greaterthansparrows

A friend in Institute class surprised me with a bag of tomatoes from her garden.  She had a new batch ripe, and she had already put up salsa, so she wanted to share the wealth.  Red ones, little yellow pear-shaped ones.  Then another friend brought me chard because she had mentioned that it was growing faster than she could keep up and I had gone, ooh, Hubby loves it--want to unload some?  She also included yellow summer squash, she said she was tired of eating it for a few days, and some--you guessed it--tomatoes!  Heirloom varieties, odd looking but so good.  All of them, from both gardens, have been so good.  It made me remember what tomatoes used to taste like, why I love them, and we have been eating them with glee.    I would guess that we had about five different types from the two gardens This is the first year that we didn't plant anything at all.  Now, we have planted things that went nowhere on occasion, and without chi...

We had a senior missionary couple serving in our ward; he was a retired school teacher, and matched Carole up with an older sister in the ward to go and read aloud to her.  Carole's 3rd grade teacher required his students to keep a reading log and to read for 30 minutes a day.  Her first reaction to that was, how can anybody read for a whole half hour? This requirement was a blessing, because it brought her over the hump from ten minutes of effort with picture books into chapter books, but a good part of that was the inspired match-up with Jeanne Jordan.  Brother Tenney supplied the books, and a china doll as an incentive when they finished a certain number of books,  and Sister Jordan supplied the delight.  They read the Boxcar Children series, for an hour twice a week. I dropped her off and picked her up; I didn't go in except to get her to the right apartment the first couple of times.  I was neither participant nor spectator--this was Carole's time,...