Dexter Iowa Community Site

Consider this quote from Abe Lincoln

"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves."

How about a little random fun on this short week?

1. The summer bounty has begun. Lettuce and spinach are ready to pick. The first load of peas are in, and the green beans are coming on quickly now. Looks like the girls will have enough to can after all.
2. I planted a dwarf cherry tree a few years ago. Every year it is just loaded with cherries. I’ve always thought that one should wait until they were a dark red before harvesting them, so every year just as they are turning bright red I’ve told the family to hold off a week before we pick them. This year we decided not to wait too long and we have beaten the birds to them. Sure is nothing like fresh homemade ice cream with chocolate chips and cherries in them. And yes, even with all the rain this year they were a little tart.
3. When I was a young boy living on the same farm, we had a couple of cherry trees that were out by an old shed. I’m not sure if it was a calf shed or a brooder house for chickens but I remember clearly my mom’s hands being bright red after picking and pitting all those cherries. Those trees are gone now as is the shed. The old Pear tree is still there, and produces a few pears every so often.
4. Ok kids, remember that not only are fireworks illegal in Iowa, they are also dangerous. So before you take the bet from your buddy that you can light a bottle rocket and let it shoot off while clenched in your backside…..just please don’t….stop and think.
5. I think the hummingbirds are not finding the new feeder I bought attractive. I’ve seen them flying around, but it seems that the goodness I leave out for them just evaporates mostly. The Oriels are nesting now and so fun to listen to in the evenings as they call to each other.
6. Enjoyed the weekend spent at Saylorville in the first of two “Camping with Grandma Bev” weekends this summer. Sure is a lot of work, but is always enjoyable. Lots of good food (except for again the absence of ham balls) and lots of relaxing which was nice.
7. I’ve been thinking a lot this week about our lack of attention when it comes to news. It’s been a shocking week. Between the senseless killing of Ed Thomas in Parkersburg, to the death of Farrah, Ed and the king of pop there hasn’t been a lack of news to keep ourselves occupied. I wonder though how fast our attention jumps from one thing to the next over time. The news of today doesn’t hold us very long…does anyone still think daily about the young men and women of the armed forces serving in the middle east?
8. And to top it off…Billy Mays is dead? Now I’m going to be stuck listening to the Sham WOW guy or that lady that sells the food preparation items that always seems to be so excited to know that if you take anything metal and put raw food into it and heat it up that it will actually cook the food, on my late night TV binges.
9. Finally this week. Please take some time to reflect on the real meaning of Independence. Now I won’t begin to go down the road of some who are sure the government is slowly but surely beginning to overstep it’s bounds in regards to the personal liberties granted all of us, but let us remember what it truly means to be independent. To live free in a county where we don’t have to constantly show papers, to go to sleep at night not worrying if our homes are going to be raided at any given moment, to not have to remember constantly that our phone conversations, email and letters are being monitored at every turn…On second thought…maybe we should worry just a little…let me end with a quote from the author of this countries most important document.
   
   “ We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debt, as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our calling and our creeds...[we will] have no time to think, no means of calling our miss-managers to account but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers... And this is the tendency of all human governments. A departure from principle in one instance becomes a precedent for[ another]... till the bulk of society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery... And the fore-horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression.”~Thomas Jefferson

See you next week. Remember, we’re all in this together.