Sarah Lynn's Nature's Splendor: Journal: Fourth of July Picnic

Hester, 3, and Lydia, 1

Last week, a friend was remembering those days when I sewed Fourth-of-July outfits for our children. Not only skirts and tops or dresses for the girls, but shirts for the boys and for Larry, too. I’ve been finding pictures of all those dresses and shirts as I go through these old albums. Fourth-of-July outfits were my favorites to sew, because I put together all sorts of fabric prints and colors that I wouldn’t do for Easter or Thanksgiving or Christmas. I’d start on the Fourth-of-July clothes immediately after Easter.

I very much dislike trying to get things done at the last minute. I was that way with homework, from the time we first got any, way back in grade school. I got busy doing homework the instant I got home. Yeah, I know, I was the odd one!

I didn’t get a whole lot of photos scanned yet Tuesday, on account of laundry and housecleaning and bill-paying and birthday-present-buying; but by early evening, I was going strong, and intended to keep at it for several more hours. These Fourth-of-July pictures are from 1992.

Joseph, 7, and Teddy, almost 9

After church Wednesday night, one of my blind friends wrote to check on some words in the song It Is Well with My Soul. We sang it out of the Praise and Worship hymnal that night, and there are at least two words that differ from the words to the same song in the Favorite Hymns. A good number of singers, including me, sing along blithely without looking at the words, because we know the words. Right?

Wrong.

This brings memories of a certain church member from days gone by who had a booming voice that carried from one side of the sanctuary to the other, and well beyond the exterior walls, too, I should imagine.

Keith, 12

We were singing Rock of Ages from the newer Favorite Hymns. A line halfway through one of the verses reads, “When I soar to worlds unknown...”

However, in the Praise and Worship hymnal, which some of the older members were more familiar with, the line read, “When I rise to worlds unknown.” The melody rises accordingly on the word ‘soar’ (or ‘rise’, as it were).

So there was our friend (let’s call him Hubert; ‘Hugh’, for short) , singing gustily, and it never entered his head to glance down at the words. He’d known them for years, after all.

With a great deal of fervor, to say nothing of volume, he bawled, “When I r----” He’d been about to say ‘rise’. Everyone else was singing ‘soar’. Realizing his error, Hugh smoothly switched to the word ‘soar’, mid-word.

It came out – loudly – as ‘roar’.

“When I roooaarrrr to worlds unknown!” ♫ ♪

Hannah, 11

That’s funnier in a group of staid but ardent hymn-singers, when one should be on one’s best behavior, than it is on paper – especially when one is sitting directly in front of said caterwauler. Believe me.

Anyway, back to the present day. I replied to my friend, sending her the correct words to It Is Well with My Soul.

The congregation sang that song with all their might and main that evening. I love it, when we sing like that. We were almost on the last line of the final chorus when I thought, Oh, just listen to all these dear friends singing this song with all their hearts! – and then I had a hiccup in my vocal chords, and had to miss the next couple of words. I’ve gotten sappy in my dodderage!

Dorcas, on her 10th birthday

Thursday evening, I had a salad of baby spinach leaves, bacon, shredded cheese, and hard-boiled egg, with a raspberry dressing. Yummy. Larry has a hard time eating salad, so he had chicken dumpling soup.

After supper, I continued with the photo-scanning. My neck complained. I obligingly rubbed a bit of Two Old Goats arthritic formula on it.

It’s good stuff. Really, it is! It has a lot of essential oils in it: lavender, chamomile, rosemary, eucalyptus, peppermint, and birch bark, enriched with 1.35% menthol to help with pain relief. I have numerous topical analgesics for arthritis, but this is one of my favorites, because not only does it feel good, but it also has a nice scent.

Here’s Victoria at 18 months:

And here’s Hester, not quite one month old, on her first Fourth of July in 1989.

I sent these two pictures to Victoria and Hester, and they responded in kind with pictures of their own little ones.

Hester wrote, “Oliver is wearing one of his koala onesies that you gave him. We all love them. 🥰 I might need to find them in the next size, lolol. He got the koala animal as a gift, too; it matches so well. 😀”

I asked, “What size does he wear now?”

“He’s in 6 months or 6-9 months,” she responded, then added, “I didn’t mean you needed to get him more, if you thought of that! lololol I was going to order some.”

“Of course it never even entered my head,” I answered, and inserted this picture:

Since Hester had remarked that she didn’t think her children look much like her, I sent a pile of pictures of her when she was about the same age Keira is, saying, “Here are a few of you that do look like Keira, though I can definitely see the other side of the family in her, too.”

“I love seeing these pictures!!” said Hester. “Keira does look a bit like I did for sure. Such a cute picture of Baby Caleb!”

Hester was so good with Caleb when he was a baby. He’d smile and laugh at her sooner than just about anybody. She’d often keep him entertained while I curled my hair or did laundry or fixed supper.

“In the doll stroller pictures, were we carrying cups of pretend coffee?” asked Hester.

“The cups probably had cheerios or raisins or grapes or apple slices in them,” I told her.

Here’s a story about those strollers from an old journal of mine:

When Caleb was a baby, we finally (and belatedly) bought a twin stroller. Sure could’ve used that thing, during the previous 12 ½ years! 12 ½ years earlier, Hannah had been born... and Keith was only 12 months old. But... we had a nice (or at least what was considered ‘nice’ in 1980) stroller from Sears, a cheap umbrella stroller from K-Mart, and we usually went for walks together, so... And when the next few babies came along, at one-year intervals, we had a wagon... big wheels... tricycles... and so a couple of kids could be pedaling in front of me, and I could push the umbrella stroller with one hand and pull the wagon with two and sometimes three kids in it. I was tough, back then!

Anyway, we got a twin stroller. Lydia and Caleb would ride in it. Lydia was totally delighted with it. She sat behind Caleb. “I’m like a caboose!” she announced, giggling.

Now and then, we’d have Hester and Lydia in it. Those two little girlies couldn’t quit giggling throughout the entire ride.

So for Christmas that year, I got Hester and Lydia – what else? --- Twin doll strollers! With two new baby dolls for each of them.

Wow, you should’ve seen those little girls’ eyes when they opened up their boxes.

Lydia, 2 ½ and big for her age, followed Hester, 4 ½ and little dinky, everywhere she went.

So there were the little girls, pushing their twin doll strollers up and down the hall, into the nursery, back around into my bedroom, on through the little bathroom that connected with the kitchen, into the living room, the music room, and down the hall again. Hester was in the lead, with Lydia immediately behind her. (I had given careful instructions about not getting so close that she bumped her sister’s heels; that hurts!) So there they went, trot-trot-trottity-trot, with Lydia peering diligently over the stroller awning to see that she didn’t get too close. Every little sashay or swerve Hester took, Lydia took too. If Hester stopped and repositioned a doll, Lydia repositioned one of hers, whether it needed it or not. If Hester tucked a blankie around a doll, Lydia did the same.

At the end of the hall, in a slight recessed area beside the nursery door, was the baby swing, often with Caleb in it, swinging, and happily watching the procession of dolls and sisters. Right across the hall from him on this particular day, I was standing in the bathroom in front of the mirror, curling my hair, and chattering to the baby.

The little girls made another circuit.

As Hester turned to go into the nursery, she cut the corner too tightly, and the rear wheel of her stroller got caught on a leg of the swing, bringing her to a sudden stop. Lydia, fortunately paying attention, came to an abrupt halt, too. She waited patiently while Hester extracted wheel from swing leg.

Once loose, Hester proceeded on her way, glancing back at me and saying, “Whew! I’d better watch what I’m doing, here!”

Lydia proceeded on, too – but she made a big enough circle that her wheel didn’t get caught. Nevertheless, little copycat that she was, she glanced back at me from the same spot Hester had done, and said, “Whew! I’d better watch what Hester’s doing, here!”

I try not to laugh right in my children’s faces.

I tried.

Friday night, I finished scanning another album. There are 13 to go, plus a big box of loose photos.

Saturday, I got ready to go see Loren. Then, while I waited for Larry to finish some things he was doing outside, including unloading a scissor lift from the back of one of his pickups, I scanned a few more pictures. I now have 31,401 photos scanned.

That day, we took Loren a Messenger newspaper, some old pictures of the motorhome he used to have, a picture of him and his German shepherd, Bullet, a wooden doorknob hanger with pretty decals on it that Dorcas made him a few years ago, and a picture of Dorcas herself, so he could connect doorknob hanger with creator of same. We also gave him a 5x7 of our family when Nathanael was the littlest baby, back in 2006; and an 8x10 of our family ten years later, taken on October 30, 2016, at Kurt and Victoria’s wedding. I had put the 8x10 in a frame so I could set it on his dresser.

We found Loren sitting with the usual two ladies in the dining room. We pulled up a couple of chairs and sat there visiting for a little while, then I suggested that perhaps we should go out, as various members of the staff were starting to clean the room.

Loren always loves the photos, and enjoyed comparing the two of our family. He laughed, surprised, when I pointed out Nathanael and said that he had recently had his 16^th birthday, so now he can drive.

As we walked down the hallway, chatting, I admired some of the paintings on the walls. It really is a lovely nursing home.

I took particular note of one that featured mountains, with a stream flowing through boulders and woods in the foreground, and a majestic buck poised gracefully on the bank.

I gestured at the painting and remarked to the two ladies, “Isn’t that a beautiful painting? Mountain areas are my favorite places to vacation.”

Roslyn stopped and ran her finger over the rippling water of the brook. “Yes!” she agreed. “This river flows through Nebraska, and this horse—” she tapped on the deer “—always comes down right here to get a drink.”

She gazed at it thoughtfully, tapped it again. “Horse.” She pressed the pad of her finger on the animal. “Waterway horse.” Then she shook her head, gave a shrug, and said, “I’ve used this terminology so many times in my line of occupation, I don’t need to eulogize further.”

Sandy, the other woman, was the same lady who, the time Hannah came with me to visit Loren, got all bent out of shape when I gathered up the books and magazines we’d brought him and were looking at in the dining room, and headed off to put them in his room.

“You ought to be ashamed of yourself!” she had told me, scowling ferociously.

Hannah, who’d been sitting beside her, told me later that she’d been muttering, “That’s mine!” each time I pulled another book or magazine out of the bag. A lady at the table behind me had been doing the same; she’s the one who clambered to her feet, pushed her walker a little closer, snatched the bag, and tried to make off with it.

Now Sandy came closer to the painting Roslyn and I were looking at. “That’s mine,” she announced. We looked at her, so she enlarged upon her statement. “It was in my house when everybody was coming and taking things, and I just told them, ‘Go ahead and take it all!’” She threw her hands in the air. “What else could I do?!” she demanded. “But when they started to take this picture, I told them to leave it here on the wall, because I knew other people would enjoy it.” She nodded at me triumphantly.

I smiled and said, “Huh,” in a ‘how ’bout that’ tone, and moved on to the next painting, this one of two hunting dogs on a wide, flat prairie with mountains in the distance. Roslyn moved with me.

“Now, this is happening in the state of Nebraska,” she said in what was obviously once her ‘teacher’s voice’. It looked more like Wyoming, but I smiled and nodded. She tapped the dog on the left. “This particular puppy sets a bad example for the other puppy.” She tapped the dog on the right. “He’s supposed to stay up in the hills where his canteen is...” (she probably meant ‘kennel’) “...but the other puppy coaxes him to...” She paused, tilting her head consideringly. “...to go where he isn’t supposed to go.” She turned and gazed down the hallway. “Their owner keeps calling me to ask where they are, and I tell him they’re in this field, but he has been unable to recover them, as they’re still just bouncing around out here.” She tapped several fingertips against the prairie grasses in the painting.

I looked at the picture. Life must surely be interesting, if paintings come to life like that for you!

Meanwhile, Larry told Loren all sorts of news about his boom truck, which is at the repair shop at the moment. Loren still seems to understand such things quite well.

After leaving the nursing home, we went to the Cracker Barrel to eat supper. I had Maple Bacon Grilled Chicken, fried okra, biscuits, and fresh fruit (strawberries, blueberries, and pineapple – and their pineapple is always delicious). I won’t have the fried okra again, as I’m no fan of breaded, fried foods; but I had to try it. It wasn’t bad, but I could only eat about a third of the little bowlful. Next time, I’ll try the turnip greens.

We stopped at Wehrspann Wetlands and walked halfway around the lake. I thought it was a fine and dandy hike, but Larry was swarmed with mosquitoes the entire time.

We saw a couple of big bullfrogs, several cottontail bunnies, a white-tailed doe, mallard ducks, and many songbirds.

We intended to walk all the way around the lake, but when we got to the halfway point, the path turned out to be a dead end. Since Larry didn’t want to go back the way we’d come, through thick woods and grasses where the mosquitoes swarmed in teeming abundance, we climbed over a gate and walked up the small hill to a road. Google Street View shows it as gravel; but it has been paved since the Google camera car went past a few years ago.

It took a lot longer to walk back to our car via paved roadways than it would have via wooded path; but at least there weren’t so many mosquitoes helping themselves to Larry’s lifeblood. It was nearly dark by the time we got back to the parking lot.

As we drove home from Omaha, we saw multiple pyrotechnics shows both large and small.

Daddy would have been 106 years old Sunday, the 3^rd, if he were still alive. In September, he will have been gone 30 years. Hard to believe.

After our church service Sunday night, we stopped at the grocery store for things for our Fourth-of-July church picnic the next day. In addition to all the fireworks going off all over town, we heard an occasional rumble of thunder. It rained during the night, and there were some strong winds.

A friend from southern Texas asked what we do – and don’t do – when a thunderstorm approaches. “Here in the South,” she informed me, “Everyone is raised knowing that a bolt of lightning will GIT YA if you even think of stepping into the tub when a storm is close enough to hear.”

“I don’t personally know anybody who refrains from showers and baths during a thunderstorm,” I responded, “although I do know one or two individuals who avoid baths like the plague, never mind the weather.”

I also commit the cardinal sin of continuing to blithely sew and quilt with my very nice machines whilst it rains and thunders outside, unless there aren’t enough countable seconds between lightning flash and thunder crash to suit me. I have been known to stop occasionally when a tornado is announced, in order to grab my camera and run for the nearest porch or balcony to see if there’s anything I need to get a picture of.

Mostly I do whatever I feel like doing, go wherever I feel like going, despite weather of any sort. Mostly. I won’t purposely drive into a tornado or big hail, or drive on a glaze of ice in extremely high winds. I won’t walk un-umbrellaed (wow, you mean to tell me that’s a word?! – there’s no wavy red line under it) (yep, I looked it up, and it is indeed a genuine and authentic word)... anyway, I won’t walk un-umbrellaed into a rainstorm, particularly if I’ve only recently fixed my hair up all purty. And if radar shows an actual tornado within a couple miles of my house, I have been known to actually gather cats, dogs, hamsters, and kids and trot downstairs.

The children recall having all sorts of fun when that happened. (What we were actually doing was cleaning the basement. I made a big game out of it. Do not disabuse them of the notion that they were ‘having fun’.)

Our picnic was held on land a little bit west of the church, just a little way out of town, that our niece Christine Walker purchased a few months back. There is a pretty lake on the property, a cabin, and lots of space.

People set up canopies Sunday night – and again Monday morning after the night winds blew them all down flat. Under each canopy were two long tables with 20 chairs on each side and one at each end.

There were approximately 440-450 people there, so that means there would’ve been eleven tables with chairs. There were two more long tables with the mainstays of the meal – fried chicken, lasagna, pigs-in-a-blanket, turkey, croissant sandwiches, potato salad, macaroni salad, mixed fruit, tapioca salad, watermelon slices, chips, homemade buns, roast beef, carrot casserole, green beans, and a lot more. Another table held desserts: cookies, cupcakes, pies, and so forth. One more table was heavily laden with five-gallon thermoses of water, lemonade, Gatorade, Kool-Aid, etc.

There's Carolyn, on the right

Our contributions were tortilla-wrapped meat-and-cheese-and lettuce sandwiches, watermelon triangles, deviled eggs, peanut-butter-and-fudge no-bake cookies, chocolate chip cookies, and five gallons of water.

Some of our friends had brought large inflatable toys for the children, and others had brought children’s playhouses. There was a riding lawn tractor to pull ‘train cars’ made of barrels with seats and steering wheels put into them, and there was a big John Deere tractor that pulled a large wagon with seating for adults. Others set up beach umbrellas with chairs under them on the sides of the lake, and parents brought sand and water toys for their children. Someone had a drone... and someone else had a small, remote-controlled boat. A few people brought fishing poles, and one of Robert’s sons-in-law caught a nice-sized fish, which he released back into the lake.

There was a volleyball net set up, and one of our friends had built a big swing with cement pillars and crossbar, and with cement footings deep in the ground. It has several sling swings and baby swing seats on it.

It was a hot, humid day, and we had been issued a heat advisory; but there was a decent breeze off the water and a lot of shade, so it really wasn’t too bad.

Here’s Caleb helping little Eva down one of the slides:

Baby Oliver was in his neat little awninged wagon.

We had a few picnics at this place, back in the late 1980s/early 1990s. Larry would drive the four-wheeler, and the kids would ride in the trailer with all the picnic stuff. I recently scanned pictures from one of those outings.

Last night, Jeremy and Lydia invited us over. They were lighting off some big fireworks after dark, and playing patriotic music on a boom box. No, not the garbage noise of today; real, honest-to-goodness music. Think, John Philip Sousa.

Malinda had on some bright red noise-canceling headphones. I heard the following conversation between Carolyn and Malinda:

Carolyn: I like your headphones!

Malinda: What?

Carolyn: I like your headphones!

Malinda: What?

Carolyn: I like your headphones!

Malinda: What?

It was Dorcas’ 40^th birthday yesterday, the 4^th. We sent her a gardening set – six tools, gloves, and a bottle sprayer in a canvas pocketed bag.

!!! A mouse just went running up the Boston ivy vines on the window beside me! I thumped on the window, but it didn’t faze him much. He stopped momentarily, turned his head and peered in, then proceeded right on up to the eaves.

It’s getting windy here, and looks like thunderstorms. There are severe thunderstorm warnings happening all over the country. Maryland and Illinois have tornado warnings.

Lydia is coming in a few minutes to borrow one of Larry’s bikes while hers is being fixed. I’d better clean off the table! Gotta keep up the illusion that I always have things nice and neat.

Erma Bombeck kept her vacuum, broom, dusting spray and cloth, and a head kerchief handy if she was lolling around, not getting anything done, just in case anyone showed up at her door. She’d grab the above and strew it strategically around the room, don the kerchief, and then open the door. One look assured the visitor that Erma was industriously cleaning the house, and that they should not stay and interrupt the process.

Oh! The mouse just ran back down. Hickory, dickory, dock.

Here’s the dock at the lake. Jonathan is in the water on the left. Keira is in the left foreground, climbing up the bank.