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| With all of our grandchildren. |
It’s July now so it seems that I spend most of my time in the garden weeding. The weather was good most of the week. We had some hot and sunny days and some cool and rainy days. Several storms came through, the biggest one on Friday afternoon that brought hail and torrential rain.
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| Hail and torrential rain. |
Out in the garden, we are in transition from the glory of the common poppies (Papaver rhoeas) to the glory of the opium poppies (Papaver somniferum). They may be in the same floral family, but they behave very differently. The common poppies have finely cut leaves, wiry stems, and delicate blossoms. The opium poppies have coarse leaves, thick, juicy stems, and robust blossoms. I love them both. The larkspur is also in full bloom with its airy spires of pink, white, and blue flowers. I planted a strip of garden with a wildflower mix and it is in full flower right now. It is mostly annual baby's breath (Gypsophila elegans) with California poppies (Eschscholzia californica), fairy toadflax (Linaria maroccana), and cornflowers (Centaurea cyanus). My lilies, that I almost despaired of seeing this year after so many untimely freezes, are beginning to bloom. The few that survived the frosts are lovely and more beloved for their hardiness and scarcity. I go out first thing every morning and walk my route through the yard, along the flower beds, through the vegetable gardens, the orchard, the meadow, and the woodland garden. It is my little piece of the world to care for and it brings me such happiness.
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| The lower part of the long border with poppies and larkspur. |
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| The first of the opium poppies. |
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| The wild flower patch. |
In my mind, this house has always been a place for visitors to come and be happy. My earliest memories of it are of visiting here in the summer as a child when we lived downstate and later, out of state. My grandaunts, whose house this was, were gracious hosts and I have wonderful memories of Aunts Sarah, Esther, and Eleanor from those times. We played croquet on the front lawn, read many books selected by Aunt Esther, went for long walks up the Rapley Road, ate wonderful meals, and spent hours talking. I loved listening to the Aunts tell the stories of our family. When we were blessed to come here to live, we tried to continue and encouraged the tradition of having guests here. I don’t know if we succeeded in the same gracious manner as my Aunts, but we created our own style and traditions. We still hold croquet matches on the front lawn. This is a house of books and we encourage those who come here to read during their stay. We still take walks up the Rapley Road. We try to provide delicious food. We play games. And we love to sit and talk. Over the years, we have had many visitors and we have added many memories of happy times spent with them to the rich heritage of this house. My Aunts kept guest books filled with the names of guests beginning in 1954 and ending in book two in 2002 (Aunt Eleanor was living at Silver Maples Retirement Home in Ulysses in 2002, but she kept adding names and signatures of the people who came to visit her there). My first appearance in their guest book was on August 10, 1958, when I was six months old and I came here with my parents and my sister Hollie. We also keep guest books and are also on our second one. I hope we will fill the second and a third and a fourth.
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| Guest books: the top two are the Aunts, the bottom two are ours. |
We have a house full of guests right now, although it’s strange to think of them as guests. They are my children, who grew up in this house, their spouses, and their children who know this as Grandma and Grandpa’s house. This gives me a happiness I cannot begin to describe.
All week we worked at preparing for our guests. Between our two houses, there were plans on plans made for the events, menus drawn up for the meals. Miriam baked and froze bread, cakes, and cookies. She also worked on finishing painting the upstairs bathroom, a project she began several weeks ago. We had all the sleeping arrangements figured out. We got out the extra table and rounded up chairs for the great gathering each meal would prove to be. Stacey and Miriam made an activity chart to try and impose some order on the tendency toward chaos with so many children (and adults). As the week wore on, excitement grew.
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| The activity chart. |
Geoffrey, Joni, and their three children Ellie, Gwen, and Henry, flew from Utah to Pittsburgh on Wednesday. They spent Thursday down there with the Thayns and then they all came up here on Friday. Sarah and Tosh arrived here on Thursday evening. They are actually sleeping over at the Shillig’s house (the Shilligs have air conditioning), but will be mostly over here during their waking hours. Next door at the Shillig’s, our nephew Aaron and his family have already been here a week, and Kurt and Julie’s daughter Kale, her husband Roman, and their two children, Lev and Mila, arrived yesterday. With seventeen Howes and eleven Shilligs, that makes twenty-eight of us and it is joyous. All of our grandchildren are here with us for the first time. There is so much going on all at once that’s difficult to keep track of it all.
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| Meals are a big deal - two tables full. |
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| The other table. |
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| Donuts for breakfast, braiding hair, and a game of Othello. |
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| Chloe and Gwen Shillig helping Miriam in the kitchen. |
Miriam planned big events for the children while they are here. The big event yesterday was a cooking competition. The children were divided into three teams. They were given balls of raw dough and access to various ingredients and told to make turnovers. There were all sorts of interesting combinations. I got to be one of the judges. It was a lot of fun. So far, despite quite a bit of rain, we’ve had walks through the yards, trampoline jumping, metal detecting, and electric bike riding outdoors, and great meals, plenty of games, jigsaw puzzling, and lots of just sitting around and talking indoors. There will be much more to come in the next week – swimming days, metal detecting adventures, an outdoor movie, an indoor movie at the theater in town, and more.
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| Playing Skull King. |
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| Sleeping cousins in the upstairs work room. |
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| Metal detecting. |
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| The Food Contest teams. |
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| Judging the food contest. |
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| Gwen and June in the rain. |
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| Sarah taking Florence for a ride in the meadow. |
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| Florence. |
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| Working on the jigsaw puzzle. |
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| Sarah practicing songs for Sunday. |
One of the main reasons for our gathering now, was to be together to celebrate Independence Day. This year, after all that we’ve been through recently, it seems especially important that we celebrate our independence and our liberty. I think the idea of liberty has eroded for many Americans and, because they do not understand what true liberty is, they do not recognize its decline. The Patriots and Founders of our nation understood liberty and the importance of protecting our God given rights from the encroachments of governments foreign or domestic. They fought a war for independence from a government that no longer represented them and was oppressive and destructive of their rights and their liberty. After winning that war, based on their experience and the profound knowledge they had of ancient and current law and governance, they drafted a Constitution that created a nation founded on the rule of law and the principles of governmental balance and the protection of the rights of its citizens. We are 232 years removed from the creation of our Constitution. In the centuries that have passed since its establishment, much of its original intent has been subverted and perverted. Liberty has suffered and our independence as a nation and as individual citizens is increasingly threatened. And many, because they do not know or understand that, do not care. The clearly defined separation of powers that creates balance between the three branches of our federal government have been ignored and altered. Our rights protected in Amendments One (Freedom of religion, speech, the press, peaceful assembly), Two (the right to bear arms), Four (protection of persons and property from unreasonable searches and seizures), Nine (ensuring that the Bill of Rights was not seen as granting only the specific rights it addressed), and Ten (powers not specifically delegated to the Federal Government are reserved to the states, or the people) particularly are under attack. The very basic ideas of what constitutes a constitutional republic are being rejected and overturned.
It seems fitting that Independence Day falls on a Sunday this year. We need God’s blessing and help in preserving out liberty. This was Fast Sunday and many in our testimony meeting this morning stood and expressed their love for our country and our freedom. Our family comprised most of the congregation. I selected the music for our meeting and Sarah played the piano and I led the singing. We sang patriotic hymns. We stood as we sang the National Anthem for our opening hymn. During the meeting, when we sang America the Beautiful, I was trying to keep myself together, but then I looked over at my nephew Aaron and saw him weeping as he sang and I completely lost it. I stood in front of the congregation and I couldn’t sing anymore. That got Miriam, Hannah, and Rachel weeping. We could not hold back our tears. We sang My Country ‘Tis of Thee for our closing hymn and the words resonated. I love this nation. I love the wise and inspired men who established it. I love liberty.
Our fathers' God to Thee,
Author of liberty,
To Thee we sing.Long may our land be bright,
With freedom's holy light,
Protect us by Thy might,
Great God our King!
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| After church today. |
After church we came home to relax a little. Later this afternoon we will gather again to celebrate. The weather is perfect today. We will have excellent food, our traditional Independence Day fare. Kurt is going to grill hamburgers and hot dogs. We’ll have potato salad, red, white, and blue jello, frog eye salad, watermelon, and other delights. We’ll have a wonderful time being together. This evening after it gets dark we will fill the sky over our houses with fireworks. We will ooh and ahh at the explosions of color and fire, feeling grateful they are just celebratory and not real bombs bursting in midair over us.
Most of our guests will be here until Friday and there are still many events and meals to come. Tabor and the Fosters are leaving to go home tomorrow. Rachel and the girls are staying until Friday when they and Geoffrey’s family will go back down to Pittsburgh. The Utah Howes will fly home on Saturday. Next door Aaron and his family will leave on Saturday. Kale and her family will be here longer. We’ve planned and anticipated this time together for so long and now we are in the midst of it. When it is all over, what will we do then? Josiah will be home for a while in a few weeks. And we do have other guests coming later, our friend Otilia and her son Eric, and my friend Jay. That will be nice. And later in August we have a big family reunion down in North Carolina and that will be wonderful. But I don’t want to think about August yet. July has just begun.
