ROSES ARE RED

Roses are red
Violets are blue
Sugar is sweet
And so are you

   (Vowels make a difference!)

          A

Rasas ara rad
Vaalats ara blaa
Sagar as swaat
And sa ara yaa

           E

Reses ere red
Veelets ere blae
Seger es sweet
End se ere yes

            I

Risis iri rid
Viilits iri blii
Sigir is switt
Ind si eri yiu

            O

Rosos oro rod
Voolots oro bloo
Sogor or swoot
Ond so oro yoo

            U

Rusus uru rud
Vuuluts uru bluu
Sugur us swuut
Und su uru yuu

The Old Arse is A-Moverin

The Old Arse is A-Moverin -
                 A-Moverin
                       A-Moverin and
                              I'm moving on.

One of our daughters stayed for a while in New
Zealand. She and her future husband Dave,
lived on a farm where Susan baked bread for the
family and Dave helped to shear sheep. When
the two of them arrived back, she had a somewhat
revolutionized vocabulary. One phrase she now
used quite often was "Rattle your days" which
was Kiwi slang to tell someone to hurry up or to
get a move on. Dags are the dried exrement
hanging from the wool at the back of sheep.
Rattling days would be when sheep are running.

     See you later . . .
                   got to get a move on!

One Just Has To Give It A Try!

As a little kid of 6 or 7 years old, our
family would regularly eat Schweigert's
Braunschweiger. (I remember it being
called liverwurst.) My dad loved it! I didn't
at first.

The liverwurst would be spread on little
crackers (usually Hi Ho's, I liked the Lone
Ranger), and then consumed with a tall glass of
cold milk.

There was a Schweigert radio commercial
back in 1947 that promoted liverwurst, and . . .
I got the great idea to send them possible
words for a commercial that they could use.

Liverup . . . things could be wurst!

Always an optimist, I actually thought they
would jump at the chance to use it!

          Guess what?  They didn't.

As Moses was once overheard to have said back
whenever . . .

      You can't help but give it a try.

Thunbergia Tamed

   I was being watched
          from within
        a dense tangle
            of vines.

               Eyes -
        liquid and dark,
    framed within petals
       of yellow-orange,

          peering at me
            from within
           an edge of a
         Kenyan jungle.

             That was
              long ago.

           Today, I see
     that same vine, with its
 liquid-dark eyes, and petals
       of yellow-orange,
    clinging to a cluster of

red geraniums - growing in
        a backyard deck
              flower pot.


        -I will never forget seeing
         those flowers from a corn
         field bordering an edge 
         of a jungle

C r e e p i n g C h u c k

The dilemma:  to eradicate, to extricate these pesty 
lawn plants to another locale, or to simply let them
be what they are.

Could it possibly be that - just maybe they thrive on attention?!

Perhaps to not be so harsh on them, would do the trick. After all,
they are part of the "wed of life."

Meanwhile, the Creeping Charlie plants live by stringing low
through the grass . . . sending out new roots at each and every
stem-joint.

And, they are in the mint family. This you can tell by their
beautiful blue florets, the minty odor, and the square stems. (A handy
rule of thumb mantra, could be:

            All mints have square stems . . . but not all plants
                         with square stems are mints.

Things could be worse . . . the stems could morph to be the size of
garden hoses, the flowers as big as bushel baskets, and the copiously
exuded odor of the crushed leaves and stems would necessitate
everyone in the neighborhood to don gas masks!

Now, that would be something for the national and local news!

I ONCE THOUGHT THAT I COULDN'T FIX THINGS

Guess what ?! I was just about ready to give one of my grandsons
a call for some consultation on how to get my computer back-on-track
and running again . . . (Every time I would go to write an e-mail, it
ran super slow and the letters and the cursor kept jerking around the
screen.)

It was then, I checked my moose. (Oops! mouse) Darn it anyway, I
hate it when the computer changes words on me . . . OK, back to the
issue at hand. I checked my mouse to see if it needed new batteries.
It didn't. (I remembered that I had put new ones in only two days before.)

Then, I happened to look on the bottom of the mouse - and there I found
a smeared smidgen of gunk (pizza or whatever?)

With great skill, I deftly flicked the stuff off from the mouse bottom and . . .
now it works !

                       That     means     that     I     fixed     it !

                                       WRIGHT ?

HOPEFULNESS

My prayers
are as wisps of
field stubble
blown across
open prairies.

Tumbleweeds
race with the wind,
lodging where
they are needed.

Seeds well scattered
are my prayers -
sown in hope of
being rooted.