A First Neighborhood Potluck
 
For years, we had hoped to host a 'get to know your neighbors' event in our 99th Avenue NE cul-de-sac.  Annie took the lead by inviting our many neighbors at Christmas time and followed that up with a reminder earlier this month.

We decided on a two hour potluck outside our yard in the 99th Avenue cul-de-sac.  We supplied the tables and chairs, water and lemonade, and a variety of foods.  And our neighbors, all but one couple being Chinese, brought fancy dishes including ribs, salmon, salads, desserts, Chinese rice and noodles, and wine.
 
We hoped for a good turn out and were not disappointed.  Members of at least nine families attended, about half of all those invited.

I was happy to meet little Hana, a month and a half older than Irene. She lives with her sister Miko who is the same age as Charis, and they live just over our south fence on 100th Avenue NE.  They didn't know there were so many other Chinese families so near by.  Many of the families had teenaged kids.  Over the good food and sunshine, more Chinese was spoken than English. 
I was pleased to hear that one of the Chinese moms said the moved to the U.S.A. because they really liked Ronald Reagan.

Nearly all of the bread winners for these families work for major software companies, which explains their upscale homes and lifestyles.  At least we could add that Nancy had worked for IBM. 
We were repeatedly thanked for taking the initiative to gather the neighbors together, and many said that we should do this again, perhaps even as soon as Labor Day.

        

June Birthdays
 
Thomas and Jonny share a birthdate on June 3rd.  But since Nancy and I planned to attend the West Seattle High School All School Reunion on the 3rd, we gathered the clan on Sunday the 4th at Jean and Joel's home.

This afternoon play date with great weather got all the kids outdoors, even the youngest ones.  All ten kids, now with three five-year-olds, were under the eyes of twelve adults.
 
Thomas got his presents on Saturday, so Jonny did not feel like he was sharing his party so much.
 
Vivienne Pastrick is just on the cusp of walking, and Isaac Sleight seems not far behind at nine-months.
 
What I like about these family events is that I can take pictures and don't need to be in charge of anything.  I can just be Grandpa. (Note my new black garden hat.)

West Seattle High School All School Reunion
 
As the Class of '73 rep with the Alumni Association, it fell to me to promote the All School Reunion with my class.  Twice I emailed the 30% of the class for whom I had addresses.  Due to COVID, we hadn't held this "annual" event since 2019. 

Before the event, I set 'twenty' as the number of classmates I would be content seeing.    We had 21 show up, with 20 present for the group photo.  I knew nearly all of those who were there.

I provided 48 cans of pop and six dozen of my Tollhouse cookies.  It was a nice addition, but I had plenty left over to bring home.

Brother Randy showed up just in time to take the group photo with my Nikon.  I organized my classmates who were an obedient group.
 

Debra Westwood and Tim Rohr from the reunion committee helped to encourage those present to register for our big August 26th reunion luncheon.

When we learned that Diane Gourley couldn't make the reunion because her son was getting married that day, someone suggested that the rehearsal dinner should be good enough.  That got a good laugh.

I took the initiative to create a half page flyer promoting the Monogram Club.  I made sure I got the approval of club president Ted Foss before I distributed the flyer to the classes older than 1984.  Such an organization will continue to decline without regular advertising.

I also prepared a draft In Memoriam list of our classmates who have passed and set it out on the three tables I'd set up for our class.  It will be my duty to prepare a poster in August of the updated list.

Nancy Gets Her New Right Hip

After Nancy's successful second hip surgery on the 7th, she started her recuperation at Susan's house on the same afternoon after the morning procedure.  Susan had a meeting later that evening at Northwest University in Kirkland, so I drove straight from Berrydale where I'd been playing with Galen, to Susan's in Redmond.  Due to the residual pain medications, Nancy was feeling very good, considering what she'd been through just that morning.

Three days later, on Saturday the 10th, Nancy said she felt well enough to accompany the whole family to Bonney Lake and a YMCA dance recital which included dance performances by Jonathan in the afternoon and Cynthia in the evening. 

On the 12th, she took a stroll with her walker in Kirkland at a small park.  We always refer to that area as being near "Ravencrest", the name we gave to a house to which we considered moving in 1992.

Her doctor was pleased with his work at her post-op appointment on the 16th, but Nancy still thinks one leg is a quarter inch longer.

Dance at Bonney Lake High School

We just barely made it to the 2:00 PM show in Bonney Lake to watch a number of ensembles dance.  Jonny's performance was near the end of the two hour and forty minute show in the large, modern, and elegant auditorium.  At least it was more elegant than one would expect of a high school auditorium.

After the show, we all drove back for a late lunch at the Sleight/Eby house in Auburn. 

The Dishers returned for the 6:00 PM performance.  Cynthia's modern dance was early in the evening program so they were able to head back to Auburn during the intermission to retrieve Nancy and myself.

I got one-on-one time with little Isaac.  It's curious how I "feel" so much closer to Charis, Valerie, Irene, and Galen because I spend so much more time with them than I do with my Sleight grandsons.

The June Garden

On the 8th, I started picking strawberries. After washing, these go straight into the mouths of Charis or Valerie.  The next day, I saw the first small Jalapeño peppers.  Then the raspberries began to ripen, and the Early Girl tomatoes started appearing.

I also found two more 5-gallon buckets that I'd prepared with drainage holes.  I used them, along with a few others, to transplant even more tomatoes.  I hate to toss healthy well-established plants.  (I gave four to Susan and one to Jean.)  One of the new tomatoes was a volunteer that had come up in the strawberry raised bed.  On the 12th, I removed seven other volunteer tomatoes from various pots.  With such a large tomato patch, I should not be surprised that they will pop up year after year on their own.  Another re-potted one was the Centiflor tomato I'd started under the basement stairs last autumn.  It had sent up new growth near its base so I cut off the old growth and look forward to seeing how it grows this summer.  After I finished harvesting the garlic on the 29th, I moved two more tomatoes coming up in the strawberry bed to the garlic bed.  The garlic bed now has four tomatoes of unknown variety.

The 9th was a rare rainy day, but I'd picked up three more bags of Earthgro Steer Manure Blend, so I prepared the ground by the cucumber trellis and transplanted nine cucumbers from their 4" pots.  I added another cucumber plant on the 21st on the opposite side of the trellis just to see what happens.

I continue to transplant green onions from the 24" x 6" trough where I started 100s of them from seed.  I gave Jean a pot of these.

Flowers are coming up all over.  I now have two dozen Asters doing very well after I broke up their root bound clump last month.  The first Zinnias are starting to bloom.

We stared harvesting potatoes and garlic on the 28th.  Charis and Valerie did all of the Yukon Gold harvesting except the heavy lifting.  The photo shows the results from the first grow bag.  It will be interesting to compare the yield of the Yukon Gold versus the Russet potatoes.  I learned a lot about both the potatoes in grow bags and the garlic.  Next year I should put the grow bags on the ground so they will drain better.  Each grow bag had a few rotten potatoes in their lowest tier.  As for the garlic, I need to just plant the largest cloves and I need to space them further apart.  But for a first effort, I'm delighted with the thirty bulbs of garlic I harvested.  All thirty are now hanging in the garage for a few weeks.

34 tomato plants 30 garlic plants harvested 13 pots of peppers. 10 potato grow bags, five harvested 10 cucumber plants  100s of onions pots of parsley, basil, oregano, and sage. Two strawberry patches Raspberries Phlox  Zinnias Marigolds Nasturtium Aster Sunflowers Lilies Lavender

'All Quiet on Our Western Front'

Pat Robertson, 1930-2023
 
Pat Robertson, Southern Baptist minister, televangelist, and conservative religious leader died on June 8th at the age of 93.
 
On Sunday evening of May 18, 1980, when I turned on my TV in my first floor apartment at 5227 15th Ave NE, Seattle, the only station that had anything on about that morning's eruption of Mount St. Helens was channel 11 airing The 700 Club.  Pat Robertson and his co-host Ben Kinchlow (1936-2019), were featuring the eruption, while at the same time holding a fundraiser.  And every few minutes they were praying and inviting listeners to accept Christ as their Lord and Savior.  Any other night I would have quickly switched to another channel.
 
In 1 Corinthians 1:27, the Apostle Paul wrote, "But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong."
 
I'd prayed that prayer before, but I hadn't had the God-given faith to follow it up with obedience.  The Holy Spirit gave me the needed faith that night.  I was saved watching TV!  And this time it took.  My life changed from that night on.  I started making better decisions.  The Bible began to actually make clear sense.  And I became eager to tell others about Jesus. 
 
I was a supporter of The 700 Club until Pat Robertson tried to run for U.S. President in 1988.  It was clear to me that he was badly misreading God's will and the will of the U.S. people.  Still, I honor him as a man of great faith.

Grandkids Corner
 
At what point will the kids get tired of Grandpa pointing his camera at them?  They do like looking at the pictures of themselves.
 
Valerie and Charis enjoy naming all of their cousins and seeing pictures of themselves. 

This edition of my journal will get posted a day early since I'll be with Galen on the 30th and July 1st.

Bits and Pieces 

On the 13th, brother Randy got the news that could have arrived any time in the past thirty years.  His estranged wife of 49 years had him served with divorce papers.  They were married at Fauntleroy Community Church, (where Randy, Laurie, and I were baptized), on Mom's birthday, June 14, 1974.  But thirty years ago, Jan told Randy to move out.  For thirty years he has hoped for a reconciliation.  Randy and I have become closer over these past many years, and he's a welcome member of our big clan at our family special occasions.  This news came as a mighty shock to Randy, but his vital faith in Jesus Christ, forged as it has been in this long domestic adversity, will sustain him.  (I took this candid photo of Jan on June 3rd at the West Seattle All School Reunion.)  I was glad to learn that Randy's good friend Paul was taking him out to dinner in light of the morning's unhappy news.

My summer vacation may come in August when I can spend some quality time with Luna the family dog in Berrydale.  But the next best vacation was four hours on Thursday night the 15th that I spent just fellowshipping with my best friend Steve White.  I thought it would be a good idea if we got together more often than just on the 4th of July each year.  (And I told him, in parting, that next time I'd let him talk!)  He is my dearest brother in Christ and together we are much like the Muppet's Statler and Waldorf.  I was surprised to learn he's twenty pounds heavier than I am, yet we are the same height.  And he didn't need to have twice as many beers than I just because I was the one that needed to drive home.  On the 27th, Steve and I went to see The Flash movie together.  Two drinks and popcorn cost Steve more than the two tickets cost me!

On Friday the 16th, I got a call from Annie.  Charis refused to go in to her gymnastics class because she didn't have her water bottle.  I agreed to drive up to the Totem Lake area with it.  On the drive, I noticed alarming noises from the Mercury Sable's engine and the engine temperature was maxed out.  I was convinced I'd done something to wreck the car.  After gymnastics, Annie drove me to Susan's house where we waited for the car to cool down.  It finally started on the fifth try and ran smoothly while I drove it the one mile to TLC Auto Care where we have all our cars serviced.  Again, the engine heat spiked in just that short drive.  They were closed on Friday so I left the car there over the weekend and Annie drove Charis and me home with a stop at COSTCO.  On Tuesday, I learned it was not my fault.  The water pump had failed.  I was greatly relieved even though the repair cost $1,692.  Alas, this followed a repair bill of nearly $800 earlier in the month for the same car due to an oil leak.
 
Back in October 2021, I dressed up as an Arizona Ranger for Halloween.  But the ladies wouldn't let me wear my "Big Iron" Ruger New Blackhawk as part of my costume.  So, I stuffed it away, apparently so quickly that I forgot where.  I've been stressed about this missing firearm for 20 months.

So, while Nancy was recuperating at Susan's and the Dishers were on a brief vacation to California, I had a few days to make an intensive search.  I found it in the back of the lowest drawer in my oldest desk in my basement office.  So much other junk was in front of the desk, I could not explore it fully until this opportunity.  Every other time I'd looked in that drawer, I didn't look far enough in the back.  And as I had assured others here, it was indeed unloaded. And (finally) it's back in the big rifle safe again.  This successful search was the Father's Day present I'd hoped and prayed for.  I'm sure I've never spent a Father's Day alone before.

My Quote from June

Portrait of My Love

Matt Monro, (1960), cover by Steve Lawrence (1961)

There could never be a portrait of my love
For nobody could paint a dream
You will never see a portrait of my love
For miracles are never seen

Anyone who sees her
Soon forgets the Mona Lisa

It would take, I know, a Michelangelo
And he would need the glow of dawn
That paints the sky above
To try and paint a portrait of my love

It would take, I know, a Michelangelo
And he would need the glow of dawn
That paints the sky above
To try and paint a portrait of my love