I've Got Time......you get to read.

It is just a plain old normal Monday for me but I am going to do one of my longer blogs.  If you are not weary and like to hear me blab, well you get a lot of words today so sit back and read.  I searched through my archives to find "red" on this red letter day.  President's day is the excuse for not celebrating the two presidents Washington and Lincoln on different days.  I guess it is the average of the two birthdays into on day.


 I searched my old grade school blog in Murray, Iowa and they still have hanging in one of the classrooms a picture of George Washington, the unfinished painting by Gilbert Sturat, that hung back in the 50's while I was attending there.  There was a copy in every elementary classroom.  That is history and loyalty of a school to keep those prints in their original frame still hanging today.

I thought I would give you a visual of that print on the wall still today.  I searched it out and here it is.  I have been out of high school over 45 years ago.  I don't remember Lincoln's photo hanging but we did put up something every February for him.

The red pears that were sent to us from our oldest son and his wife for Christmas looked like this.  I know some of my blogger friends had never heard of red pears before so here they are.  They taste the very same as the others and these came from Texas.  They are boxed up nicely in top and bottom foam padding and each is wrapped in papper to protect its skin.  They actually ripen after the arrive which can be touchy at times.  They like to ripen at all the same time some years but this year they seemed to keep until we ate them all at different times.

Spring means the blooming of tulips and then comes the lilies.  We were so dry last year that we had very few in bloom.  I transplanted some in the fall and their roots were barely in existence.  They were frail and thin.  I moved them out into an area in the open sun and away from any trees or the house.  I hope the moisture we are getting will revive them once again to give me good flowers.  The iris did not bloom well last year either.  When they get too wet they die, but hopefully they will be back and show their color again like previous years.

The archived photo of the poinsettia jumped out at me when I was going through my picasa files.  I don't categorize my files other than I  make a new one each month in my documents. I move them from documents to picasa in order to blog.  In the picasa files I can guess the time of year because of the subject matter. I have a lot of Christmas decorations in the one part of a  file and I know I am in November through January.  Sprouting tomato plants show me that we are in the spring along with all the tulip photos.  Finding the different archived photos is pretty easy to do.

It is more of a red orange than red but it fits the theme today.  The trailer was a gift to me from santa a few years back, maybe 55 years ago.  It had a different car I believe that was to be sotred inside of the stream line camper.  It is all thin metal but the wheels are still on it.  I really didn't have many cars as a young guy, mostly tractors were in my toy box.  I have a small collection of miniature cars now because my wife was buying me one each Christmas.  She has stopped doing that a few years back but I still like having them.

My wife explained to me early in our marriage that red and roses both symbolized true love.  So I do try to be sure there are some around durning Valentines day.   Last year I went crazy and bought here a red, white and pink combination bouquet.  It was a hit but I went back to just red this year.

An old firetruck that I salvage from my late wife's family home.  The stuff was going to be auctioned off after everyone had taken what they wanted.  I grabbed up a handfull of them, leaving a lot of plastic ones behind.  The plastic would have been collectible too but at the time I had a metal toy collection so I added to it from ones like this.  It was a family of three girls and I bet the dad really wanted to play with the cars more than his daughters did and yet I could see them playing with them.  I confused the different trucks for a while with my John and Iva connection and a couple of months ago I remembered they were not from them.

This timid red lily did not bloom for very long this past summer.  It is actually a darker brown red than what the camera picks up.  You can see that the stem is so short on it because of the dry weather.  I must have just finishing watering the tomatoes and it got wet in the process. It certainly was rain drops that are on it.

I will be interested in seeing how many raspberry canes that I will have this summer.  I lost over half of them last year. I think that the outer edges of my stand were older canes so the heat and lack of water just shut them down early in the season. They may come up from the roots as I think that is how they grow, but it wasn't a great season for these juicy red berries.

My son and his wife had a one year wedding anniversary celebration near their home in Maine.  The uncle and sons related to Keegan cooked the lobsters.  It was a fun time and was nice to be able to have fresh lobster that was caught that morning from the Atlantic.  They were hot on the plate when you picked it up from the food line and it was my very first time to eat lobster.  I do like it.

I am in the High School  English classroom today.  They have papers to finish up or they have study hall work to do.  I don't really have to instruct today other than keep crowd control and encourage work to get done,  Thanks for stopping by today.