Today’s post comes from Crystalbay

I’ve never had a green thumb.  The only plants I’ve ever been able to keep alive are hostas and pathos. In fact, I have one pathos which is 20 years old.  Every summer, I planted a couple hundreds dollars worth of flowers and new shrubs to replace the ones from the year before that died.

Last fall, I had an idea.  I’d bring a flower box annual coleus inside for the winter just to see what might happen. Well, a lot happened!  This supposedly summer-only plant was eight inches high a year ago.  Over the winter, it grew so tall that I had to wire it to a floor lamp to keep it upright.

Early this summer, I wondered if this very large plant would like to spend the warm season back outside, so I transplanted it from the living room into a landscape bed outside.  The damn thing grew even taller and thicker.

I’ve now brought it indoors again.  My grandson, a hulking body builder, could barely lift it.  It’d gone from 8” to 2’ to 3’ in just one year.  I’m thinking about going into the plant-selling business.  Or, maybe just growing several over the winter to give as Xmas gifts.

At this rate, I may have a tree by next summer.  I barely have room for it now, but there’s some kind of silly pride in having accomplished growing a small plant into almost a tree!

What surprising luck have you had with plant life?

today’s post comes from tim

the colors i get in the walks around the neighborhood have been wonderful. i think it was bir who wished me new smells this spring when i was new to the house and all the surroundings. the walks with the dogs and the wife have been good. the circle of life is out there for all to see. i used to marvel at martha stewart and the calendar she was ruled by with seeds started. swapping sweaters and short boxes doing her christmas list of details and yet when you walk around outdoors the obvious that there is a cyclical nature that i have been standing in the midst of without acknowledging it.

we are starting birthday season at my house with the november birthday followed by a 2 december, 2 januarys , 3 februarys,  3 march than a break until june for the 2 at either end of the kid rollodex,

the dark afternoons and mornings make the hottub sessions a special deal.i enjoyed it so much last year i am reminded of the circle now that 7 pm or 6 am is dark. i need to put speakers out there but then again maybe not.

the paths around my neighborhood are incredible. there are trails in all directions and the dogs are different whichever we go. it is fn to see the response from them and from me.  the leaves came and went as did the flowers the critters the seasons the berries  the seasonal ronds will be something to look forward to.

im waiting for the costco christmas trees to show up. i need to grab one quick. they dont last long.

whats a reocurring event you look forward to

Today’s post comes from Verily Sherrilee

Right now I’m feeling pressed for time – I’m almost done with holiday prep and Nonny is coming next week. I have two separate lists and there’s not much time for sitting around. I read this Billy Collins poem last night and love the idea of having bags of time.

It seems like so much more than just my regular old time; I could get boatloads more done!

What would you do with bags of time?

Today’s post comes from Wessew.

I love playing cards. I rarely ever make a wager on card playing, so my love is not based on avariciousness.

I enjoy making the best of what I am dealt. Early on Crazy Eights and Go Fish were my games of choice. Then, several winter nights in 1963, my whole deck was changed. My sisters and I were taught how to play Pinochle. There was a three day blizzard with little to do except watch the white world outside or the black and red world inside at the table. Pinochle is a great card game. The card combination of Queen of Spades and Jack of Diamonds is key to play and from where the game gets it’s name. The worth of those two in one hand depends on the scoring system you use. In our home system, a single Pinochle was melded as 4 points and a double Pinochle as 30 points. Thus were we trained that Spades and Diamonds go together.

Then we learned the game of Hearts. The object is to score the least points. Typically a heart card in your hand at the end of a hand of play counted one point against you. The Queen of Spades counted 13 against you; a very, very bad card unless you also took ALL the other Hearts in which case you have “shot the moon” and now give every other player 26 points. “Shooting The Moon” was always a coup. Being the last player below 100 points meant you were the victor. One summer, my workmates and I engaged in a four player Hearts tournament. The first guy to win ten games was the winner. We played at break and at lunch for days on end until it came to this: We had each won 9 games and each, in what had to be the final hand, had 90 points each. We were so evenly matched that it reminds me of a Vulcan mind meld. Whomever was ahead was to be dealt with harshly. We knew who needed to get the queen and just enough hearts to keep the game alive. Now we were at a final reckoning. No longer allies. I will never forget that moment. We were working laying carpet at a school in Cannonball, North Dakota. (Very near the site of the present civil disobedience action regarding the pipeline.) We declared victory for all of us and never played the last hand. It felt wonderful.

I play Whist, Canasta, Cribbage, Rummy and Oh Heck among many other card games but the one game I have yet to learn is Bridge. I would love to learn for one simple reason: I understand that in trying to score the best hand possible one can declare “NOTRUMP”. Let me learn and may the Gods of Luck deal me hands for which I can bid….NO DAMN TRUMP.

What is your favorite suit? Why are Clubs so neglected in card playing?

Today’s post comes from Renee in North Dakota.

North Dakota doesn’t have a native son who became president. I think the only president who ever lived in North Dakota was Teddy Roosevelt.  We have clasped him to our collective bosom, however, and his only presidential library is due to be built about 4 blocks from my house, on the former rodeo grounds at our local college.  The Theodore Roosevelt Center At Dickinson State University website tells us:

“Theodore Roosevelt established two ranches in the badlands of western North Dakota: one called the Maltese Cross seven miles south of the Northern Pacific Railroad (1883) and the other called the Elkhorn, 35 miles north of the village of Medora, North Dakota (1884). Roosevelt never owned a single acre in North Dakota. Like most other ranchers in the badlands, he was a squatter on lands that still belonged to the public domain or the NP Railroad. The Maltese Cross (Chimney Butte) Ranch had already been named by the time he invested in it. He named his second ranch the Elkhorn after he found the horns of two male elk interlocked at the site. The elk had been butting heads in a struggle for primacy when their horns became locked. Unable to extricate themselves, the elk died of starvation. This appealed to Roosevelt, who regarded life as a Darwinian struggle.”

“At the Elkhorn Roosevelt ranched and played cowboy, went on long solo horseback rides, often for many days at a time, and hunted for elk, mule deer, white tail deer, and other quadrupeds. He also grieved for his mother and his first wife Alice, who died together in New York City on Valentine’s Day 1884. In fact, at the Elkhorn TR wrote the only tribute he would ever pen for Alice, who died two days after giving birth to Roosevelt’s first child Alice. He also wrote parts of two of his 35-plus books at the Elkhorn.”

The plan is to rebuild the Elkhorn Ranch house next to the library. For that purpose, large cottonwood logs have been collected from the area, and local ranchers are encouraged to donate logs to rebuild the 60 x 30 foot cabin. A builder from South Dakota has been hired to build the cabin by hand using only tools that were available to Roosevelt’s builders. You can see some of the logs that have already been hauled to the grounds.

It will be quite a job, and I look forward to seeing progress on the cabin when I drive to work each day. The Legislature set aside many millions of dollars to build the library, as long as the TR Center could raise 3 million more. They have a ways to go, but are optimistic that the library and the cabin will both get finished.

If you could design a presidential library for any president, what would you do?

Today’s post comes from Clyde in Mankato

My mail carrier on the North Shore used to joke about the range of mail I received. As a person actively involved in unions, I received a lot of liberal mail. As a pastor I received a lot of conservative mail. And, as a joke, students would fill in magazine subscription cards with teachers’ names. It was a bit of a hassle to stop these, but before I did, the hunting and fishing magazines supplied my name to ultra-conservative organizations. Sorry about that, Steve, but it is true. One of these promised to tell me the evils of public school teachers.

In my life I belonged to many subcultures. Small farm culture, neighborhood culture (three times), teacher culture, faculty room culture, North Shore culture, Iron Range culture, small church culture, lumberjack culture, union culture, University of Chicago culture, nursing home culture, taconite plant culture, team culture, coaching culture, railroading town culture, and many others, such small bar culture, which may surprise you. But I love small bars, especially the rural ones, especially in the north woods, of which there are many. In most of these cultures I was a sort of outsider, never quite at home.

When I write my short stories I try to use these many subcultures. It is fun to revisit some of them in my memory, some not so happily. Lumberjack culture and north woods bar culture are among my favorite things to write about.

I assume Babooners have belonged to many subcultures, too.

What have you learned from the culture’s to which you have belonged, willingly or unwillingly?