DOSE: What do we live for, if not to make the world less difficult for each other?

Found this quote by George Eliot on today's Daily Reflections.  It made me think of the passing of two great actors in the last two days: Robin Williams and Lauren Bacall.  Both of them, in their own way and time, made life a little less difficult for all of us.  Just like in today's reflection, one past too soon but with a life full of wondrous deeds- the other lived a long full life but with deeds just as wondrous.  And both of them made life a lot less difficult for all of us- not only could they take us away from our troubles and pain- but much of their work made us think and filled our heads with new thoughts that changed the way we feel.  I hope that Robin finds that What Dreams May Come was wrong about suicides and that the person who reaches down and pulls him from the pit of despair is none other than our loving Lord Jesus Christ.  I believe that Robin and Bacall are in heaven right now having all their tears wiped away- because God loves those who gives so much of their hearts to others.  And I don't remember too many roles they played where we did not see their whole heart and soul.  That's what made us love them so much.  The world will be a little less bright without them, but we can see them whenever we want- thanks to the marvel of our electronic world.

So to them, and to you, I leave this photo of a little bit of heaven on my Earth- the place I imagine it would be great to walk with God, which ironically, I think is a photo from one of my own morning walks.  Sometimes, the most beautiful things are the things right under our noses.  Until tomorrow!

TTCG Plot 2: August 9,2014

This is my basket this week: cranberry hibiscus, zinnias, butterfly pea flowers, mint, oregano, and African blue basil.

Here are the flowers growing in the front of the garden.

Plot 2 is not producing much in the way of food this time of year.  The plants that are thriving are just taking over.  We are awash with lemon grass and some 6 ft tall plant that looks like giant dill.  As last summer, flowers are doing well.

Violents in a patch near mine.  Violets are edible and look beautiful in salads and in ice.

More violets growing under the sign

White zinnias growing in the pathways

An array of pink zinnias growing in the pathways

These are the plants along the gazebo that I planted in May.  The thai basil, sage, and red salvia are doing great.

The plants on the other side of the gazebo did not make it (though they might come back from the roots in the fall.  But this milkweed looks very happy here.  Might be a good idea to plant more here- we want to have a place for baby monarchs to grow.  The monarchs love our zinnias.

Lots of basil, lemongrass, and a huge cranberry hibiscus on the herb mound.

This would also be a good place to plant more milk weed- they did very well here last year.  Maybe if we let the gazebo plant go to seed, we'll have more here soon!

These beans are growing well in the plant nursery.

There are also some baby tomatoes and what looks like mooring trees on the other side of the plant nursery.

That's this week's Plot 2 update on the Temple Terrace Community Garden!

WOTS: Remy's Ratatoille and Sunflowers

Remi's Ratatoille or Confit Byaldi

What's on the stove?  This lovely concoction of fabulous summer vegetables.  Got some lovely lady finger eggplant, purple bell peppers, and Roma tomatoes from A Simpler Place in Time.  This was a lot of fun- and a lot of chopping and slicing but went really fast because the fun factor was just amazing.  I started by roasting green and purple peppers in a 450 degree oven for 15 minutes while I chopped up a medium onion, three tomatoes, and a teaspoon of garlic.  Fried these in my cast iron pan with a little olive oil, parsley, thyme and a bay leaf.  By the time they were chopped and cooked down, the peppers were cool enough to remove their skins.  Into the sauce with the peppers!  Then the fun begins- slicing the zucchini, Roma tomatoes, eggplant, and yellow squash into 1/16 inch slices.  Then I simply poked each slice into the sauce and overlapped them so that about 1/4 inch of each of the veggies is visible.  Then drizzle with some herb infused olive oil and out into a 350 degree oven for 45 minutes. I baked some chicken along with mine and served it with a crusty french bread.  Especially loved the flavor of the vinaigrette sprinkled over the top just before serving.  Delight in a bite!

Thought I'd give you a Window on the Seasons too!  August wouldn't be August without sunflowers!  Just sunflowers, a variety of mums, and some airy purple things from Publix, in my red pitcher and sitting among canning jars in my window. Must be the canning my Mom did in my childhood, but come August, I love to pile assorted canning jars together for my window.  Country bling!

Have a great weekend everyone!  See you on Monday with more of my Frank Liebler (2nd great grandfather) story.  Thinking that TOGA (Tales of our Great Ancestors) is better than SOFA (Stories of Our Family's Ancestors).  Even if they weren't great in the historical sense (although some truly were impressive people), they are all my great-grandparents- so they are great in that sense.  Until then!

POMP- Progress On My Porch: Garden Week of August 7th 2014

I decided the POMP is a better acronym for my porch garden.  P can stand for so many things: Progress, Pictures, Portrait and even Pride- so here we are- new acronyms.

You would never believe that it was August in Temple Terrace to look at all the lush greenery on my porch.  There are three big differences this summer.

1) I put three high growing plants in two crate planters.  The crates were just ordinary craft crates from Michaels.  Each basket is simply lined with landscape fabric and a three equal part mix of potting soil, peat, and perlite- more P's!  

We are thinking multiple P's tonight as a prayer for my sister Beth's wonderful Newfoundland, Smokey.  He had a miraculous recovery from heart trouble this winter, has cancer but is responding well to chemo, and today had another miraculous recovery from urinary problems- so we are all praying for P's!

Anyway the extra depth of soil is really helping the plants retain water in the heat of the day- which is really kept to summer survival.

2) The plants come from Cheyenne's Country Thangs.  Two or three summers back the plants from her shop did very well and this year, I am enjoying that huge basil on the left.  It's very hard to see but on the right is a cherry tomato plant intertwining with my scented geranium and cascading down in front of the box.  And in the back, a Roma tomato plant is coming back after dying back to almost nothing.  If anything will live in the summer, it's a cherry tomato but any tomato this time of year is great.  I'm only getting 10 tiny tomatoes a week- and it's a great little treat that I harvest a few plants at a time!  Anyway- all three plants that are thriving contrary to expectations come from Cheyennes.  The scented geranium is several years old and was not happy in the smaller planters- it is growing by leaps and bounds and came from my other local produce vendor  A Simpler Place in Time.  I'll be using the eggplants from there in my Ratatouille's ratatouille whose success or failure I will post on Friday.

3) The third thing that I am doing differently in the last week that really is helping- is to insert the stem of my watering can into the soil when pouring on new water.  More water gets absorbed by the soil and the moisture gets retained much better.

Here are a couple more pictures from this week:

This is my three tiered wooden garden that I rescued from TTCG Plot 3 when they wanted to discard it last year.  The sage is growing in one of those foldable cloth cubicles full of my 3-P soil mix.

And this is my nursery box.  All these plants are waiting to be moved into the next grate planter.  There is a jalapeño  pepper, regular parsley and curly parsley- all three also came from Cheyenne's.

DOSE: For those that glory in The Lord as their creator and guide

Wrote this post Tuesday PM.  After that, felt like the weight of the world had been removed from my shoulders.  Soon after, got out my new set of hangers and out three sets of work clothes in the closet.  Started out my AM with Creighton University's Daily Reflections, Rob got up and started his day at 7:30 AM (very unusual) and I got to work on the new earlier schedule that I have been trying to start for three weeks!  Lots of progress since the insights in the post below!  Getting off to a good start!

Spoiler Warning: Religious content below.

Collect for this week.
As I was preparing to write this week's message, I turned to  Creighton  University's Daily Reflections page to see what The Lord had to say.  Tears came to my eyes.  Here I am starting up my blog again and searching for ways to open the dialog on the Discipline of Self-Esteem. The central principal of DOSE is that if we seek to become the person God created us to be, then everything else falls into place.

Then I read this collect: That for those who glory in you as their Creator and Guide, you may restore what you have created and keep safe what you have restored.  To really live the DOSE, you must first know yourself as the person God created you to be.  And to find that person, you need to let yourself be lead by God. Wherever that leads- no matter what the price.  And if you do that,  then God will restore you to become the person that He has created and then keep that restoration safe.  

Readings for Tuesday Aug 5th

Then I went to the readings and the next thing I read is: Write down all the words I have spoken to you in a book (Is this a hint?).  And the readings are all about Faith and restoration.

Daily Reflection

The actual reflection is the kicker.  It's all that I've been thinking about getting ready to write today.

You see, I started out on this journey many years ago when I heard a talk at a woman's conference.  The speaker was a recovering cocaine-addicted mother who banded together with other recovering cocaine-addicted mothers for support for their mutual recovery.  Everyone contributed whatever they could to meeting the needs of the other mothers.  And what they discovered as they got into the process was that everyone had some special unique gift to give to their world that they only discovered as they went about the business of recovery.  And the discovery of this gift was a tremendous asset in the recovery process- they saw their own true worth- the person that God created
them to become.

When I first discovered DOSE as a concept, letting God be my Guide was second nature.  I didn't have a choice back then.  My life had become such a mess that the only way to make anything work was to listen for guidance, take a step in that direction, then listen again and take the next step.  The things I wrote back then made sense for the person I was back then.  And what made sense back then was taking care of myself- in the plane emergency drills they tell you to put the mask on for yourself first.  That made everything else fall into place.  But as time went on, taking care of myself was not working anymore- DOSE was falling apart for me, the weight came back on, CHAOS (Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrome) was reigning, and I was feeling that there was something fundamentally wrong with DOSE.  I stopped writing.  I knew that the person that was created to be was a writer, but I stopped writing anyway.  I waited to be inspired and inspiration never came.

So today, I decided to seek inspiration- and that lead me to understand that the way I'd been expressing DOSE was a little backward.  I felt that if you took care of yourself, then you would discover the person God meant you to become- and if you would be true to yourself- then everything would fall into place.  But in reality- you need to GLORY in God as your Creator and Guide first.  Then He will restore you to be the person that he created- then you will discover the glory of that creation which is a true sense of self-esteem- and then God will keep safe the DOSE that He restored.

But just like Peter in the sea.  The way to keep walking on the water is to keep following your Lord and your Guide.

TOGA: Frank Liebler

Frank Leibler (1823 - 1896)-2nd great grandfather
Michael G Liebler (1858 - 1921) son of Frank Leibler
William Burnham Liebler (1902 - 1975) son of Michael G Liebler
William Michael Liebler (1928 - 1994) son of William Burnham Liebler
Mary Rose Karline Liebler daughter of William Michael Liebler


Ancestry.com Share a Story

A lot of the documentation for this story is at the above link.  Here is some more information.
The first time we see a Franz Leiber in the United States is in the Castle Garden archives.  This shows that a Franz Leibler arrived from Germany on the Silvie de Grasse and arrived December 7, 1846.  There is another record of a passenger list for a Franz Liebler arriving in 1853 with his wife Margaret and son Frank.  This may have been a return visit because the obituary for his son Frank indicated that Frank Jr. was born in Cromwell CT.

We can't see a record for Frank in the 1850 census, but by 1860, he was 36 years old, living in Cromwell CT with his wife Margaret (age 36) and his three children Frank (11), Barbara (9) and Michael (my great-grandfather age 2).  Not long after that, he left his wife and three children behind while he served in the 24th CT regiment, company E infantry in the Civil War.This company was formed in November 1862, served in the New Orleans area under Grover's division from March 1863 until September 1863.  They all went home at the end of September.  The worst part of this service must have been the diseases. They list 59 men to disease and 16 men in battle. Luckily Frank returned home safe.


Cromwell CT has a lot of land records for Frank dating from 1855 until his death.  Will get to these at another time.

The couple was Roman Catholic and were buried in two cemeteries associated with St. Johns parish in Middleton CT.  Frank was buried in 1896 and his civil war service was documented there.  Having computer trouble today and things are going slow.  Hope to have more next week...

Looks like he had a 25 acre farm and that it was productive.  However, both sons left the farm and made lives for themselves in nearby towns.  Michael (my great-grandfather) went

New Blog Schedule: November 2015 version

Would like to get back to my writing every day.  Rather than writing willy-nilly, this time we would try to set up a plan that works with my new life.  So here goes:

Monday: TTFS- Updates on my walking regime- hoping to someday run/walk in the Boston Marathon, aided in large part by my activities with the Take The First Step run/walk group.  For me, the name of the group is an affirmation of my journey because it begins with taking the first step.

Tuesday: TTCG- observations and photos of what is growing at the Temple Terrace Community Garden focusing on Mary Rose's Garden in Plot 2

Wednesday: SOFA- Stories of our family's ancestors.  Building on what I can find on the Liebler Family Tree on Ancestry.com, will choose an ancestor a week to highlight.

Thursday DOSE- Discipline of Self-Esteem.  Will include defining the Discipline of Self-Esteem as well as what I am doing to build my own DOSE.

Friday: TOMP- Tales from my porch.  This is what is growing on my porch garden and the various experiments that are being conducted to garden in a small hot but sheltered urban space.

Saturday: WOTS- What's on the stove or Windows on the Seasons (both have the same number acronym!)  This will focus on what I'm doing to enhance the environment on my home- either by trying something new and delicious from all the things that I am growing in the garden- or by decorating for the current season with natural materials- most of which I get from my garden.


That's it for today!