Summertime, and the livin' is busy...

Wouldn't think summer would be so busy but this year it certainly is. We have been walking down at Powell Gardens, which is way more fun than a treadmill. Garden is coming in quite well this summer, harvesting tomatoes, peppers, zucchini. Then there is keeping up with the weeds, I mean grass, as it grows. Last year we couldn't get enough rain. This year it is there regularly. Which is great. My flowers haven't looked so good. Things are coming up all around that I forgot I even planted last year.

Then there is the distraction of our new addition to the family, my birthday present, a kitten! She is the cutest little black kitty, and we named her Violet, because of two literary Violets. One is the cat in Jan Karon's books, and the other is the orphan girl in the family of Lemony Snicket books. My Violet was cast out of a truck window as the fool drove up the back roads. She was rescued by the Director of the Board of Sheltered Services. When I went to the board meeting, I told him I would think about adopting her because it was my birthday. So he brought her out to us and after all her Unfortunate Events, she has a new home. We have a bunch of new kitty toys all around the house now--jingle balls in different colors, little furry mice in dayglo shades, feathers on a stick, the bigger cat's tale, and on and on.. So here she is in her debut on the web.

July 4 Celebrations

We went to Powell Gardens to celebrate the 4th this year, and truly enjoyed ourselves once more. It has become our favorite walking site, with trails winding through flowerbeds and woods, past waterfalls and the lake. They had a "Booms and Blooms" weekend, with their daylilies all in bloom, a daylily sale, and a concert with fireworks on the 5th. We came home with a sack of daylilies in the morning, after walking the trails, and then returned in the evening with a sack picnic dinner from Subway, and our lawnchairs, along with about a million other celebrators. There was a blues/jazz singer concert first, then the Lee's Summit Symphony orchestra played, on into fireworks time. The weather was perfect, a beautiful summer evening, balmy breezes, temperature in the 70's, no mosquitoes to carry us off, and spectacular fireworks display over the lake.

Finding the car afterwards was interesting--I thought we had parked in the furthest field from the entrance to the gardens, and it was dark in the parking lots, except for our flashlight, car headlights, and some spots up on stands. So we walked way down to the furthest end, hitting our remote buttons, no response from any car around. Then we walked way back up to the entrance, and found a traffic director, who asked us when we had arrived. Thankfully he directed us to the right lot, and this time when we hit the alarm button, it went off! What was really funny was that you could hear the same thing happening all over the lot, others doing what we were doing. And as we reached the final turn out of the lot, another senior couple was also wandering back toward the entrance. He was saying to her, "well, if we just wait until they all leave, we should find our car!" I think we considered that a few times too. Senior moments on the Fourth(Fifth)!

Book pages

I don't know how many of you are planning to visit China, and particularly the Summer Olympics, but for most of us, we just plan to sit at home, and watch it via satellite. In anticipation of this event, I read a new book, by Matthew Polly, "American Shaolin", and decided it was well worth the read, and I certainly learned more insights about China and the Chinese than I would if I had made the trip. Since I do not speak Chinese, reading/traveling on the coattails of Mr. Polly was an excellent idea. And since I am not a martial arts expert, I truly enjoyed reading about his experiences, because he was the one getting beaten up in daily workouts with the Shaolin Monks, not I. He wrote about his year abroad at the Shaolin Temple, as the only American there. Luckily for him, he spoke "pretty good" Chinese-- "where, where where?" was his idiomatic reply when he received that compliment. And also lucky for him, he was able to master sanda, the Chinese form of kickboxing, to the extent that he could perform in competition with Chinese masters. There were some very interesting political observations, and one truly scary one, where he and a Shaolin monk compared countries and their ability to win in a full-out war. Can you spell "Korea"? Now I understand why the Chinese are so anxious to invite the world in, and show off their economic accomplishments while they compete in the Olympics. If you have seen the movie "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon", you will enjoy this book. And if you haven't seen the movie, go rent it after you read "American Shaolin"--makes you appreciate the kicks without the pain!