We had a week of sultry summer weather, a real August heat wave, and I loved it. It was in the high 80's and low 90's all week and the humidity was high. We’re not used to really hot weather here and a lot of people complained about it. I did not complain. We have so many months of cold weather that I glory in the hot days. There are so few of them compared to the freezing days that seem to stretch endlessly from October to May. We had some great thunderstorms too. One on Thursday afternoon lasted for four hours.
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| A sultry August morning. |
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| Josiah braving the approaching storm to get an apple from the orchard. |
We had over two inches of rain fall during the week – a great blessing. The gardens are thriving and the lawn is regaining its green. We could use more rain to make up for the deficit and it looks like we’ll get it. The forecast for most of the week calls for thunderstorms and rain.
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| Sulfur cosmos in bloom. |
Two of our early apples are ripe now, Sops-of-Wine and Yellow Transparent. On Wednesday I picked a bucketful and canned the first of what will be many batches of applesauce. This early in the canning season, I love the smell of cooking apples. Later in the season when we’ve got apples cooking constantly, I won’t love the smell so much.
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| Canning applesauce. |
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| The first batch finished. |
I have a houseplant, a hoya vine, that a friend gave me a few years ago. It grew and slowly vined around the window in the music room. A few times it’s had a flower cluster, just one, just now and then. Three months ago I put a grow light in the music room above the plants and the hoya vine went crazy. It grew quickly and started to bloom profusely. Right now it has seven flower clusters on it. There about twenty flowers in each cluster and they are beautiful, white and red. They look like they’re made of wax, which why it’s often called a wax plant.
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| A cluster of hoya flowers. |
We watched the Olympics all week long. We were mostly interested in the swimming and gymnastics events. It was great to see our American athletes do great things. The swimming events are done now and gymnastics ends tomorrow, so after that we probably won’t watch as much.
On Saturday we attended our last Boy Scout Court of Honor. It was held at the Pennsylvania Lumber Museum. We got there early and took a walk around the grounds. Three of Josiah’s friends became Eagle Scouts. Josiah, who became an Eagle Scout two years ago, received all three palms, bronze, gold, and silver. He (and we) are done with Boy Scouts now, a milestone in the history of our family. All three of our sons are Eagle Scouts, and Daniel earned two palms, but Josiah is the only one to receive all three palms. We’re proud of him.
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| Josiah getting ready for his last Court of Honor. |
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| Josiah and his friends Blayde and Dylan. |
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| Receiving three palms. |
We reached another milestone today. Today Josiah received the Melchizedek priesthood and was ordained an elder. I did the ordination. On Tuesday we will take him to the temple. It’s hard to believe we are at this point already, that my youngest son is an elder and that in four weeks he’ll be leaving on his mission. It’s a great blessing that all my sons have served or will soon serve missions. When Geoffrey left to serve in Kentucky we were excited. He was the first to go, but he had already lived away from home for a while and although we missed him, it wasn’t that bad because we still had six children at home then. When Daniel left to serve in Houston, it was a little harder on me. He is my namesake and I’d come to rely on him to do a lot of things around the house and garden for me. He’d been away to college and we missed him then, but we still had two children left at home too, and that helped. Now Josiah is leaving. For a while now Josiah has been the only child at home full time. Hannah comes and goes between home and college. I’ve relied on Josiah for so much of the hard work around here. It will be very hard when he leaves. And when Hannah returns to college in January there will be no children at home. I don’t know what we’ll do. Nevertheless, I’m glad Josiah is going. Serving his mission is an important part of who he will be. It will change his life in so many good ways. But I’m going to miss him.
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| An orb spider in the garden. |
We have a busy week ahead of us. Daniel and Seth arrive here tomorrow. Tuesday Daniel, Seth, Josiah, and I will be in New York all day visiting church history sites. Then in the evening Stacey, Hannah, Kurt and Julie will join us at the temple. During the rest of the week I have a list of big projects for the boys to work on. I like having a labor force at my disposal for a while yet. On Friday evening we’re all driving down to Philadelphia and on Saturday we’ll attend the Philadelphia Temple open house. So many great things to look forward to.
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| Our sunflower at its peak. |
