All "B's"

This post is a combination of many posts but for sake of time, space, energy and for your benefit, I have combined them into one big post. All of my topics will start with the letter B (it is stretching it for some of the words). In no particular order here are my "B's": busy, broccoli, birds, bugs, beads, blossoms, bum or bunk mortagues and beloved bargin music.

Busy- my life has been slightly busy in the last few weeks and I have not had much time at my house. Grandma had her surgery 10 days ago and I spent several evenings at the hospital to visit with her. Last week Jen and Trinity came up to visit and to help out and I was at Mom and Dad's several nights to hang out with everyone. I had fun with my sweetie pie niece (and it was good to see Jen and the rest of my family- always good to see them). We danced, played hide and go seek, swung in the swing (I pushed), drew with sidewalk chalk and read many stories.

Broccoli- ate my first crown of broccoli from my garden yesterday. Absolutely yummy. More on this under bugs.





Birds- despite a blustery storm that was rolling through, the robins, western goldfinches and the hummers have been alive and well in my yard. The robins were going for the ripe, red berries in my neighbors yard. There seriously were 50 robins feasting on the berries. I think the berries makes them a little intoxicated or at least they act intoxicated. Instead of DUI it would be FUI (flying under the influence). The Western goldfinches are snacking on the thistle seeds that I have hanging outside of my sliding glass door in a thistle bag. There have been up to 5 goldfinches on the bag at a time. My girl cat, Rosie, is really bothered by the birds and she gets a low guttural growl/meow and her whole body shakes. Last week I put out new hummingbird food. They swoop on down, take a drink of the sweet water and zoom on off again.






Bugs- having an organic garden means that my produce sometimes has to be extra washed because there are bugs. As I said above under broccoli, I fixed my first broccoli to eat for lunch yesterday. It sure was yummy. I only used half of the crown and brought the rest over to eat with a friend in a salad. Upon further inspection of the broccoli (this had been washed earlier in the day and was the other half of what I had already eaten), there were tons of tiny bugs on the underside of the "flowerettes". I had to really wash each and every flower to get the bugs off. I must have eaten bugs when I had fixed the broccoli for lunch. Yuck.



There have been a few times that when I bring fresh lettuce in from the garden that while I am soaking the lettuce leaves, small snails somehow get out of the sink of water and crawl around the top of the sink. Reminds me that I always have to wash everything super duper good. I can only imagine bringing a salad from my garden to a party (this actually happens quite often) and dishing up on each person's plate and having a small snail circling the plate.



Beads- today I wore the earrings that I won at the Peach Fest auction. About 2 1/2 years ago, there was a dinner and auction to raise money for my cousin Julie's fight with ovarian cancer. There were so many things at the auction. I remember clearly wanting to win the auction for and item that I could take home and keep forever, in case my cousin would pass away. As you know, my cousin passed away just over 2 months ago from ovarian cancer. When I put the pretty pale aqua stoned earrings on this morning, tears filled my eyes. I stopped what I was doing and took a few minutes to reflect on my cousin and to pray for her husband Chad, son Kevin and Julie's family. It was in honor of Julie that I wore the earrings today. The earrings are almost the color that represents ovarian cancer-teal.



Blossoms- my yard is starting to explode with different blossoms. Right now my daffodils, African daisy's, prim roses and my apricot tree are in bloom. Very beautiful. Hoping the powerful storm, did not knock off some of my precious apricot blossoms. Lord willing, the dwindling bee population will find the way to my tree to pollinate the blossoms so I will have a great crop of yummy apricots in June. June is crazy again this year, school ends around the 14th and Jen's baby boy is due on June 20th. It is a real quick harvesting period, the fruit comes ripe and then they are gone and fall off the tree.







Bum or Bunk mortgages- oooooouch, this mortgage situation is deep and far reaching. I praise God that I am not in the situation of losing my house because I could easily have been in that situation. I bought my house almost 6 years ago when all of the "great rates" were tempting. God had me go the conservative route. Let me tell you just a little of the effects of the mortgages that have gone bad. Not sure if you heard, don't know how one could not have heard, but the Governor of California (as we call him, Arnold) reported to Californians that we are in a fiscal emergency. The State of California is in crisis because of the mortgage situation. The revenue from home sales and the tax of those sales is grossly down. The State has to make billions, yes billions- with a b-b and in boy, of cut backs across the boards. Public education alone will suffer a 7.8 billion, yes b again, in cut backs for this fiscal year and projected much more for the upcoming year. The school district that I work in is already anticipating making 8 million in cuts (which is on top of the 18 million that we had in the emergency fund). I don't know where it is going to come from, we are already hurting and have large class sizes.



Let me take this further. The city where I work has over a thousand houses on the market and over 2 thousand houses in foreclosure. Many people who are in trouble know they don't have many options, they can't sell, no one is buying, they can't rent for full price because no one can afford full rent rates, so. . . some are renting to low income renters because it is set money which is better than no money. I personally don't have a difficultly about section 8 housing. The problem arises when you have a large number of people living so in a given area. Unless a city (including law enforcement, schools, political policy. . .) is ready, prepared and has a plan to deal with some of the challenges and issues that come with low income housing, every aspect of the city is affected. You now have urban challenges and issues coming to the suburbs. These challenges and issues are different than the challenges and issues of the suburbs. I'll stop here because I don't want to be misunderstood. This housing crisis is deep and far reaching, more than people 'just needing to move to another place'. Whole lives, family and communities are being affected hard.


Beloved Bargin music- I received my package yesterday from Sovereign Grace Music. As I noted in a post a few weeks ago, Sovereign Grace Ministries is having an incredible sale on their music and books. These music CD's are some of the most Christ and gospel centered music that I have ever heard. My church includes several of these songs in our worship services and I have included several of them on this blog page. I have been listening to a few of these CD's non-stop since I got them yesterday. I encourage you to check out the music and books while you can get a discount. Check them out here. What incredible music. On a later post I will share one of my favorite songs.



Anyone know how to get music to play on your blog page?