I never realized how much I love flowers until recently.  Looking at the outside of my house gives you a clue and inside it's flowers, flowers everywhere!  I'm especially proud of my dahlias and zinnias this year, they are enormous and beautiful!

Worth Repeating

How’s this for controversy.
The following is a copy of an article written by Spanish
writer Sebastian Vilar Rodriguez and published in a Spanish newspaper
on Jan. 15, 2008. It doesn't take much imagination to extrapolate the
message to the rest of Europe - and possibly to the rest of the world.

REMEMBER AS YOU READ -- IT WAS IN A SPANISH PAPER
Date: Tue. 15 January 2008

ALL EUROPEAN LIFE DIED IN AUSCHWITZ By Sebastian Vilar Rodrigez

I walked down the street in Barcelona , and suddenly
discovered a terrible truth - Europe died in Auschwitz ... We killed
six million Jews and replaced them with 20 million Muslims. In
Auschwitz we burned a culture, thought, creativity, talent. We
destroyed the chosen people, truly chosen, because they produced great
and wonderful people who changed the world.

The contribution of this people is felt in all areas of life:
science, art, international trade, and above all, as the conscience
of the world. These are the people we burned.

And under the pretense of tolerance, and because we wanted to
prove to ourselves that we were cured of the disease of racism, we
opened our gates to 20 million Muslims, who brought us stupidity and
ignorance, religious extremism and lack of tolerance, crime and
poverty, due to an unwillingness to work and support their families
with pride.

They have blown up our trains and turned our beautiful Spanish
cities into the third world, drowning in filth and crime.

Shut up in the apartments they receive free from the
government, they plan the murder and destruction of their naive hosts.

And thus, in our misery, we have exchanged culture for
fanatical hatred, creative skill for destructive skill, intelligence
for backwardness and superstition.

We have exchanged the pursuit of peace of the Jews of Europe
and their talent for a better future for their children, their
determined clinging to life because life is holy, for those who pursue
death, for people consumed by the desire for death for themselves and
others, for our children and theirs.

What a terrible mistake was made by miserable Europe
The Global Islamic population is approximately 1,200,000,000;
that is ONE BILLION TWO HUNDRED MILLION or 20% of the world's
population. They have received the following NobelPrizes:

Literature:
1988 - Najib Mahfooz

Peace:
1978 - Mohamed Anwar El-Sadat
1990 - Elias James Corey
1994 - Yaser Arafat:
1999 - Ahmed Zewai

Economics:
(zero)

Physics:
(zero)

Medicine:
1960 - Peter Brian Medawar
1998 - Ferid Mourad

TOTAL: 7 SEVEN

The Global Jewish population is approximately 14,000,000; that
is FOURTEEN MILLION or about 0.02% of the world's population. They
have received the following Nobel Prizes:

Literature:
1910 - Paul Heyse
1927 - Henri Bergson
1958 - Boris Pasternak
1966 - Shmuel Yosef Agnon
1966 - Nelly Sachs
1976 - Saul Bellow
1978 - Isaac Bashevis Singer
1981 - Elias Canetti
1987 - Joseph Brodsky
1991 - Nadine Gordimer World

Peace:
1911 - Alfred Fried
1911 - Tobias Mi chae l Carel Asser
1968 - Rene Cassin
1973 - Henry Kissinger
1978 - Menachem Begin
1986 - Elie Wiesel
1994 - Shimon Peres
1994 - Yitzhak Rabin

Physics:
1905 - Adolph Von Baeyer
1906 - Henri Moissan
1907 - Albert Abraham Michelson
1908 - Gabriel Lippmann
1910 - Otto Wallach
1915 - Richard Willstaetter
1918 - Fritz Haber
1921 - Albert Einstein
1922 - Niels Bohr
1925 - James Franck
1925 - Gustav Hertz
1943 - Gustav Stern
1943 - George Charles de Hevesy
1944 - Isidor Issac Rabi
1952 - Felix Bloch
1954 - Max Born
1958 - Igor Tamm
1959 - Emilio Segre
1960 - Donald A. Glaser
1961 - Robert Hofstadter
1961 - Melvin Calvin
1962 - Lev Davidovich Landau
1962 - Max Ferdinand Perutz
1965 - Richard Phillips Feynman
1965 - Julian Schwinger
1969 - Murray Gell-Mann
1971 - Dennis Gabor
1972 - William Howard Stein
1973 - Brian David Josephson
1975 - Benjamin Mottleson
1976 - Burton Richter
1977 - Ilya Prigogine
1978 - Arno Allan Penzias
1978 - Peter L Kapitza
1979 - Stephen Weinberg
1979 - Sheldon Glashow
1979 - Herbert Charles Brown
1980 - Paul Berg
1980 - Walter Gilbert
1981 - Roald Hoffmann
1982 - Aaron Klug
1985 - Albert A. Hauptman
1985 - Jerome Karle
1986 - Dudley R. Herschbach
1988 - Robert Huber
1988 - Leon Lederman
1988 - Melvin Schwartz
1988 - Jack Steinberger
1989 - Sidney Altman
1990 - Jerome Friedman
1992 - Rudolph Marcus
1995 - Martin Perl
2000 - Alan J. Heeger

Economics:
1970 - Paul Anthony Samuelson
1971 - Simon Kuznets
1972 - Kenneth Joseph Arrow
1975 - Leonid Kantorovich
1976 - Milton Friedman
1978 - Herbert A. Simon
1980 - Lawrence Robert Klein
1985 - Franco Modigliani
1987 - Robert M. Solow
1990 - Harry Markowitz
1990 - Merton Miller
1992 - Gary Becker
1993 - Robert Fogel

Medicine:
1908 - Elie Metchnikoff
1908 - Paul Erlich
1914 - Robert Barany
1922 - Otto Meyerhof
1930 - Karl Landsteiner
1931 - Otto Warburg
1936 - Otto Loewi
1944 - Joseph Erlanger
1944 - Herbert Spencer Gasser
1945 - Ernst Boris Chain
1946 - Hermann Joseph Muller
1950 - Tadeus Reichstein
1952 - Selman Abraham Waksman
1953 - Hans Krebs
1953 - Fritz Albert Lipmann
1958 - Joshua Lederberg
1959 - Arthur Kornberg
1964 - Konrad Bloch
1965 - Francois Jacob
1965 - Andre Lwoff
1967 - George Wald
1968 - Marshall W. Nirenberg
1969 - Salvador Luria
1970 - Julius Axelrod
1970 - Sir Bernard Katz
1972 - Gerald Maurice Edelman
1975 - Howard Martin Temin
1976 - Baruch S. Blumberg
1977 - Roselyn Sussman Yalow
1978 - Daniel Nathans
1980 - Baruj Benacerraf
1984 - Cesar Milstein
1985 - Mi chae l Stuart Brown
1985 - Joseph L. Goldstein
1986 - Stanley Cohen [& Rita Levi-Montalcini]
1988 - Gertrude Elion
1989 - Harold Varmus
1991 - Erwin Neher
1991 - Bert Sakmann
1993 - Richard J. Roberts
1993 - Phillip Sharp
1994 - Alfred Gilman
1995 - Edward B. Lewis
1996- Lu RoseIacovino
TOTAL: 129!


The Jews are NOT promoting brain washing children in military
training camps, teaching them how to blow themselves up and cause
maximum deaths of Jews and other non Muslims. The Jews don't hijack
planes, nor kill athletes at the Olympics, or blow themselves up in
German restaurants. There is NOT one single Jew who has destroyed a
church. There is NOT a single Jew who protests by killing people.

The Jews don't traffic slaves, nor have leaders calling for
Jihad and death to all the Infidels.

Perhaps the world's Muslims should consider investing more in
standard education and less in blaming the Jews for all their
problems.

Muslims must ask 'what can they do for humankind' before they
demand that humankind respects them.

Regardless of your feelings about the crisis between Israel
and the Palestinians and Arab neighbors, even if you believe there is
more culpability on Israel 's part, the following two sentences really
say it all:

"If the Arabs put down their weapons today, there would be no
more violence. If the Jews put down their weapons today, there would
be no more Israel ." Benjamin Netanyahu

General Eisenhower warned us it is a matter of history that
when the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, General Dwight
Eisenhower, found the victims of the death camps he ordered all
possible photographs to be ta ken , and for the German people from
surrounding villages to be ushered through the camps and even made to
bury the dead.

He did this because he said in words to this effect:

'Get it all on record now - get the films - get the witnesses
- because somewhere down the road of history some bastard will get up
and say that this never happened'

Recently, the UK debated whether to remove The Holocaust from
its school curriculum because it 'offends' the Muslim population which
claims it never occurred. It is not removed as yet. However, this is a
frightening portent of the fear that is gripping the world and how
easily each country is giving into it.

It is now more than 60 years after the Second World War in
Europe ended. This e-mail is being sent as a memorial chain, in memory
of the, 6 million Jews, 20 million Russians, 10 million Christians,
and 1,900 Catholic priests who were 'murdered, raped, burned, starved,
beaten, experimented on and humiliated' while the German people looked
the other way.

Now, more than ever, with Iran , among others, claiming the
Holocaust to be 'a myth,' it is imperative to make sure the world
never forgets.

This e-mail is intended to reach 400 million people. Be a link
in the memorial chain and help distribute this around the world.

How many years will it be before the attack on the World Trade
Center 'NEVER HAPPENED' because it offends some Muslim in the United
States ? Do not just delete this message; it will take only a moment
to pass this along.

HAPPY B-DAY, BRANDON!

Happy 14th Birthday to my middle grandson, Brandon! Seems like only yesterday he was born. I'm very proud of him, he has turned out to be a fine young man.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

I pray we all have a wonderful 2012.

My Ireland!

Ahhh, Ireland! My Ireland!

As the plane circled over Dublin airport for the 3rd time giving Aaron Feldman a close-up view of the lush green carpet of earth he called his "beloved Ireland" he sighed, muttering under his breath, "American by birth, but Irish by the Grace of God".

That's exactly what he would write to Des when he arrived home from this bloody trip.

Anxious to hear from her, he hurriedly dropped his bags in the elegant entry of his country estate, ran to the library and sat down at his computer.

Logging onto Yahoo!, he double-clicked on the Inbox. What he saw made him smile. Although he had only been gone a week on one of his numerous top-secret missions into Israel this time, with all the added problems he had encountered, it seemed like an eternity.

Too close for comfort, much to close for Aaron's liking, but he had accomplished his objective and had taken out a really bad man.

Hopefully, he was back before his six-year old daughter, Lilly, could barely miss him. A week was a short time to plan and carry out his assigned mission, but too long for a single parent to be gone. Good thing he had his personal assistant, Rose, take over the parenting duties while he was gone. Rose was old enough to be Lilly's grandmother, but she was young at heart and Lilly adored her.

He missed Lilly like crazy, but he had really missed Des, too! Looking at his inbox, she didn't disappoint. There were four ecards and at least that many emails, three of which contained several of her beautiful, original poems.

As he opened the last "missing you" ecard he smiled even broader as the tune of "Somewhere Out There" played softly. Our song, mine and Des. It may seem silly to other people because it was from a children's movie, but one Lilly had watched over and over. At some point, after he had listened to the soundtrack at least a thousand times, he realized it fit he and Des perfectly .

"Somewhere out there if love can see us through, then we'll be together, somewhere out there, out where dreams come true". If only it were that simple, he thought.

And one day, even though they lived thousands of miles apart, he vowed he would meet the woman of his dreams who had captured his heart via email over a year ago.

Just seeing her email ID always caused his heart to do a flip flop.

Amazing what words written on a computer screen had come to mean to him.

Opening her letter, seeing the warm, sincere salutation (although both knew salutations in emails were not necessary), told him at once how her heart really felt as she began, "My Dearest, Darling Aar." Again he sighed with satisfaction and longing as he did so many other times he opened her mail.

The letter said she had missed him, missed his daily correspondence and to remedy her loneliness he wrote in response:

Dear Des:

Thank you, Des, for all the mail awaiting me. It's always good to be home, but even better to have all your mail welcoming me back. I've missed you, too.

It was a long trip this time and I am exhausted. Things are so bad in Israel, anything and everything that could go wrong did.

Then to top it all off, my Glock was stolen out of my car while it was parked at the airport and I spent half of the bloody day at the Police station. The powers that be in Ireland aren't going to like it one bit.

As yet, I don't have a bloody clue as to what my punishment will be, but I'm sure there will be some meted out, on that I can depend. Hopefully, whoever took it won't use it to commit a crime, but what are the odds of that? I shutter to think.

Guess now I'll trade the BMW in for something much simpler, and less attractive. Over here, once a car has been burgled, it's marked, and they will burgle it time and again. So it's best I get rid of it. Thinking of a two-door Toyota, just large enough for Lilly and me.

Thanks again for all the cards, poems, and emails. They made my day. Guess I'd better trot off to bed, I am so exhausted I may sleep for a week.

Will write more later when I am fully rested and awake,

Always,

Aar

Yes, Des made him laugh from the inside out, and that was a good thing. So few things did anymore, as his life became more and more bogged down with both personal and international cares.

Written by Deborah Gibson Taylor

Copyright 2011

COOKING

Believe it or not, I love to cook! Yup, me the career woman. I just love it. More importantly, I love the positive reactions from others for my endeavors. I suppose these "platitudes of gratitude" are why I do it.

Yesterday I was really in the "mood" for doing some major cooking and baking.

When raising my family, I thought one meal at a time. But, over the years, I've learned the joy and ease of batch cooking.

On my last shopping trip, I purchased six pounds of ground turkey, a dozen thin cut pork chops, and a large rump roast.

Using a crock pot for roasts is the ticket! It makes all my Sunday dinners a breeze, now I know the secret to making them taste good. I do the following late Saturday evening for a perfect Sunday roast. First, I peel and quarter a large onion and put in the crock. Next, I put the roast on top of the onion, add a little salt and then liberally sprinkle garlic powder (or to taste) on top the roast. Lastly, I pour in about 3/4 cup hot water around the roast. Turn the crock on high and let it cook overnight. Next morning, you'll awake to a tender, moist roast beef to die for!

But, don't limit your crock cooking to just roasts. You can also fix chicken, turkey, chops, just about anything and everything in a crock pot.

Next, I'll tell you about the ways I use ground turkey for nutritious and simple meals.

In the meantime...

Be well, be blessed!

EVERYDAY THINGS

Sometimes we think the everyday things are mundane things. Perhaps they are, but one thing I've learned over my numerous odd years on Earth, this is exactly what life is made of.

The thought occurred to me, maybe I should write about them? After all, one (wo)man's mundane is another (wo)man's excitement. We'll see. After all, reading this blog is purely voluntary. Those who like it can come back and those who don't can move on, and that's perfectly okay too.

Be well, be blessed!