The Doctor is in.

April 2022

The Library . . . Almost!

For thirty years, we have waited to paint the Library. Early on, we decided that we would choose something in a "rose" color. I was surprised and quietly very pleased when Nancy settled on the dark "Sugar Beet" color from Home Depot.

This was the TV room when the kids were young, even though unfinished. That ended when a very young Jeannie Beth dropped a pencil into Uncle Jack's TV and shorted it out.

Nancy still had five rows of Oak flooring to install, but we wanted to take advantage of Annie's availability during her Easter break from Seattle Christian School. She and Nancy did most of the painting while Thomas and I entertained the girls.

I needed to make two trips to Home Depot. One gallon of white primer didn't quite cover the children's "artwork" on the walls, and it took three gallons of the Sugar Beet paint, with an eggshell finish, to do the job.

Nancy chose the color to match the curtains in the master suite, of which we consider this room a part. It is a close enough match to the chairs from the Uncle Jack dining set which will go into this room. The table and chairs have been in Susan's basement for many years.

When "Uncle" Jack Bower, Nancy's next door neighbor in West Seattle, moved to the Kenney retirement home, he and I made a deal. He gave me his elegant dining room set and I gave him my roll top desk. The understanding was that I would get the desk back when he "no longer needed it." As it happened, when he passed, we were the closest thing to family that he had, and while his car went to his Gatewood Baptist Church, all of his furniture and other worldly effects came to us in Bellevue. The Kenney home was just happy that someone was willing and available to clear out his two small rooms.

Jack and I were great friends. We both came to Christ about the same time, I in my mid-twenties and he in his late sixties!

Work has already begun on the baseboards and shoe moulding. And crown moulding is planned for this especially elegant room.

Cousin Rob's "panorama" photo shows that we got the first two of five bookcases into the room. His photo greatly distorts this small 15.5'x10.5' space. Nancy's hope chest makes an excellent window seat as expected.

When she reaches the north wall, we can remove the table saw, vacuum any remaining sawdust, put three coats of finish on the last section of floor, and begin to fill the 120' of shelf space.
On the 29th, I sanded the last 12 full rows of oak flooring. A single thin strip of oak is all that remains to reach the north wall.

Breaking News: Jonathan and Reuben to Gain a Brother

Cynthia shared on Facebook Messenger this month that their third child, due in September, will be a boy! My thought, of course, was that Nathanael will be 60% of the way to a Cross Country team.

Someone quipped that since all the granddaughters are in Bellevue and the grandsons are in Auburn, if and when Jean has another baby, it should be a girl, because they live in the middle and already have Galen. Lucky Galen will have lots of nearby cousins and I picture all those boys finding all kinds of fun along the Sitte's stretch of Jenkins Creek.

A Modest Easter

Our Easter party at Susan's was smaller than usual. Joel tested positive for COVID that week, so the Sitte's stayed home. Sniffles in Nathanael's family kept them home too, although he did drive up to drop off the fruit sorbet Cynthia had made for those kids attending who had food allergies.

Yet, we did welcome brother Randy, church friend Julie, cousins Bob Hollis and David Cautley, and Annie's SPU friend and bridesmaid Kristen Glass.

The Disher girls and Pastrick boys enjoyed the traditional egg hunt, which was especially fun for them due to the reduced competition!

Annie got a few good camera shots of my ever-increasing bald pate while I tried to steer the two four-year-olds through their first (although abbreviated) game of Life.

The day was special in one particular way. Like Jean and Joel's wedding, and Ginger's memorial service, this Easter saw the last four "Rutherford" cousins get together to share family stories.

Laurie and Tom Visit from Colorado

On the 2nd, Jean and Joel hosted Laurie and Tom as they passed through the Northwest on vacation.

Don and Judy also stopped by briefly. It was their first visit to Berrydale. Don took Amber on a walk down to the creek.

Unlike Nancy and I, Laurie and Tom are real world travelers. I knew they had traveled to places like Africa and Antarctica, but Laurie also reminded me that she's been to Europe over a dozen times.

Days with Charis and Valerie

I plan to do a photo shoot with Valerie when she turns two in December. She seems to look like Charis more and more.

On weekdays now, I watch the girls early so Thomas can get a shower. Then after breakfast, they are mine until Thomas takes over after lunch. They are also mine on Monday nights when Annie and Thomas are at a UPC Bible study.

Outdoor Planting Finally Begins

Here's what's in the garden now: Cherry and Early Girl tomatoes, oregano, parsley, potatoes, green onions, Walla Walla Sweet and other bulb onions, leeks, horseradish, marigolds (a dozen pots), lupine, and zinnias. The cucumber seeds in outdoor pots have not come up, which is fine because it is still too cold. Those indoors are up.

On the 20th, I began to put my cherry tomatoes outside. Eight plants went in the ground and five went into pots. I moved all of my remaining tomatoes outside in two-quart pots. I'll have to be more careful about "hardening off" when seedlings are moved outside next year, as many of the tomato leaves got sunburned. I put most of the Early Girl tomatoes in the ground on the 29th. Since I took four cherry tomato plants down to Jean, my supply I'd hoped to reserve to give to brother Don in May is much depleted.

Susan is beginning to seriously think about downsizing, so I felt no qualms about asking if she planned to use her tomato cages. I suspect they are the first of a variety of garden items that will end up at our house.

Serrano pepper (small and hot) and Bell pepper seedlings are doing fine indoors and will go outside next month.

Mostly as an experiment, because potatoes are so inexpensive and largely off my diet, I put six seed potatoes into three 5-gallon buckets. In a similar experiment, it looks like the five ounce hunk of Horseradish root I put in a large pot has taken off. It is not to be harvested until after the first frost in the fall.

Many of the second-year green onions planted last month have bolted as expected and I look forward to a good harvest of their seeds. A few bulb onions are doing well just north of these. On the 22nd, I prepared a small patch north of the bulb onions and planted dozens of leeks. I learned later that I should have planted the leeks deeper.

My oregano seedlings didn't do well, but I divided a flourishing oregano plant from last year into four pots. It is hearty and invasive, so this seems a sure way to keep this herb going.

I used rocks and cement blocks to wall off the main onion patch in hopes of keeping little feet out of it. I'll need to do the same around the new big patch of Walla Walla Sweat onions I planted from starts. I'll need to limb some trees along our south property line to give the onions the direct sun that they need.

I put my many small lupine seedlings in the ground atop the berm at the south end of the new garden section.

The lavender seedlings continue to grow ever so slowly indoors. I don't expect to put any of them outside until at least mid-Summer.

A Visit to Berrydale

Galen continues to thrive, and to exhaust his loving parents. He's just got his second tooth.

Jean and Joel, both fully vaccinated, tested positive for COVID this month but were fine by month's end.

Jean let me plant four of my cherry tomatoes in two of her planter boxes in their south yard.

Of course, each visit to the Sitte home gives me a chance to gas up at the nearby Covington COSTCO, and to stop in at the Carpinito Brothers Nursery and Garden Center in Kent on my way home.

On this visit to Carpinitos, I got a new device for the end of my hose for more careful watering, a bundle of Walla Walla Sweet onion starts that I planted on the 29th, and more Basil and Zinnia seeds.

Bob and Kim Come
for a Two Day Visit

We celebrated Kim Disher's birthday on the 28th. Their visit freed me up to work on my lessons in the book of Acts and to visit Jean and Joel. Grammy always brings new toys she finds around Dallas, OR.

Charis and Valerie show Grampy and Grammy the same affection they show Grandpa and Grandma.

Bits and Pieces

By month's end, I have two of my four detailed Bible lessons prepared for May 5th and 12th. I hope to have the third one done, on Acts 24-26, the first week in May.

I hate to gamble, and "playing" the Stock Market feels too much like a trip to a casino. I did make a major buy in my Roth IRA this month, with AT&T (T), Home Depot (HD), and IBM. I sold all three nine days later for a $2,400 gain. I hit a good uptick in IBM especially, buying 100 shares at $125.64 and selling them at $139.70. I've watched Nancy's IBM stock rise and fall for over forty years, so I have a good feel for it.

I made my sale of these three U.S. stocks at the very start of the trading day on the 22nd, just before the big 981 point drop in the Dow average that Friday. On the last trading day in April, the Dow average fell another 939. This looks like the big sell-off I've been expecting.

Alas, in my traditional IRA at Charles Schwab I also bought 1500 shares of ERIC (Ericsson). It hasn't fared as well. So I have just one stock to follow for a while.

My Family Room computer had gotten so old and slow that I purchased a low-end Dell replacement. I'll move the old model downstairs since it still has software I'd like to use occasionally. I added a small 21.5" Lenovo monitor that fits on my roll top desk.

I managed to send out an email to over 100 of my West Seattle High School classmates, keeping them up-to-date about ongoing plans for our 50th reunion next year. There are over 300 more for whom I only have mailing addresses. In May, I'll hold a first Zoom meeting with the reunion committee to brainstorm about this big event.

Nancy and I will attend the SPU faculty retirement dinner on May 5th.

My Quote from April

Conclusion to The Song of the Dead by Rudyard Kipling

We have fed our sea for a thousand years
And she calls us, still unfed,
Though there's never a wave of all her waves
But marks our English dead:
We have strawed our best to the weed's unrest,
To the shark and the sheering gull.
If blood be the price of admiralty,
Lord God, we ha' paid in full!

There's never a flood goes shoreward now
But lifts a keel we manned;
There's never an ebb goes seaward now
But drops our dead on the sand—
But slinks our dead on the sands forlore,
From the Ducies to the Swin.
If blood be the price of admiralty,
If blood be the price of admiralty,
Lord God, we ha' paid it in!

We must feed our sea for a thousand years,
For that is our doom and pride,
As it was when they sailed with the ~Golden Hind~,
Or the wreck that struck last tide—
Or the wreck that lies on the spouting reef
Where the ghastly blue-lights flare.
If blood be the price of admiralty,
If blood be the price of admiralty,
If blood be the price of admiralty,
Lord God, we ha' bought it fair.

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