“The RoseBouquet”

There is evidence if you’re alert to it. The trees are starting to shed their yellow leaves, the temperatures are cooler and the breezes and winds have a fall taste when I am outside. My garden plants are yellowing and falling over. Even one tall sturdy tomato plant over which I had placed a wire cage seems to have placed most of its fruit on the north side and yesterday I found it tilted over, cage and all.

Then this morning on the radio I heard that we can expect a serious frost the first week of September. What? Tomorrow? This week?

I’ve just checked with the weather network and don’t see any frost forecast but they’ve been wrong before.

I had noticed those signs of fall sneaking up, but had thought that I could go on for a few more weeks pretending it was still summer. I still wanted to show off my tall corn and so forth to some people who have not come to visit yet. But this implies that I should spend the coming Labour Day weekend out there harvesting my garden. Especially the tomatoes and the corn and the zucchini. The potatoes might survive the first frost if it’s not too serious.

My plans for a candle-making craft session with some friends on Saturday fell through. But that turned out okay for me, as I needed that time for some bookkeeping catchup. (I still need another Saturday too).

However, on Sunday I brought along my friend Shannon from church and we enjoyed some summa borscht from my crockpot and then went to the Appreciation Tea over at Western Tract Mission. I took along a bouquet of my bright and sunny marigolds.

This past weekend I had company from out of town again. This time it was my favourite uncle and aunt from my Mom’s side of the family. Uncle Henry and Aunt Frieda Kroeker from Castor, Alberta, came for a 50th anniversary of their friends Walter and Hannah Andres in Rosthern.

(Remember, my brother Tom and I went to our uncle and aunt’s 50th anniversary the Victoria Day weekend in May? Well, their good friends, the Andres were there too, and now it was time to reciprocate, as these two couples got married the same year and both Uncle Henry and Walter had been school teachers).

Uncle Henry is legally blind now with macular degeneration, so Aunt Frieda has had to learn to drive in her senior years. However, she refuses to drive in a city as big as Saskatoon. So they get around that by driving as far as her sister’s place in Rosetown, a town about an hour and a half from this city. Then they catch a bus to come to Saskatoon, and I meet them there and chauffeur them around.

On Friday I went home an hour early and hurried to get supper ready, and a bit of tidying up, then a bit after 6 pm I dropped everything and raced over to the bus depot, which is not more than 5 minutes away. Their bus pulled in almost immediately, so I didn’t even have to sit down to read. After our initial greetings we hurried out around the corner to my car and I brought them home for supper.

Over the table I suggested that I call my cousin June and invite her and her family over for the dessert, so they could visit with them too. They agreed, so I did, but June came alone. We had a pleasant visit, though she had to be up and going to chauffeur her son to some event with his friend. I don’t think it lasted a whole hour.

My uncle and aunt were willing to sleep on the mats and quilts I brought out (my house is too tiny for a real guest room and proper double bed) - which we laid out in the pantry.

Before noon on Saturday we were dressed for the anniversary, and headed out. First stopping at a WalMart for some camera batteries and a watch battery. We also stopped at a bulk baking supplies place just outside of Rosthern, but still arrived at the church the same time as the Andres and some of their family.

Two things stand out from that celebration. I found myself networking around and realizing that I knew many of the Neudorf cousins from that large extended clan that showed up. (Hannah is a second cousin to Mom and Uncle Henry, etc). But my uncle did not know most of these second cousins of his, so I found myself in the delightful role of introducing them.

Secondly, I think we were all taken aback a bit to discover that the Andres’ daughter Michelle and her husband were expecting their tenth child, and besides the nine they had already, they had adopted 5 more. So in December their count will be 15. Their oldest daughter was married and she and her husband had already adopted three or four too! Aunt Frieda was really flabbergasted.

Now, come to think of it, my great-grandfather Jacob Neudorf had 18 children - with two wives.

Anyway, they had their return bus ticket to Rosetown for 6 pm in Saskatoon, so we had to excuse ourselves before the cake cutting and head back to the city. just in time too. I got them there at 5:45 and in five minutes they were boarding the bus. Not quite a whole 24 hours I had with them.

You may recall that I had a number of weeks of back and hip pain. Basically from about Mother’s Day in May to about mid-July. Then, just when I’d decided to go to my doctor about it, the pain lifted away. I felt almost foolish reporting the pain I’d been having in the past tense.

Mind you, I had started taking joint health supplements, and extra calcium, and I think it was taking effect.

The doctor sent me for an x-ray and some lab work. Then I was called in when the x-ray showed calcification of the left kidney. It seemed like a mistake because I was no longer in pain of any kind. This usually implies kidney stones, but can be something else too. Immediately, I cut back my calcium to just one dose a day, in case I’ve been taking too much.

However, the doctor wanted to schedule me for a CT scan to check this out further. That appointment took place this morning. I’m curious myself to know what this will show. I’ve taken both my Mom and my Dad to these tests, but never had to go through it myself.

I left home before 7:30 and walked the 8 blocks to St. Paul’s hospital, stopping several times to take some photos of the city’s huge bowls of flowers in the boulevard on 22nd Street. (It’s impossible, I’d noticed, to take those photos when you are driving by).

There was the admitting process and waiting in the Diagnostic Imaging department, where I tried to continue with my morning prayer lists. Then I had to drink two large paper cups of water with some medication dissolved in it. I was informed that it might taste metallic but I was just glad for the refreshing water; I noticed no off taste.

A very nice attendant explained everything, hooked me up for an IV and explained about lying very still on the table that slid in and out of a large circular piece of machinery, and that I would feel a warm flush for about 30 seconds. A mechanical voice told me when to take a deep breath and hold it, and when I could breathe again.

In a few minutes another attendant was taking out the IV needle and telling me I could go. If my doctor doesn’t call me with the results in a week, I’m suppose to call and remind him.

My computer opened this morning to my Facebook page, which I have totally neglected and ignored since last Tuesday, and lo, and behold, there’s a bunch of birthday greetings for me! That must be what my brother Ernie referred to on Saturday night when Penny and he called to wish me a happy birthday.

How did I spend it? Well, like I keep telling everyone, my birthday is a season that lasts from when the first early birthday card arrives until the last one comes tumbling in the mail. I know there are more coming in this week, so it is not over yet.

Still, I did have several mini-celebrations already. On the third Wednesday of the month the mission staff celebrates all those who have birthdays that month. That’s once. Then on Friday at noon, the staff that were present for lunch celebrated again with a chocolate cake and pumpkin pie and a gift of a sweetheart rose plant. (Unfortunately, I forgot that it would need watering over the long weekend so it’s looking a bit droopy here today). That’s the second time.

Then I took off the afternoon to go visit my dear prayer sister, Kathy, about 40 minutes out of town. Our birthdays are just days apart, so we always try to get together to celebrate. We had a lovely couple of hours together, exchanging gifts and she made a light supper for us both. That’s the third time.

I had internet problems at home, so on Saturday I had to wait for the techie to come visit, but aside from that I had promised myself a sewing binge day. I put all my reno and gardening projects aside and treated myself to something I’d had a yen for quite a while. So I went through my stash of fabrics and cut out one outfit after another. Let’s see, a night gown, an eyelet print blouse, a two-piece blue print set, a beige pant suit set, a green silk skirt, - that’s all I can recall at the moment. However, by the time I had those cut out about 4 pm, my back did not like the idea of leaning over the sewing machine, so I’ll have to sew them up as I can snatch a half hour here or there. I did have the satisfaction of finally getting started though! By the way, I often design as I cut out.

You notice that it doesn’t take a big party or lots of food to make me feel like I’ve celebrated, right? Small pleasures will do it for me.

For the longest time I have resisted getting on Facebook. I have (no, I still belong, I guess) to another networking community, and it just got so time-consuming to keep up with seeing what snippets people had written, that I decided that to get on with my working career I would have to ignore them. I have not deleted my account there, but I only check the email related to that community once in a long while.


Last week I was frustrated when our SiteSell guru announced some videos by contest winners on Facebook. Naturally, I couldn’t go see them without an account there. So I sighed deeply, created a new email just for this, and made sure that the flood of emails that would come in would not show up in my KMail where I normally deal with incoming emails from about 24 addresses. I have trouble keeping up with those, and my good friends are kind enough to be understanding that sometimes it takes me a week or more to get to them, because I’m so busy just dealing with business and client emails first.


At least I should be able to follow a link when it seems there is something important to see on Facebook.

Well, then the very next day I was calling my cousin Phil and his wife Barbara because his mother had died, and they urged me to see their family photos on Facebook. Wow! had their kids ever grown up. Even their grandkids were not babies any more!

Before I knew it I spied small photos of some other relatives’ names that I recognized, so I decided to “add” them to my friends list, or invite them to be on my list. Especially Saturday night when I was wrestling with a computer problem at home, I got distracted as I tried to hunt for a contact who might have some answers to help me. Just as I’d feared, one thing leads to another on Facebook.

Now I invest a lot of time in this RoseBouquet. I can’t keep up with my 8 websites, and all my client and mission work if I start corresponding with everyone I know on an individual basis. So I resolved some years ago, that I would schedule in Tuesday mornings to write a four-part blog and publish it not only as a blog, but an ezine, that can be subscribed to for free, and also as an RSS feed. The latter is touted as a great way to promote one’s website and blog.

This morning I checked to see how many “friends” I have on Facebook. What 13 already? Hmm… It’s nice to see what some relatives are up to that I haven’t heard from in ages, but is this thing going to run away with me and re-organize my life? I confess, I’m a bit nervous about this.

It seems like I spent this last weekend online shopping around for sympathy flowers. My Aunt Margaret Friesen died last Thursday. She was in her 90s, and in a nursing home. She was married to Dad’s brother George, and they had two sons, Phil and Paul. In the flurry of emails and phone calls on Friday evening, my youngest sister, Erma, suggested that we five siblings go together to send them each a bouquet of flowers. She could not afford to contribute though until the end of the month. So I volunteered to place the order.

I’ve been researching how to shop online in the smartest ways for my new website, so I applied all my skills. By email we agreed that we would limit our combined budget to $100. But the best looking arrangements are always more, of course. Elsie, located out on the west coast, suggested I find florists right in Oshawa, Ontario where the funeral was to be on Monday. (The viewing was at the funeral home in Huntsville on Sat. and Sun.) So I narrowed our choices down some more and emailed the links to my siblings. Then waited for feedback.

But Sunday afternoon I had picked the florist to use, but it appeared our order was too unusual to do online, I should phone it in. Because of the two time zones difference, I had to wait until early Monday morning. My 7 am was their 9 am store opening time. It took several tries to get someone answering, but I finally got our order explained, for two arrangements to be delivered to the church by 1 pm, and with cards so that Phil and Barbara would take one home, and Paul and Lynn would take the other home.

I pointed out one of their designs on their website as a guide but said their designer could follow her own head in making the arrangements. The woman was pleased that I understood this is the far better plan!

I believe Erma was going to be there, along with some other relatives, so at present I’m waiting for someone to send some photos and perhaps one of our flower arrangements.

When I called Paul he told me that they will be passing through here in August to visit their daughter and son-in-law in Alberta who were in the midst of a big move and could not return for the funeral. He promised to bring me some photos on a CD at that time.

Whew! It’s surprising where we can “find” or “make” time when we have an urgent project to finish, isn’t it? By giving up pockets of time that I usually used for the garden, or on Saturday, for my housecleaning and reno projects, and even Sunday afternoon, I managed to get my manuscript reformatted, not just once, but twice, and out in the mail yesterday.

I thought I was done at 3:40 pm on Saturday, but then in evening checked the instructions again, discovered that it had to be in MS .doc format, and so did some more fine-tuning until 9 pm.

On Sunday morning I put it all on a USB stick. I was invited out to lunch with two wonderful senior ladies, but afterward I went to my office to print out the manuscript because Word Alive wants both a paper and a CD copy. There I found to my chagrin that once the file was on a different computer (in .doc format) the page length shifted, and the page numbers did not show up, plus the table of the index disappeared and the text was all one compressed paragraph!

Yikes! So I spent nearly 3 hours putting everything back in order again. Then I printed it, and burned a CD for them, and one for me to file, and took it home to package up neatly.

There’s a strong temptation to think that after all that work I deserve the prize, but my spirit knows that’s not how it works. It’s time to put it in the Lord’s hands, and wait to see how the judges will see it.

How was your holiday weekend? Parades and fireworks? Family picnics?

I did none of the above. I often miss the longer hours I had to talk things over with my Best Friend when I cared for my parents, so now when there is a holiday and I’m not expected to be somewhere, I like to take some leisurely hours for a retreat with my Best Friend. I always come away refreshed and enthused for the work projects before me. Sometimes there are new ones!

For some months I’ve known about a writers’ contest by Word Alive Publishing in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. I’ve been thinking that would be a great place to enter that devotional book I wrote on the Joy Gems I found in the Bible. So far I had done nothing about it. I went online to check the contest instructions and realized that I would have to reformat my manuscript to comply with the rules. (Sigh).

So I spent a number of hours at it on Saturday, and again on Sunday, and I’ve given up my half hour Bible study each morning this week to work on it. This morning I got all the basic work done, but I need to check the index as I think somewhere I have a wrong page number. I also want to read it all over once more to make sure I’ve caught all the little errors that I may have missed.

The deadline for submissions is next week on the 15th, so I want to get it in the mail by the end of this week. I don’t know if I’ll make it. But I must try! The prize is a publishing package worth $4000!

More than a month ago (it seems), some friends in Kamloops, BC., said they would be travelling through to go to Minnesota for a 60th anniversary. They asked if they could stop for the night at my place. I assured them they could, and marked the date on my calendar. The 23rd of June.

I tried calling them on Monday and Tuesday evening last week, but had to leave a message each time. So I assumed they were on the way.

I did extra cleaning over several Saturdays to prepare for them. The Saturday just before was a busy one with the Walkathon, then the pot luck farewell for the ESL students, and the recital, etc., so I made a point of doing still more cleaning on Monday over my supper period at home. On Tuesday evening I was taking minutes at the Board meeting, but on Wednesday all day I kept expecting my friends to show up. Maybe even at the office before 5 pm.

Then I hurried home and started a supper of chicken breasts in a bed of mushroom rice, and I made a chocolate dessert, and then plunged into more cleaning. I even kept the inner door of the front porch open so I could keep an eye out for their car as they would pull up - any minute now.

About 8 pm the supper was more than ready, and I was exhausted from cleaning, so I filled my supper plate, and sat so I could watch for my friends through the door and the front porch windows.

I had expected to spend the evening visiting, so was prepared to skip one evening of working for my client’s website. However, after I had the dishes done I sat down at the computer and thought I’d see how much work I would get done before they arrived. Hopefully they had not run into any accident on the way. For sure they should have heard on the news not to take the # 1 highway as it was flooded out near Maple Creek.

By 11:30 I had put in three hours of work for the client and decided to give up and go to bed. At least I could bill for those hours, and had not lost that income time. And, hey, the pantry room that I was turning into a spare bedroom looked much better! I also had cooked chicken for another three meals ahead.

I’ve now resigned myself to it that they may have flown south and just forgot to let me know. When I hear from them, I’m sure they’ll have a great story to explain.

Hey, we’ve begun to have some sunny days after five weeks of rain, and my garden is thriving. My neighbour Joe says it has increased 3 times in size in just 3 days! Next week is the beginning of a new month and it will be time for another photo story.

We’ve got holidays coming up this week. Here in Canada Thursday is Canada Day. On Sunday the USA will made a big event out of their national, July 4th, birthday too. Some people will manage to celebrate both holidays. If you can make a long weekend of it, I hope you’ll have a wonderful, blessed time, and will be able to rejoice in the good features of your country.

My hip is much better, thanks. Partly due to the chiropractor’s treatments and on Saturday night I bought an extra firm girdle, which does exactly what I’ve been thinking for quite a while. It pulls my internal organs inward, and that forces my back to lengthen, which gives my poor vertebrae extra room so they don’t grate on one another. I’ve had two days now of feeling much, much better!

I did some extra housecleaning yesterday over supper and before I started my evening’s work. Towards the end I did get some pain spasms, so there’s still some healing to come, but I’m very grateful today. Thank you, if you prayed.

After about six weeks of rainy weather, (about three hours south of us the TransCanada highway is flooded in some places!) we are finally getting some sunshine and summer heat. In fact, on Sunday night I felt I had to remove the heavy tarp I had nailed over the outside of my window box air conditioner and start using it a bit. When I get tired of the noise it makes I make do with just a big white fan near my desk.

Do you uses fans at all? Do you also get tired of all that blowing air drying your skin and face and eyes? I find it makes me thirsty and tired. But hey, in this part of Canada we’ve been whining for summer, so now we need to adjust to temperatures in the mid 20s Celsius (mid 60s Fahrenheit).

I’m reminding myself that in some other countries they have it much hotter - year round!