This native climber, renamed after the Civil War, is blooming these days where it covers the south fence at the rancho. Its sweet fragrance was especially heavy today after last night’s gutter-swamping rain. More rain is expected tonight and tomorrow.
The first Iris of spring at the rancho. Dated, sure, by a few months now. But a nice memory.
Mr. B.’s second grade teacher sends home a sheet every week wherein he is supposed to log his daily reading of AR (Advanced Reader) books–at least twenty minutes a day. In fact, he reads an average of an hour each day, and by the end of each week has close to four hundred minutes of total reading. So far he prefers fantasy stories. The Pendragon series is his latest favorite. Also Magyk, the first of a trilogy plus. Products, I suppose, of our previous bedtime reading of Harry Potter, Narnia and Lord of the Rings. Despite his own reading, he still likes to be read to, especially at bedtime–fortunately for Mom and Dad, who would miss it more than he might. Someday, I know, the bedtime stories will end. But not too soon, we hope. I have sent off for Tom Sawyer, Detective, now that Huckleberry Finn is drawing to a close.
Comments Off on The reader
Posted in Library, Mr. Boy, Rancho Roly Poly
Tagged Detective, Magyk, Pendragon, second grade reading, Tom Sawyer
Got to finish the edging this morning, after yesterday’s first mowing of the back forty. Then wait a week or ten days and do it all over again. I waited longer this year to start. Well, twelve days longer. I’m back on the treadmill. The bane of home ownership.
For the feds it was 12.72 percent. For state and local, via real estate and estimated sales taxes, it was almost 10 percent. That’s roughly what some others pay in state income taxes, which pols here like to crow that we don’t have. But they do find ways to make up for it. Sadly, we will not be getting a federal refund this year. But all-in-all, I think we’re getting off light.
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Posted in Rancho Roly Poly, Scribbles
Tagged federal, state and local taxes for 2007, Texas
This is one of the oldest synagogues in Mississippi, dedicated in 1905 in my father’s hometown of Lexington, in the hills on the edge of the Delta. There were never more than eighty in the congregation, and the rabbis always drove in from Vicksburg or elsewhere. But, like the ark, symbolized by the handles (or horns) up there on the sanctuary’s roofline, the believers have remained steadfast. There’s talk now–as the Jewish population has dwindled–of moving the building to Ole Miss, but I wonder if that wouldn’t be a mistake. Could be there’s still some draw left in the place, and the population will rise again.
Comments Off on Temple Beth El
Posted in Genealogy, Rancho Roly Poly, Scribbles
Tagged Lexington, MS, Southern Judaism, Temple Beth El
It’s embarrassing not to remember the name of a spring flower, but it’s too pretty not to use. Any ideas?
THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER 