The Guerrilla Gardner

Our part of town has been stable forever, but finally the last of the IBM-ers from the 1960's surge that led to the building of the neighborhood are dying out.  We learned from the utility guys painting fluorescent lines on the ground and planting little flags that the house next door and the one across the street are going to both be demolished and replaced with something fancier.

We kind of thought as much when the children of the next-door-neighbor came and dug up some ancient gardenia bushes, but this nailed it.  Knowing that both houses had been occupied by gardeners, Paula asked and received permission to 'liberate' some of the small plants and flagstones that would be destroyed by the new construction.  Recognize that Paula is the Guerrilla Gardner of North Hills.  For instance, the other day on our morning walk, she came across an amaryllis bulb with big white flowers in someone's yard waste barrel and so she 'liberated' it.  

Among the specimens to be preserved were some lovely hellebores, a low-growing plant that blooms in the winter, 

as well as some Arum italicum, a pretty shade-happy lily.

Luckily, her aggressive 'liberating' hasn't gone beyond legal limits...yet.  If I were the neighbors, I'd watch out for my gardens.  I'm just sayin'.

Dave

2020? Where the heck did THAT decade go?!

I'm reading Nobel laureate Kip Thorne's classic Black Holes and Time Warps: Einstein's Outrageous Legacy, a book which has to be read slowly and re-read slowly to wrap one's head around the concepts contained therein.  I'm starting to feel that my frame of time must be warped somehow, that those years with everything they contained must have been compressed in some way; surely I'm not ten years further in to the future.... Yeah, OK, I just checked the birth certificate and Google Calendar, and yep, it happened.
Man, what a decade!  Started off pretty normal, dinking around, having fun, enjoying life

grandkids coming along,

kids making progress in life, 

and then BOOM!!  The message came through loud and clear that it was time that we were supposed to do something else, so I burned the operating-room shoes

and we headed to Bogota.  You know, like Colombia.

I became internationally certified in Toilet Repair.

And we learned to enjoy new things.  Mostly.

Yeah, that's a big crunchy ant, and it wasn't even on a dare.

And whether I liked it or not, I learned a lot about dengue fever, tuberculosis, head trauma, and other things having to do with keeping missionaries healthy.

We kind of got used to how things were done in South America.

And we came to appreciate and enjoy beautiful Colombia.

Big, BIG mistake.  It has been said, "If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans."  He must have been giggling uncontrollably, because about the time we were getting OK with and looking forward to our second year helping the missionaries in Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela, we received a new assignment, and after a brief interlude back in the States to re-pack, 

and check on the grandkids,

we headed for Huancayo, Peru.  That's HUANCAYO, and no, neither we nor you had ever heard of it.  We spent three wonderful, 

terrifying, 

beautiful, 

not-so-beautiful,

hot,

cold, 

and incredibly rich years in the Peru Huancayo Mission, coming to love our 451 missionaries and the thousands of local folks we came to know.  And then we came home, and unpacked,

and fixed stuff that had worn out, 

or needed some help,

and she showed the gardens once again who was the boss.

Luckily they hadn't moved the beach,

and we got to go to some cool places, 

and we played with the grandkids (when did they get that BIG?).

The dinking around continued,

I went back in Scouts, then back out of Scouts, 

we got to see some more cool places,

Christmases came and went,

grandkids got HUGE,

and they started stealing cars,

and then, - Wait.  What?!  That was it?!  The decade, with missions and elections and births and deaths and gladness and sadness and growth and all the rest was done.

I need to call Kip Thorne, though I'd better hurry because in that decade he turned 80.  There's just gotta be some kind of time warpage going on here.  So much happened in so little time.

We hope that your decade was as rich, and that the next one works out as well.

Dave & Paula