From the Halls of Montezuma..."God is nigh"

AP photo Arlington National Cemetary

In the late 1950s, my parents bought an organ for me, a little one, when I was about 8 years old. The first song I learned to play was "From the Halls of Montezuma"...to the shores of Tripoli. I didn't understand much more about those words than that they were about brave soldiers somewhere fighting a war. I sang the song proudly while I played. I have always had an affinity for the military. Even at a young age, I appreciated bravery and willingness to serve others...qualities I recognized in young men in uniform. I remember watching TV programs in the late 50's about the military..."Men of Annapolis" and"West Point" .

Today is Memorial Day 2026. CSPAN is airing the National Memorial Day parade complete with marching bands, gold star families carrying flags, and Americans of all stripes and colors lining the street. The beautiful American flag is everywhere. It is the day the President will lay the wreath at Arlington National Cemetary while Taps is played.

Today is the day we get to donate to the Gary Sinise Foundation and Tunnel to Towers Foundation. They both have taken up the call to continue to support the families of military men and women who have lost a loved one by paying off home mortgages and providing programs and emotional support.

Today is the day for us to remember those who gave all by enjoying the freedoms for which they fought and died.

"It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth".

May the words of Abraham Lincoln stir the hearts of all Americans as today we remember "these honored dead".

Hi, I’m Gary Sinise.

You may know me as an actor, but my life’s work has been to honor and support our nation's veterans, first responders, wounded heroes, families of the fallen, and those enduring invisible wounds. I launched Gary Sinise 

How Does My Garden Grow?

 Just back from my trip to SLO for Dave's Heavenly Birthday Celebration and found the yard ablaze with color and variety...This is the second spring for the new landscaping in front and nearly 50 years of caring for the backyard. Can that be true???

I'm starting with the backyard...this is a pretty fuschia my friend Marie gave me about 4 years ago. It is under the heavenly bamboo and so pretty much gets only shade..seems to be happy.

This Clivia is about 50 years old. It blooms at Easter and only at Easter.

Dave and I planted it together. It grows under the awning next to the house. 

Shade area.

Another 50 year old species...bottle brush. The bees go crazy for this plant as well as do the hummingbirds. Oh, and the squirrels get in and make a mess picking off the blossoms...grrr. But I love the view across the yard from under the tree.

Calabrachoa and Johnny Jump-up enjoying each others company...pretty much sunny growing area. I got into purples and lavenders for some reason so I keep repeating this color scheme.

In the same planter box the Johnnies wrap around the succulents (Aeonium?) ...I like the contrast of the purple with chartreuse. I did that in the front yard too.

Below...Another shady area under the awning...my particular favorite is the Japanese Sedge Grass "Eversheen' at the bottom of the photo...a bi-colored grassy plant. It completely dies back in the winter. I just pull off the dead leaves and then it fleshes out quite quickly. It will get 2-3 x this size by the end of summer. Dave planted the umbrella plant years and years ago. I asked, "Can a house plant grow outside?" He said, "Honey, all house plants used to grow outside." Hmmm.

Now, the rhododendron...not sure why we planted this right next to the RED bottle brush because they clash. But this plant is again, 40-50 years old. It is under the pine tree in shade but I think the pine roots are encroaching on its ability to spread its own roots and so it suffers. Still it puts out an annual spring display of prettiness.

Finally, another grouping of Aeonium...I show these because they were suffering from not enough water. I learned succulents need water too! They have tripled in size with loving water. I may need to decapitate or separate them before long due to massive growth.

Now, to the front....Happy Heavenly Birthday card to Dave..under the olive.

Sorry about the glare, but doesn't he look happy?

Here we are April 6, 2026..just 2 years old is my front garden. 

I mean Dave's garden because he was the inspiration.

Close up of Penstamon Betty Boop

Stunning color! The rain pretty much has beaten them down so I will need to trim them down...boo hoo. I don't want to!

Ornamental Oregano Kent Beauty...this died back completely and now the new growth is really coming out. The flowers will not start for a month or two and last until fall.

Scabiosa...this variety called blue but looks purple. It is next to the Penstamon. Problems with mildew in early spring. I prayed with fungicide and it went away.

I love seeing this view walking up the street...the kaleidascope abelia lights up the whole yard.

That's it for now.

Ode to Dave: A Beautiful New Garden

Then and now...

Dave and I found our Pleasanton home in 1981 and have loved living here, especially enjoying the art of gardening...in the back yard. Early on, Dave laid 2 tons of flagstone, created a rock garden with steps, built brick planter boxes, and replaced gravel with new irrigation and grass (all for our dog Buddy!). In the back yard, Dave created an oasis for us, a place of peace we enjoyed every day. I wanted to transplant all this into the front yard.

The backyard on the day of Dave's celebration of life, June 10, 2023. 

I love the color and sense of peace Dave's design provides us.

Dave redid this round planter box 3 times before it matched his expectations. I love the flagstone and would use it in the front yard as a major element for a new walkway and steps.

I knew I wanted to use flagstone in the front for a new walkway 

with the same shape as the one in the backyard.

I also knew I wanted lots of color out front, just like in the back yard.

We had talked about redoing the front yard for a few years. 

But he reminded me, "You know, if you take out those junipers you are going to have to put in water". Yes, I knew it would be a very big undertaking to pull out the junipers and start all over, but it just seemed like time to try.

When he passed from mesothelioma in 2023, I decided to take the leap and create something beautiful to honor him by bringing elements of his unique backyard design into the front. In addition, I had the house repainted in 2024 and choosing new plants and hardscape out front would be a chance to make a total transformation and highlight the new paint color.

The almost 50 year old juniper-filled front landscape had outgrown its welcome. I know, it didn't need water, but man it was ugly and getting so overgrown you couldn't even appreciate that a home was behind the evergreen junipers.

The most notable feature in the front yard really is the huge ball shaped olive tree! Dave used to get up on a ladder and trim it himself. This caused me great anguish as you could imagine. He did it to prevent the olives from setting and dropping. But when he reached 75 years old, we both agreed...no more ladders or wielding a heavy trimmer overhead. 

So we said...let it go natural. 

In the summer of 2023, I hired a company to trim it and get it

started on its path and to 

"natural beauty"....

The tree was opened up and provided the theme for a new Mediterranean Garden

I found an urn from Giannini Garden Supply in SF. I chose this one because it is called "Etrusco" and reminds me of the wonderful Etruscan art Dave and I admired in Italy.

Our new flagstone walkway in the similar shape as our back yard walkway.

I needed a way to gain access to the plants on the sloping yard so I asked the contractor to build me some steps, again similar to Dave's plan in the back yard. The poppy was a volunteer!

WOW! Heavenly Glories stream from the James Webb Telescope

Last night, I tuned into a TV program on Fox discussing the building of NASA's James Webb Telescope...totally new to me. So I searched online to find some of the images captured by this amazing piece of engineering. I simply could not believe the beauty of the universe and wondered at those in heaven...do they have a front row seat to this kind of jaw dropping scenery? I don't know but the thought of it makes me deliriously happy! 

"With Webb, the science team can now see where stars formed and how they are distributed, in a similar way to how the Hubble Space Telescope is used to study local galaxies. Webb’s view provides a unique opportunity to study star formation and the inner workings of infant galaxies at such an unprecedented distance." Rob Landers, Florida Today January 28, 2025

Here are some of the images I found in Landers' article (link below) for more images and information about current NASA ventures into galaxies as far as 35 billion light years away. 

NGC 1559 resides approximately 35 million light-years away in the
little-observed southern constellation Reticulum (The Reticule).

This image from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope features an H II region in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way. ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, O. Nayak, M. Meixner

The Crab Nebula 

NASA, ESA, CSA, Tea Temim (Princeton); Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI)

I am no expert in the science of telescopes and the cosmos, 

just a huge admirer. 

So once again, this is where I captured today's information and images. Enjoy!

https://www.floridatoday.com/picture-gallery/tech/science/space/2025/01/28/james-webb-telescope-unveils-awe-of-the-heavens/77995309007/

47

It is Friday January 17th. In three days, Donald J. Trump will be sworn in as the 47th President of the United States. Although in his farewell speech, Joe Biden said "Democracy is fragile", the Constitution--to which President Trump will swear allegiance to defend and protect-- is not based on fragile precepts. The United States is not a direct democracy in the true sense where each person dictates the rule of law. The framers believed such a system would be subject to tyranny of the majority. Rather, they gave us a Constitutional republic with a representative government, with the good people electing good legislators to represent us in Congress.

The framers knew we would struggle to keep balance in our country, that we would tangle with foreign entities and be threatened from within and without. The document they left us in enduring. It has endured for 237 years despite internal and external forces trying to render it null and void. And so, America endures. The Constitution. The Constitution of the United States. It is a beautiful and God inspired document providing the citizens of the United States with the freedoms needed to live life to the fullest. 

The preamble illustrates the wisdom and strength of the founders' vision for this great country:

"We the people of the United States of America, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of freedom to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States."

These beautiful beginning words, should lead all Americans to the point of pride in our founders' work and create in us the diligence to encourage each other in the wisdom of the document they forged. We need to know and understand our Constitutional rights. We need to teach each other kindly in these rights. 

May the days of division come to an end as we unite, truly unite as one people under God living in a land governed for the people and by the people. Donald Trump is a fighter, a bigger than life leader who has not given up his belief in the people or "the nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." Neither should we.

Now he is to become President of the United States, again. Only the second man in history to serve non-consecutive terms.  May God bless Donald J. Trump, 45 and 47th President of the United States. And may God bless America.

Now that's a RED WAVE!

  Here's how a picture paints a million words.

 

                                                                   

                                                       

It's Veterans Day 2024...God bless the USA

I don't care how many times I hear this song, it brings tears to my eyes. Thank you Lee Greenwood for capturing the heart and soul of America in this anthem. Listen to it on Veterans Day 2024. An historic year for the USA brought about by the people who wanted a President for the ages.

Please take a listen...and remember the Veterans all over America who deserve our praise and help.

Good Morning Everyone In Heaven!

That is how I wake up each day now. "Good morning everyone in heaven! Good morning sweet Jesus. Good morning Heavenly Father. Good morning Holy Spirit. Good morning Dave." Sigh.

It feels good to connect right away with the most important people in my life. It makes me smile. It sets my heart on the right path. I love my mornings reading Dave's Bible and thinking of the things he thought about thanks to all his handwritten notes and dots connecting themes on each page. Happy.

Sooo....I am in the midst of relandscaping the front yard...old junipers have been removed and now all you see is dirt...and the house! The house actually looks beautiful with so much potential for a lovely front yard. I want to put in a flagstone walkway in place of the old funky brick one that was poorly laid and replicate the rock garden Dave did in the backyard along with a few large flagstone steps to help manage maintenance on a sloped yard.

I see the olive tree as the main "speaker" of the job...Mediterranean style plants should prevail and colors that complement the silver green leaves of the olive. I have contacted a couple people about the job but no bids are in yet.

Here are a few things I like:

More later, after I hear from the landscaper.

"You should not be surprised at my saying 'You must be born again.' The wind blows where it wills. You hear its sound, but you cannot see where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the spirit." John 3:7

I see these words of Jesus meaning that the wind changes the landscape, everything it touches but you really cannot see a molecule of wind...only the sound and the effect of the wind. It is the same when mysteriously and miraculously God touches our hearts with the Holy Spirit...the spirit changes the landscape of our heart. We cannot see a molecule of the Holy Spirit. We can only be amazed at its effect.

I love you Jesus. Amen

Don't You Love It!? More & More & More Stars Being Added to the Universe

 NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has snapped a stunning image of the Tarantula Nebula, shedding new light on the brightest region of starbirth in our galactic neighborhood. 

Also known as 30 Doradus, the nebula is a large star-forming region of ionized hydrogen gas that lies 161,000 light-years from Earth in the Large Magellanic Cloud.

Its turbulent clouds of gas and dust appear to swirl among the region's newly formed stars.

Miracles happen every day in every life...miracles as significant as a star being created. Sometimes, however, we fail to recognize the event as miraculous. For over 1 1/2 years now, Dave and I have witnessed countless miracles in our lives as we are fighting to live together as long as possible. People pop out of the woodwork wanting to pray for us...a teller on the phone, a checker at TJ's, every neighbor on the block, a radiation assistant, a carpet cleaner, a roofing guy, a cardiologist, our home care nurse and her prayer group in India...the list goes on.

We have never felt so loved, so supported or cared for. We are basking in God's love and provision for us. Even when things happen that I thought were wrong or untimely, turn out to be for the best and at the right time! 

My vision of the future is so very limited. God's is endless. So I pick his vision for us, want what he wants for us. Today is a good day, a very good day.

Amen.

My Next Project: I am not afraid

I found this silver charm on Etsy today. I think I have to have it to make my next bracelet!

The notation said it was from Joan of Ark so I looked it up:

As Joan of Arc was leaving Vaucouleurs to begin her mission to save France she was asked by a women: "How can you make such a journey when on all sides are soldiers?" to which Joan responded: 

"I do not fear the soldiers, for my road is made open to me; and if the soldiers come, I have God, my Lord, who will know how to clear the route that leads to messire the Dauphin. It was for this that I was born!" 

The original in French is: "Je n'ai pas peur des soldats, car ma route m' a été ouverte, et si les soldats viennent, j'ai Dieu, mon Seigneur, qui saura comment libérer la route qui mène à Sieur le Dauphin. C'est pour cela que je fus nais." 

From the website Maid of Heaven

America, America God Shed His Grace On Thee

The best song ever sung for our country by the great Ray Charles...please listen and be inspired

ray charles america

Counted in the Stars

It is a great sadness that we have lost many many people around the world from 
the 2020 virus. 

We don't know the whole story yet...we are still living in quarantine. These are not really happy times, but they are making us think of bigger things than cars and vacations and future plans.

I am reading the Little Prince 
and the Bible these days.



“In one of the stars I shall be living. In one of them I shall be laughing. And so it will be as if all the stars were laughing, when you look at the sky at night…”

Antoine Saint-Exupéry, "The Little Prince"




"Then God took Abram outside and said, 
"look up at the sky and count the stars - if indeed you can count them...So shall your offspring be."

Glorious Easter

We were invited to our friends, Jodie and Jeff, for Easter. I wanted to make her an Easter basket because it is just so much fun to gather spring flowers together in one spot...here is how it turned out.

I started with the variegated plant on the left and thought the nasturtium was the perfect contrast. Cell packs of cosmos and coleus filled in well.

See the little blue glass tulip? 

I got that at Alden Lane.

The white, cheerful basket came from Bloomies in Pleasanton. It had a liner so I just added soil and then the flowers.

I added Easter eggs, a mushroom and a glass tulip. The succulents were from our yard and the ribbon was the same we used at the Gala last September.

The best part? Jodie loved it!

Notre Dame...Our Lady is burning almost to the ground

Nearly unbespeakable news from Paris. The beautiful Lady is on fire. I have been there and seen her. Dave has walked up to the top of her and viewed Paris from on high. Somehow she is burning. I don't know if we will ever know the truth of why. Terrorism? Carelessness? Accident? The end of the age? It is simply horrendous for me, for the French. For the catholics? What does it mean? France has become secular and the church of God is just a place to visit with very little if any spiritual value to the people of secular France. The same thing happened in Christchurch NZ. We visited the famous church and it was a place of nothing related to Christ. In the church, there were postings on a wall of places to meet people for a massage, Muslim meetings, vegetarian meetings, gay meetings..no word about Jesus. So the earthquake hit and the Christ church fell to the ground. Now Notre Dame has burned. Against a backdrop of multiple church burnings in Paris in the past year, growing Muslim infiltration pushing out any Christian vestige of faith, and large disinterest in Christianity in Europe as a whole. I had an English patient once who was amazed at Americans always talking about God. She said, in England we never talk about God. So Europe has left God. doesn't care. I prayed for her child who had no normal vessels to the Kidney and was expected to die. I prayed for a healing. I prayed for a healing where the doctors would say, "we have never seen this before". The baby was healed and the doctors said. "We have never seen this before." So in England where no one talks or thinks about God, this God heals a baby. When faith leaves the heart, no miracle is done. Why did Notre Dame burn to the ground? Maybe no one cares about the God she is supposed to house. The truth though is that God lives in a human temple, a human heart. So if she is Never rebuilt, maybe that is just fine. As long as people invite him into the human temple. He will live forever. Happy Easter.