Sunday!

Graduation Day is almost here…. Gardening Report from the Lake

Welcome to #davidwrites~! Reading the story in the app avoids the inevitable typos that I miss until I hit the publish button! Subscriptions are free. Current publishing schedule is Sunday, Tuesday and Friday.

Thanks to all who voted in the crossword poll this week. Over 80% of you do enjoy solving puzzles, and most of you do them daily! It’s good mental exercise.

Here is another benefit of puzzling: sometimes it leads you to beauty. The answer to 30 down in yesterday’s NYT crossword (spoiler alert) led me to this inspiring poem:

 Still I Rise 
You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
’Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.
Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I’ll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries?

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don’t you take it awful hard
’Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own backyard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I’ve got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

Maya Angelou Poetry Foundation from And Still I Rise: A Book of Poems. Copyright © 1978 by Maya Angelou.

We’re enjoying a long weekend at the lake. Today will be a day of rest, after two of digging in the dirt.

I posted the story “I Never made it to the Liquor Store exactly one year ago, and yesterday we returned (to Lawnscape Garden Center, NOT the liquor store). Once we had the ground all dug up and the weeds pulled it was time to shop for flowers!

Lawnscape Garden Center, Angola, Indiana

Love this place! We each got a wagon full, then back to the cottage to plant.

We finally finished by four in the afternoon, then enjoyed a look at the fruits of our labor.

The Cottage flower gardens

“You’ve got to give them room to grow,” I commented, then realized that applies to people as well as flowers.

Our two oldest grandchildren will be attending college this fall! They both graduate a week from today! The University of Vermont and Indiana University are so fortunate! So proud of them and their families.

Note to all Brilliant Grandchildren: I’ve already started making plans for a bigger flagpole to accommodate three more flags. But they won’t always be flown according to birth order. Instead the ranking will be determined by the order of your bracket in March Madness!

We’ve got a busy week ahead, so it’s important that we rest up today. Tuesday we’ll be heading to Gnaddenhutten for a private tour of the site, then wind our way down across the Ohio River to Dutch Fork, documenting a bit of frontier life during the American Revolution, some of which was covered in The Capture of Jacob Miller.

Then it’s on to Boston for the high school graduation of the first born grandchild. The Brilliant Wife will be flying back to Michigan a day before so she can attend the graduation of the second born grandchild there! Yes both graduate on the same day, a mere 1000 kilometers apart! So we will split up to cover both. What fun!

We’re just going where the universe takes us.

Having “room to grow” applies to many things, doesn’t it? Not just flowers, nor even children and young adults, but also to countries. It was the unstoppable need of our species to grow that caused the terrible conflicts on the western frontier of our new nation as we pushed over the Appalachians.

Thanks so much for traveling along! So glad you’re here~!

Be good to yourself! You deserve it!

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear

I rise

Into a daybreak that’s wonderful and clear

I rise.

Thanks so much for traveling along! So glad you’re here~!

Be good to yourself! You deserve it!