I'm BACK!! Wow! I can hardly believe it's been three months since my last post. A lot has happened. (This might be a long post, Gail-Friends.)
Most recently, Jem put out his flags for Flag Day - 100+ of them. It's a back-breaking task, but he loves doing it. He does it on Memorial Day, Flag Day, July 4, and Veterans Day. He had a young man come by who stood at attention and saluted. They had a nice conversation about their mutual love of America. The young man is a disabled veteran. They thanked each other for their service.😊
Let's see -- what happened in March? Oh, yes - Purim! We always enjoy that holiday, but I didn't take any photos. I always am convicted by the yearly reminder from the book of Esther: "Perhaps you were born for such a time as this." Each year, I take it to heart and recommit myself to working for Adonai's kingdom. I have this reminder that I wear. And then, there's a reminder in my living/dining room: Both were given to me by the ladies of Ma'gen Da'vid and I treasure them.
In March, we celebrated our youngest daughter, Amanda's, birthday. Elijah loves to blow out candles, so he helped.
He's a busy little boy, and he played with a basket of apples while they were here. After they left, I found them hidden all around the living/dining room. So precious, right?
If you see any dust, just look over it. I will get to that one of these days. My motto has always been
My house is clean enough to be healthy
and dirty enough to be happy.
Jem had a speaking engagement at the local SCV meeting and sold several copies of his book, Blow Gabriel, Blow! If you're a Civil War buff, you would enjoy reading it. Here's the LINK
I started going to a chiropracter, which has helped somewhat. I won't go into my complaints, but suffice it to say, getting old is not for sissies. This beautiful painting is in the chiro's waiting room, and I had to share it with y'all. Isn't that comforting? His hand is always reaching out to us, Gail-Friends.
My friend and critique partner Betty, held a great event at the end of April. Peggy, our other critique partner, and I attended and had a really good time. Betty recently moved to assisted living where she started a writing group. The group is focused on writing their memoirs and published a book with their first essays. At the event, all of the writers sat at tables, and we met them and had them sign our copies of the book. It was a beautiful event and well attended, too. The most exciting thing was that several of the writers at first said they couldn't remember things well any more; but when they started writing, their memories began to improve. Isn't that amazing?
Their stories are in this collection, titled Monday Memoir Moments by Betty Jackson. It is available on Amazon. Here's the LINK
April brought Passover. Once again, I forgot to take pictures. It was a good seder, but bittersweet. Why? Because it was our last one at Ma'gen Da'vid. Rabbi Jem announced at the end of the seder that he had decided to retire.
Why? There are many reasons: mostly our age, health, and strength. Jem has been in ministry for thirty years, and is almost seventy-eight. I'm almost seventy-four. We both had been seeing it coming for the last year. There are other reasons, but I won't go into them here. Suffice it to say that we will always minister for Hashem because that is our calling.
We are committed to taking the truth of our Messiah Yeshua and His Living Torah to those around us. We take The Great Commission very seriously and have opportunities almost daily to minister. We just don't have a building any more, and that's a relief in some ways. We often say, "We're footloose and fancy free!" It does feel good to be "retired", but we fill our days with busyness, believe me.
I'm making room in the shed for the precious things from Ma'gen Da'vid that we cannot part with yet. May was spent clearing out the building, packing up the precious Judaica used for the past thirty years in ministry, giving things away to members and friends, and donating things to other ministries. God blessed us with kind and willing helpers to move and pack up everything, and we are grateful for their hard work. It was a big undertaking, and we officially closed the doors on May 30.
Most of all, we’ve been remembering, with tears, the precious ones who have come through the doors of Ma’gen David over the last eighteen years. We remember celebrations of the holy days, Bar and Bat Mitzvahs, baptisms (in rivers, ocean, and pools), weddings, births, deaths, and most of all the friends we've made. We've had so many blessings and so many happy memories. Most of them are recorded in posts on this blog.
In May, we celebrated eighteen happy years of marriage and went on our mostly annual vacation to the Florida Folk Festival. First though, we stopped by to visit Mama and Daddy's graves, and I got to get a hug from one of my favorite cousins, Sharon.
At the Folk Festival, we attended a lecture about The Devil's Millhopper. It's a huge sink hole in north Florida. Amazing that I've lived in this state all my life and never heard of it. It's on our list of places to visit now that we're retired. Here's the LINK.
We also heard a gentleman talk about what it was like living on a Florida farm before all of the modern machinery. This photo shows some of the implements used on the farm. The items in the foreground are brushes made of corn husks. This interested me because my parents grew up in the 1930's and 40's. It was a very tough life. Is it any wonder that my paternal grandmother had seven sons, my maternal grandfather had eight, and only one of them chose farming when they left home? I can't blame them.
We enjoyed the festival, especially the performance by Jim Stafford. He's always so funny. You might remember one of his big hits, I Don't Like Spiders and Snakes. He's quite the songwriter and an accomplished guitarist. Look him up on YouTube. You can also find videos about the festival there. It's a three-day event with music, dancing, cultural lectures and crafts, storytelling, and great food. We've been going for many years and try not to miss it.
Also in May, we celebrated Elijah's third birthday at a local restaurant. Bless his heart, he fell asleep and didn't get to blow out his birthday cake candles. So, they did it with him later that day.
On Memorial Day, we attended a ceremony in Titusville, remembering those who've given their lives for our country. Then we went to a ceremony at the American Legion, in memory of those members who have passed away in the past year. We remembered our dear friend and synagogue member, John Reindl. We sure do miss him.
Since then, I've been doing a huge project at home -- getting rid of STUFF! We have two sheds - one is mainly a catch-all of miscellaneous STUFF. It's full of spiders and is very scary! I think I'll name it The Shed of Doom. Jem's paint and yard equipment is in there, and it houses my massive collection of canning equipment, glass bottles, and jars. I think I have a hoarding problem related to glass jars.
The other shed is bright and clean and full of important stuff - like boxes of my mother's dishes and linens, her papers, cards, letters, and photographs, recipes and cookbooks, and various sentimental things I haven't had the heart to part with yet. (She passed away in 2015.) I found the big, fat piggy cookie jar that tempted me every single day of the seventeen years I lived at home with Mama and Daddy. When they weren't around, I used to climb up on the kitchen counter, stand up, and help myself from the jar which sat on a shelf above the sink. I think that was the beginning of my sugar addiction.
I also found things like baby mementos from both of my daughters. Would you believe I had my oldest daughter, Melissa's pacifier? She's fifty+ years old! ACKKK! And of course, I had boxes of my older grandson's toys and games. He's almost fifteen! Jem and I both found boxes of clothes we'll never fit into. I closed my eyes and bravely sent all of the clothes to the thrift store. I've been diligently going through the other boxes and have made amazing progress. I feel so good about it.
Golden Cottage Garden is growing like gangbusters. (Thanks to Jem/aka Mr Green Jeans.) We even have bananas!! This tree is probably ten years old and and has only born fruit one time. We were shocked to see this abundance:
Well, that's about all from Golden Cottage. I'm hoping to post more regularly now that I'm footloose and fancy free.
Great blog, you've been very busy!
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