I am getting ready to savor the great taste of home grown green beans that I picked yesterday off of the 8 plants that have survived this very wet spring. There is nothing better than eating something you grew and nurtured. They, along with sweet corn we are having, are my most favorite thing to eat and brings back memories of picking my grandmother's in her garden on their farm in South Dakota. I believe my love for gardening stems from the summers I spent at their farm when we lived in Bloomington, MN and our parents would drop off my 4 older brothers and me. They had a well and you would drop the bucket down and pull it up and drink from a ladle. No indoor plumbing. No AC. My four older brothers locked me in the barn loft one day and on another escapade they left me atop a hay bale when the cows came into the pasture. They were brutal but, don't worry, I got them back when they were in junior high and high school. I could earn a couple dollars not telling on them. Worked many times. LOL
I can almost taste them now.

From Gary Bedore Banners going up! #RockChalk

@bskeet Please know that we all on this board care enough for one another and have this board to share in the crazy, good times as well as the sad imes. You're in my thoughts.

UPDATE! Offspring of my banana spider spotted this morning. @nuleafjhawk be aware!

Today's photo is of our Brittany Spaniel, Jasper, that Mike found at a pet store (with papers back then) when he was a puppy and it was just a couple of months after we had moved to Austin in the heart of old Hype Park neighborhood. We rented a duplex on a side street that was a dead end and had a fenced in back yard for $150 per month. He got some quail and began training him in the back yard. Just the best dog ever. Mike would take him to southeastern Kansas to a farm our friends had and could out hunt any other dog. I saw him once catch a pheasant in the air after he had pointed it. We got a female and they had 6 litters. All of the pups went to his hunting buddies up in Kansas and Michigan. Mike would take him to work on the various job sites and when he would be missing, we found him one time in the community swimming pool, he had a girlfriend and he would visit her house and be inside the ac while Mike would be out in 100 degree weather working, and many nights after he couldn't be found, Mike would come and get me and we would be out searching the neighborhood for him. When he was just 6 months old, he fell out of the back of Mike's truck and broke his left hip. He would sleep in the only chair we had when we first moved all that time he was healing. He lived to be 15. We kept one of the males from his last litter, but he didn't get the same genes. The female was bitten by a copperhead in the throat and Mike put Adolph's meat tenderizer on the bite and although she swelled up a lot, she survived.
Who is your favorite pet?

Today's photo is of a beautiful amaryllis bloom from a potted plant I received from work when I had the girls in December 1987. I've kept this photo sealed and in a frame all these 35+ years it was so beautiful. It took years to finally get this bloom. I read that the amaryllis flower has a fascinating and dramatic origin story that dates back to Antiquity. According to a Greek myth, Amaryllis is a beautiful young maiden who is deeply in love with Alteo, a local shepherd and gardener. Strong and handsome, Alteo has a passion for flowers and claimed he could only fall in love with a maiden who brought him a flower so unique that it never existed before. Unsure of how to gain his affections, Amaryllis sought guidance from the Oracle of Delphi, who told her she must sacrifice her blood for him to win his love. For a month, Amaryllis stood upon Alteo's doorstep, piercing her heart with a golden arrow each night in hopes he would notice her, but he did not. On the 30th day, Alteo opened the door and, in her place, saw an extraordinary and beautiful dark red flower that had blossomed from the blood of Amaryllis' heart. A sad tale, for sure, but from this myth, the amaryllis flower has become a profound symbol of love, commitment, and determination. During the Victorian era, the amaryllis flower took on the meaning of pride, strength, and confidence due to its sturdiness and towering height over other winter flowers. Gentlemen would give the amaryllis flower to women they respected and thought were strong and very beautiful.

Today we honor all those that gave the ultimate gift so that we can have the liberties I cherish. I fly my flag in their memory.

Our flag does not fly because the wind moves it. It flies with the last breath of each soldier who died protecting it.
— Unknown
The ultimate sacrifice for freedom deserves our highest honor.

@nuleafjhawk Bet you they still have the same menu that you last saw! They added on a back room. How 'bout them pies when you first come in!!! I go to do my lab work in Marble Falls just so I can eat there after.

@BShark Yup. When we lived in Leavenworth, our best friends bought 50 acres outside of Winchester off 134th Street and are still there. They have horses. It seemed like another world from Leavenworth in 1975 and lots of parties at the pond, fishing and his brother had another plot off of 92 by Springdale. Mike would go every winter to hunt with the two of them.

He shot that deer in Winchester, Kansas at our oldest friends' place.
This is the evolution of the She Shed:

This is the UT 74 Bronco and still looks great. Both vehicles went into the shop when he finished and they haven't been outside since. He would start them periodically and run the engines, but sadly since he has been gone they have just sat there, but at least they aren't in the elements and they have been covered this whole time. The other picture is of the office he put inside the "shop" as he called it and shows his desk and cabinets he made. He put the shop up all by himself. Borrowed a crane from the guy down the road. He was a master craftsman.

I found some pictures and scanned them. This is the 73 Bronco before and after:

@mayjay I call it my own Home Depot. The building is 40' x 60' and there is a section for each: electrical, paint, automotive, air gun nails and staples of every kind, along with a section for his woodworking stuff and 4 different shelves with 5 levels in each that he welded to hold all the lumber. It has a loft which houses all the parts he took off the 73 Bronco and cabinets he built all around it. Has a bathroom and an office. It still has way too much crap in it. He built a warehouse and office space for his friend's landscaping company and the leftover cedar stumps and columns he used to make a bench in his office and an L shaped desk in addition to the paneling and cabinets he built for the office. I know because after he passed, I went through everything to find out just what was in there. I didn't realize he had so much stuff in there. I put a $15K HVAC unit in there to keep the stuff from getting baked. He would open the big garage doors on 3 ends and do his work outside mostly. But I didn't want to have to have the doors open just to be in there, and I didn't want any snakes or other things getting in there, so to keep the stuff from turning to crap, I did that the year after he passed. It has been worth it.

@rockchalkjayhawk I want to puke every time I see it. Funny story about it tho. Mike saw the 74 Bronco parked at a local building supply company and waited around for the owner to show up and when they didn't, he put a note on the car's windshield saying "If you ever want to sell it, give me a call." Couple of years later, he got the call and the guy had lost his wife and was doing down sizing and decided to sell it. We had so much fun running around in it and always got HORNS UP every time we were in it.

Today's photo shows how nature makes itself visible in the most barren places. These native plants (Greenthread) survive due to their long roots to tap into moisture deep in the ground. And this is on the edge of our "road".

My neighbor's son is a pastor at a church in Marble Falls. I had a full rack of Mike's clothes that I donated to a community service organization that supplies recently released prisoners and others down on their luck to have a wardrobe for interviews. Some even still had the sales tags attached as they were things his Mom would send for birthdays and he never wore them. I felt that it was the best use and lo and behold one day after doing lab work in Marble Falls last fall I stopped at the local Blue Bonnet Cafe and saw a guy wearing one of his shirts. It could have been that the guy bought it at the store but I just knew it was one that I had donated. Now, most of his hunting gear I did try to sell at the local church garage sale and I couldn't believe that people would want to bicker over a brand new pair of insulated pants that still had the price tag on them would only offer $15 for a $85 a pair. I brought most of the items home. Rather, I gave them to his hunting buddies up in Kansas and Michigan, where they really needed the stuff. It was amazing to me how many people wanted to just be given things after he passed. His nephews drove down from Emporia one Memorial Day weekend a couple of years back with their truck and took home most of the tools and equipment that was just sitting in the She Shed. Cleared out about 6 cabinets worth of nail guns, saws, table saw, etc. They have a classic auto shop there in Emporia and Mike used to work there when their dad, Mike's sister's husband, operated it. They to this day don't ever forget to thank me when they use a tool they got and tell me how it helped in a restoration project. They got Mike's dad's 1973 El Camino and restored it. It's beautiful. Mike was supposed to get it after his dad passed but he never went to get it. We would always take it out for a ride when we went to his Mom's. I still have in the She Shed a 1973 Bronco (that he refitted into a rock crawler) and an original 1974 Bronco that is painted UT Orange. Everytime some guy sees them, they go gaga.

@crimsonblu22 We are watching!!!!!

Mike's mother gave us back all the gifts we had given her throughout the years before she passed. When Mike's dad lived with a heart condition for 20 years, she would never tell us when he was experiencing setbacks and when Mike would ask why, she said you make your life day to day and you can't make up lost time on a deathbed. He and his father (retired air force) didn't get along when he turned 18 and went to college in 1969. He was not the military type and I think his dad resented that he wasn't. When we got married, they did repair some of the issues, but it took the energy to make that call. His dad was able to fly down here after we built the house and had the girls and he was impressed with what Mike had become and he told Mike that. Both were at peace. It boiled down to thinking you know what and who someone is without really knowing them for who they are, not what you wanted.

On such a gloomy day, I wish I was here! After Mike passed away, the girls and I went to our favorite place. As a family, we made many trips to South Padre Island. We tried Corpus Christi, Port Aransas, Galveston, Houston but nothing compares to South Padre. We tried condos and rentals, but liked best a dive of a 2 story motel, The Surf Motel, in the middle of the island that we always went back to. Back in the early 90s there wasn't the tourist trappings like today. We could walk to the bay side, drive as far north on the beach as you wanted and Mike fished, the girls played in the sand and I sought sea shells and did a lot of reading. The typical family. We went to a wildlife refuge to see the migratory birds and fished off the piers. Rode the go carts. Rented bicycles. Toured the small towns around there. The girls had a pool at the motel, there was the bar and they had volleyball courts. The rooms have kitchenetts and Mike would barbeque with the other guys in the middle of everything. It was fantastic. I am thinking of heading down there before hurricane season.

Late getting here today. Another round of storms overnight and another limb down. Today's photo is of the east side of the house flower bed that is covered in salvia. The hummingbirds love them. See all kinds of bees too. Mike welded the railings to keep the deer out and saw a squirrel in there this morning along with a lizard. Who knows what else lives in there.