aloe vera plant or experiences, or to ask even more questions on the C2 form; Aloe Vera Questions and Answers

That site, www.aloe-vera-and-handy-herbs.com, is getting over 400 visitors a day now, so of course, I’m keen to keep producing profitable pages on it. Since it is an informational affiliate site, that means I need to keep putting out good content pages, and add good quality ads - from which I will get commissions.

Oh for more time to work at that! Also to do that on all my other sites!

Well, I have a prescription now for new glasses. But a government bill was due last week, so that wiped out what I had saved for new glasses. I have to save up all over again. However, this creates a perfect time to go shopping for glasses. I can ask for quotes for my Rx, and honestly not have the money to jump at whatever they offer as the best steal of a deal, so I can keep getting quotes all over. In due time the money will come in and I’ll know exactly where I want to go back to get my glasses.

The current glasses on my face I got in 2005. The best price I found in my months of shopping was at Costco, for more than $500. On Thursday the first place I checked had a half price sale and I could have got them there for $418. But that sale was over Saturday at 5 pm. I want to check out some other places today, and hope for another sale at the right time, as the full price ranges make me cringe.

This is a good time to exercise faith in God my Provider.

He does answer prayers very literally sometimes. Week before last, at the staff meeting, I prayed for a new volunteer to help with the mission’s website. By Monday last week Arnold had found someone and asked how soon I could interview her. I named Tuesday at 1 pm. We hit it off so well, that we talked straight through until 5 pm! I got nothing else done all afternoon.

Then she came on Friday afternoon at 1 pm for her first training session. Again, I got little done, as we talked almost the whole afternoon. Laurie is willing to come three days a week, but I’ve suggested that we start with just one - like Wednesdays, and work up to that. My prayer now is that we’ll learn to work together in the same room, but at different computers and each get some quality work done!

In southern Saskatchewan, my home province, we’ve been having huge dumps of rain over this last weekend. We hear of natural disasters in other parts of the world, and the rivers flooding in Manitoba next to us, but it is fairly easy to remain detached until these disasters creep in closer to home.
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Aside from the two big tree branches which came down on Friday when it was quite windy, and it was raining “cats and dogs” as we sometimes say, I can’t really complain. My garden is thriving with these rains. (And yes, I’m tentatively planning a photo story next week to cover May and June’s changes).
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What it did was give us at the mission some pause for thought; we’d planned our annual fund-raising Walkathon for Saturday, the 18th. Arnold, our director, who is pretty good at making decisions, sent out an email on Friday night saying that we had three options. We should all meet at the Kinsmen Park on Saturday morning by 9:45 and the final decision would be made. Cancelling altogether was not one of the options he named.
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Katie and Harold, a couple involved with the mission who live nearby, had offered that we could have the BBQ in their garage. The option chosen was to do the walk, not from the north end of Spadina Crescent and along the Meewasin Trail beside the river to the Kinsmen Park, but from the park as far as a little beyond the Circle Drive bridge, and then walk into the sub-division where Katie and Harold live, and have our short program and hand out the prizes there over our BBQ lunch.
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I was not one of the walkers, but drove up and down Spadina, and got out to take some photos of the walkers, then went to our friends’ house, and sat in the car to total the donations that had come in and determine who was to get the prizes. It was more than $2000 more than we’ve ever raised before! I’m sure there are still monies dribbling in, so I’m not sure what the final total is yet. But financially it was very successful!
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As the walkers arrived I learned that two couples had started at the original starting tree and come from that direction. Our other walkers had gone as far as the agreed point, then turned around and went all the way back to the park for their cars. In the garage I counted 30 people as we ate the sausages on a bun with dressings, and a watermelon, and the cake Barb always brings, for the walk is also in memory of their son, Mark.
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There were fresh downpours while we were in the garage. About the time we were ready to disband and go home, the sun came out, so we lined up in the backyard for our annual group photo session. I put it up on the WTM site yesterday, WesternTractMission.org (3 men are missing; one had gone home, and two were taking photos).
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When I got home I dragged the two large tree branches to the back alley, and went inside. I decided I was tired and flopped across the bed for a wee rest. I woke up quite refreshed two hours later, so I got up and made a batch of pizzas to take to my brother Tom the next day, Father’s Day.
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Back in February, Barbara, a subscriber, tipped me off on a new opportunity was just getting going. I checked it out and signed up. As my very first internet friend, Connie, used to say, “What’s not to like about FREE?”

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Have you got the impression that I work, work, work all the time?

Well, that’s not quite true. I do know the importance of sometimes over-riding my work agenda for something more important. I did that on Saturday.

While digging up more flowerbeds last week I’d begun to get a pinch in my neck and then these vague headaches with little explosions of pain on this and then that side of my head. I managed to get through my work the last couple of days, but I much prefer to be, as Mom Blissett used to say, (and she’s 102 now), “Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.”

Because most of my headaches seem to be related to a digestive tract that gets sluggish when I’m over-tired, I decided that I need to do a cleanse on the weekend, and since it’s best not to do a lot of physical work then, I was happy to declare it a fasting and prayer day too. (I have a list of other headache remedies I try too, such as my homemade herbal teas, cold packs, etc. It all depends.)

I had a great time praying leisurely and thoroughly through my usual lists right until noon. I drank a lot of tall mugs of water, so I didn’t even feel hungry. In the afternoon I went over my daily/weekly schedule and work plans and looked for places to tighten them so that I could get ahead faster with my web businesses. All the while I prayed about this as if discussing it with the Lord. Any ideas that came, I considered to be from Him.

By about supper time I was feeling refreshed, headache-free and ready to do something else. So I baked muffins, did dishes and swept and washed my floors. Oh, and watered the indoor plants. I ignored the garden and all other housework, putting them off.

Turns out that the headaches were not totally gone yesterday. I now suspect a pinched nerve in my neck. If it doesn’t stay cleared up soon I’ll try a chiropractor. But tomorrow I have my long-awaited optometrist appointment.

What are your best headache cures?

If you take seriously internet promotion of a business, or just want to keep in touch with website visitors, then it is highly recommended to produce a regular newsletter by email. These are called ezines. As I love to write I’ve produced ezines since back in 1999 or 2000 when I started my first one, the Journal-Digest. (I still have some subscriber/friends from back then!)

To do an ezine well, and to produce something that people want to read gladly you have to work at it. That’s why, when life got runaway-busy on me in 2007, I cut back to just this RoseBouquet once a week. However in the last year or so, two of my clients, for whom I build and maintain their websites, have asked me to setup, produce and publish a monthly ezine for them.

On top of that, visitors to my http://www.aloe-vera-and-handy-herbs.com site have been asking if I don’t have an ezine to which they could subscribe. Well… how nice of them to ask! Since I do understand the value and purpose of an ezine, and how to do it, my only problem is to designing the ezine, and planning how and when I will roll it out. Actually, a couple of other sites are at a point where they should soon be offering an ezine.

Ah, but you remember my time crunch?

So I’ve set aside that first half hour in the office on Monday mornings to plan and prepare for my ezine on aloe vera and herbs. I’d like to get a few issues written so that if any crisis interrupts me, I have one waiting i the wings to send out, without having to write it then and there. I’m hoping that in about a month’s time it will be ready to roll out monthly.

The others are not so urgent. I can develop them in a similar way, but more gradually.

I stopped in my tracks yesterday and asked myself, “So how many ezines will I be producing then?”

What’s more, this is considered business writing. That means I should be charging $50-100/hour to do that for others. Oh my, eh?!

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Flower seeds are still on my mind and in my hands. Several times last week I spent most of my supper/kitchen time after I got home from the office in doing a few more rows of vegetables and then tucking flowers into various corners and spaces.

On Saturday morning, coming back from my egg run to a farm, I stopped at my friends’, the Hildebrand’s place, on Laura’s parents’ farm. We tramped around the yard, and into her hidden Garden of Eden to look for herbs. Laura gave me a little shopping bag full of extra seeds she had to spare. It included a large quantity of zinnia seeds. Ah-ha! Something new for me to try!

So in the afternoon I dug up another flowerbed just to the west of my little shed and sowed cosmos, asters and zinnias there. I found space in the flowerbed beside the shed for a zig-zag row of dahlias. I sowed more of Laura’s zinnas in the old fridge-planter, (where two potato plants are coming up nicely). Then I went around to the front of the house, and wherever I saw a gap I either planted a petunia (I’d bought a flat of 16), and/or I sowed some more zinnia seeds.

I tell you, I’m really looking forward to my garden and flowers this summer!

But that’s not all. Last night I finally set out my tomato seedlings that I’d started in the back porch. If I were to count each wee little plant separately, I think there would be about 40, but I transplanted them in clumps.

(I’d had to make change before I went to get eggs from the farm, so I’d stopped to buy a 4 pk of Fantastic tomatoes for 1.88. One doesn’t amount to much, but the 3 bigger plants near the path are those more advanced plants in the photo).

Actually, I put a clump of my yellow tomatoes across the path to keep them from mixing with the reds too much, and I put one clump of cherry tomatoes in an old stone crock without a bottom by the east corner of the back porch. It will get good morning sun, but in case the lack of afternoon sun is a hindrance, I put the other clump in the middle of the garden where it should get sun all day long.

(We are getting nice long days now in June! The sun rises about 4:30 am and goes down about 9:30 pm.)

But that’s still not all. I have all these flower seeds burning a hole in my apron pocket yet. So I’m hoping this week to dig up a circle on my front lawn so I can sow still more.

Just wait until my fennel comes up too, and perfumes the whole neighbourhood!

You think I’m crazy?

(Shrug…) No matter. I’m looking forward to my riots of colour and the anise/licorice scent of my fennel.

The above is what I squeeze into my personal time. It’s a narrow margin, but it’s amazing what you can get done if you give a regular, small block of time to it. Apparently that was a philosophy that my great-grandfather, Isbrand Friesen (Mom’s grandfather) lived by, and I’ve found it productive too.

These days though I realize that the blocks of time I’ve set aside for my own business are not enough. So in those little snatches of time when my mind darts off to mull over a problem, I’ve been pondering on how to re-arrange my daily and weekly timetable to make more room for business hours. I must guard the hours promised to Western Tract Mission, and those promised to my clients, but is there anything I could give up, or turn over to someone else so that I can have more time to make my web businesses profitable?

These days I’m considering this; if I could finish my evening work a bit sooner, so I get to bed before midnight, it would be easier to get up earlier in the morning. Then I could see my way clear to getting to the office half an hour earlier. Five half hours a week, would add two and a half hours to my business time in a week. That’s almost an extra morning!

My dream plan of course, is to do well enough so that I can hire an employee or two, and delegate some work to them. That would almost be like doubling or tripling my out-put! Whoa!!! But now to turn my dream into a plan and to carry it out.