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

An invasion! From Uzbekistan!

As noted before, our daughter Ashley has been developing new versions of Sherwood kids every two years or so for the past thirteen years, and the latest was due to arrive in October.  She was initially planning to travel from Tashkent, Uzbekistan to have the new one in London, but after plans had been laid, including ours (see a previous post) that destination was changed to Raleigh.  This time, however, her good husband refused to impose on us for her lodging with the other six kids for the required six weeks before and after her delivery , and they rented a house about ten minutes away.
However, that was no impediment to a lot of fun with the gang.  Everything from sailing boats in the back yard

to digging out Laura and Ashley's wedding dress (they had employed the same one) with cousins,

to washing Grandpa's car on a sunny afternoon, which of course involved spraying Grandpa,

to enjoying the slides at Monkey Palace

and climbing high enough in the neighbor's magnolia to require oxygen.

Ashley kept the kids on schedule in their schooling, and even enrolled them in equestrian lessons, which they were taking as Phys Ed back in Tashkent.  Ironically she got them in at the same stables where she had ridden as a teenager, having earned her own money to do so.  

No one could keep clothes on Big Bill, aka Captain Underpants.  

Brandon arrived from Tashkent in time to get over most of the jet lag before New Baby Elizabeth Sherwood arrived safely in the early morning hours of October 23, to the delight of all.  

Despite the excitement of the new sister, life went on including the observance of such vital celebrations as Halloween, complete with costumes put together out of stuff in our play clothes bins.  I'm not sure what the kid with the green face is supposed to be, and I'm not sure that he cares except for the candy.

The other set of grandparents drove from Missouri (!) for Joseph's baptism and Elizabeth's blessing, and two of my sisters (under the clock and in the blue shirt) also came down for the weekend. 

No pictures were taken of the ensuing feast, as I was schlepping dishes and corralling grandkids.  

As time went on, we took care of other things, like making a kid change the oil in the Miata,

and piercing the ears of the 11- and 13-year-old granddaughters, who had finally obtained permission from their dad.  They also knew that Grandpa had xylocaine and clean needles. 

New visas for Uzbekistan were needed, so I pulled out the camera and shot the pictures.  OK, the image of the last kid in the lineup, Baby Elizabeth, could have been pulled from Google Images and no one would have been the wiser.

We got all the twelve grandkids to slow down long enough for a group picture, which won't happen again for a long while.  Mike and Adrienne had come down from Delaware, bringing one-year-old Kate who tied with New Baby for Favorite Cousin to Hold and Play With.  

And finally the end of twelve weeks came, more quickly than we would have liked.  After one last poignantly sweet trip with Kathleen and Sophia to the mall for earrings and a butterfly necklace for Eleanor, we bid them all farewell the next day as they started their long trip back to Uzbekistan.

It was good to have them here for a while.  

Family seems to become more important all the time.

Dave & Paula