And then it is winter

 Just an interesting little thing. 

(Disclaimer....I am not calling anyone old!!)

You know. . . time has a way of moving quickly and catching you unaware of the passing years. It seems just yesterday that I was young, just married and embarking on my new life with my mate. Yet in a way, it seems like eons ago, and I wonder where all the years went. I know that I lived them all. I have glimpses of how it was back then and of all my hopes and dreams.
But, here it is... the winter of my life and it catches me by surprise...How did I get here so fast? Where did the years go and where did my youth go? I remember well seeing older people through the years and thinking that those older people were years away from me and that winter was so far off that I could not fathom it or imagine fully what it would be like.
But, here it is...my friends are retired and getting grey...they move slower and I see an older person now. Some are in better and some worse shape than me...but, I see the great change...Not like the ones that I remember who were young and vibrant...but, like me, their age is beginning to show and we are now those older folks that we used to see and never thought we'd be. Each day now, I find that just getting a shower is a real target for the day! And taking a nap is not a treat anymore... it's mandatory! Cause if I don't on my own free will... I just fall asleep where I sit!
And so...now I enter into this new season of my life unprepared for all the aches and pains and the loss of strength and ability to go and do things that I wish I had done but never did!!  But, at least I know, that though the winter has come, and I'm not sure how long it will last...this I know, that when it's over on this earth...its over. A new adventure will begin!
Yes, I have regrets. There are things I wish I hadn't done...things I should have done, but indeed, there are many things I'm happy to have done. It's all in a lifetime.

So, if you're not in your winter yet...let me remind you, that it will be here faster than you think. So, what ever you would like to accomplish in your life please do it quickly! Don't put things off too long!! Life goes by quickly. So, do what you can today, as you can never be sure whether this is your winter or not! You have no promise that you will see all the seasons of your life...so, live for today and say all the things that you want your loved ones to remember...and hope that they appreciate and love you for all the things that you have done for them in all the years past!!

"Life" is a gift to you. The way you live your life is your gift to those who come after. Make it a fantastic one.

LIVE IT WELL!
ENJOY TODAY!
DO SOMETHING FUN!
BE HAPPY !
HAVE A GREAT DAY
Remember "It is health that is real wealth and not pieces of gold and silver.

LIVE HAPPY IN 2013!

LASTLY, CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING:

 TODAY IS THE OLDEST YOU'VE EVER BEEN,

YET THE YOUNGEST YOU'LL EVER BE

SO - ENJOY THIS DAY WHILE IT LASTS.

~Your kids are becoming you......but your grandchildren are perfect!

~Going out is good.. Coming home is better!

~You forget names.... But it's OK because other people forgot they even knew you!!!

~You realize you're never going to be really good at anything.... especially golf.

~The things you used to care to do, you no longer care to do, but you really do care that you don't care to do them anymore.

~You sleep better on a lounge chair with the TV blaring than in bed. It's called "pre-sleep".

~You miss the days when everything worked with just an "ON" and "OFF" switch..

~You tend to use more 4 letter words ... "what?"..."when?"... ???

~Now that you can afford expensive jewelry, it's not safe to wear it anywhere.

~You notice everything they sell in stores is "sleeveless"?!!!

~What used to be freckles are now liver spots.

~Everybody whispers.

~You have 3 sizes of clothes in your closet.... 2 of which you will never wear.

~~~But Old is good in some things: Old Songs, Old movies, and best of all, OLD FRIENDS!!

God Bless-johnnyb

Monday Morning stuff

This is a very interesting video to watch:   Life on a self-sufficient farm.  It is worth the 7 minutes.

We had another winter storm blow through yesterday.  Just a few inches more.  There was a little more wind this time.  It blew shut all the paths we had scooped out.  These pics were taken yesterday morning.  There had been freezing fog all night.  The ice on the trees were a pretty sight.

And  our humble abode. 

 Carol is filling out an order for some more blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, almond trees and asparagus.  She tries to add a little each year.  The heat last year was tough on our trees.  It was hard to keep enough water on everything.

She has also been soaking a pot of beans overnight.  she just put them on to cook for later today with the addition of a ham hock.  I think corn bread is also on the menu.  Add a little homemade ground horseradish in the bowl and I am in heaven.

God Bless all--johnnyb

I received this from a friend and wanted to pass it on---johnnyb

Why Do Societies Give Up?

By Victor Davis Hanson

2/14/2013

Why do once-successful societies ossify and decline?
Hundreds of reasons have been adduced for the fall of Rome and the end of the Old Regime in 18th-century France. Reasons run from inflation and excessive spending to resource depletion and enemy invasion, as historians attempt to understand the sudden collapse of the Mycenaeans, the Aztecs and, apparently, the modern Greeks. In literature from Catullus to Edward Gibbon, wealth and leisure -- and who gets the most of both -- more often than poverty and exhaustion implode civilization.
One recurring theme seems consistent in Athenian literature on the eve of the city's takeover by Macedon: social squabbling over slicing up a shrinking pie. Athenian speeches from that era make frequent reference to lawsuits over property and inheritance, evading taxes, and fudging eligibility for the dole. After the end of the Roman Republic, reactionary Latin literature -- from the likes of Juvenal, Petronius, Suetonius, Tacitus -- pointed to "bread and circuses," as well as excessive wealth, corruption and top-heavy government.
For Gibbon and later French scholars, "Byzantine" became a pejorative description of a top-heavy Greek bureaucracy that could not tax enough vanishing producers to sustain a growing number of bureaucrats. In antiquity, inflating the currency by turning out cheap bronze coins was often the favored way to pay off public debts, while the law became fluid to address popular demands rather than to protect time-honored justice.
After the end of World War II, most of today's powerhouses were either in ruins or still preindustrial -- China, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea, Russia and Taiwan. Only the United States and Great Britain had sophisticated economies that survived the destruction of the war. Both were poised to resupply a devastated world with new ships, cars, machinery and communications.
In comparison to Frankfurt, the factories of 1945 Liverpool had survived mostly intact. Yet Britain missed out on the postwar German economic miracles, in part because after the deprivations of the war, the war-weary British turned to class warfare and nationalized their main industries, which soon became uncompetitive.
The gradual decline of a society is often a self-induced process of trying to meet ever-expanding appetites, rather than a physical inability to produce past levels of food and fuel, or to maintain adequate defense. Americans have never had safer workplaces or more sophisticated medical care -- and never have so many been on disability.
King Xerxes' huge Persian force of 250,000 sailors and soldiers could not defeat a rather poor Greece in 480-479 B.C. Yet a century and a half later, a much smaller invading force from the north under Philip II of Macedon overwhelmed the far more prosperous Greek descendants of the victors of Salamis.
For hundreds of years, the outmanned legions of the tiny and poor Roman Republic survived foreign invasions. Yet centuries later, tribal Goths, Visigoths, Vandals and Huns overran the huge Mediterranean-wide Roman Empire.
Given our unsustainable national debt -- nearly $17 trillion and climbing -- America is said to be in decline, although we face no devastating plague, nuclear holocaust, or shortage of oil or food.
Americans have never led such affluent material lives -- at least as measured by access to cell phones, big-screen TVs, cheap jet travel and fast food. Obesity rather than malnutrition is the greater threat to national health. Flash mobs go after electronics stores, not food markets. Americans spend more money on Botox, face lifts and tummy tucks than on the age-old scourges of polio, small pox and malaria.
If Martians looked at the small box houses, one-car families and primitive consumer goods of the 1950s, they would have thought the postwar United States, despite a balanced budget in 1956, was impoverished. In comparison, an indebted contemporary America would seem to aliens flush with cash, as consumers jostle for each new update to their iPhones.
By any historical marker, the future of Americans has never been brighter. The United States has it all: undreamed new finds of natural gas and oil, the world's pre-eminent food production, continual technological wizardly, strong demographic growth, a superb military and constitutional stability.
Yet we don't talk confidently about capitalizing and expanding on our natural and inherited wealth. Instead, Americans bicker over entitlement spoils as the nation continues to pile up trillion-dollar-plus deficits. Enforced equality rather than liberty is the new national creed. The medicine of cutting back on government goodies seems far worse than the disease of borrowing trillions from the unborn to pay for them.
In August 1945, Hiroshima was in shambles, while Detroit was among the most innovative and wealthiest cities in the world. Contemporary Hiroshima now resembles a prosperous Detroit of 1945; parts of Detroit look like they were bombed decades ago.
History has shown that a government's redistribution of shrinking wealth, in preference to a private sector's creation of new sources of it, can prove more destructive than even the most deadly enemy.

Day after Q

Nice bright sunny morning.  Temp was +2F this morning with windchill at -17F.  We ended up with somewhere between 12-15 inches.  It was a nice winter storm.  We did not have the wind that was forecast, so it is sitting nice on the fields and pastures.  Ther was a little wind, but not bad.  Wasn't enough to classify it as a blizzard here anyway.  Just a winter storm.

This picture was from our front door this morning:

This picture was from the back yard:

Some areas of the state had a lot more snow,  but it did cover most of the state.  Another storm is forecast for Sunday.  Not supposed to be much snow, but more wind.  The moisture will be good if it will stay on the fields.  National Weather Service just announced that it was the worse winter storm to hit Kansas in decades.  We have had bigger snows, but this one covered most of the state with either snow, thunder, lightning, rain, sleet and whatever may have fallen from the sky.  There was a house fire in Wichita yesterday, during the snow storm, that was caused by a lightning strike. Strange, strange, strange.

Did a little snow shoveling this morning.  Not much.  Just enough to clear the snow away from the doors.  cleaned out a small area for the chickens to come out and look around.  The dogs have been wondering around the yard, mostly looking for a place to do their morning stuff.

Everyone have a good day.  God Bless--johnnyb

"Q"

We are still fighting the crud.  Not worse, but the cough is still with us and it has zapped any energy that we may have in reserve.  And after a winter of total vegging, that ain't much.  We have been preparing for a winter storm to blow through today and tomorrow.  I think we are ready for it.  Propane tank has plenty in it for a few days if then power goes out and we have to use the furnace.  It is just a heater and doesn't need power to run.  Did a wally world run Monday and stocked up on some things we needed.  The storm is not of the magnitude of  the ones in the NE, but 50 MPH winds here are terrible.  Nothing to stop it except barbed wire fences,  and that ain't much of a wind break.  Once in a while a jack rabbit will stick it's head up and block a little, but only a little unless he freezes in place!  I see the NWS has put a name on the storm.  Q!!!!  We don't even rate a full name.  But that doesn't surprise me.  They will probably give it a name when it gets farther east.  Naming  storms puts a burr under my saddle anyway, especially winter storms.  It's not like there is so many that the NWS can't keep track of them!  What's wrong with "the blizzard of 06"?  If you talk about the hurricane of "05" most people would know what you are talking.  Probably some that are still unaware of it.  Just their annual house cleaning and........I won't go there.  That's a bigger and uglier burr.

Cleaned the chicken house and put new straw down, so they can have a nice place to spend the storm.  They haven't been out much this morning.  They came out to see what I was doing earlier, so I gave them some scratch food and protein (cat food) to make them happy.  I also put out food for the wild birds.  I need to put some out for the game birds yet and then I will be done until evening.

It started snowing about 30 minutes ago.  The ground is starting to become white.  The moisture will be good.  The wind is from the SE now, but will turn to the North tomorrow.  That will make for some weird drifts. 

On the national scene....I see where our illustrious VP was out campaigning for gun control yesterday.  At a meeting put on by gun control idiots he told a woman the best way to protect herself was with a double barrel shotgun.  He told her they were easier to aim than AR 15 and could be just as scary.  That is what he has for his wife.  So much for taking our guns away from us!!

Time to go.  Hope everybody has a good day, and anyone in the path of "Q", stay warm.

God Bless--johnnyb

Wednesday already

I am finally starting to feel almost better than death warmed over.  This past week has not been good.   I did feel good enough to take a little walk yesterday afternoon.  Will be glad when it has run its course.  Carol has also been down with it.

Last night was the annual kindergarten party in D.C.  Such a farce!!  It would be nice to think that there might be at least one person there that has the best interest of the country in their hearts, but I don't think there is.  Seems that the only thing the White House is wanting to do is take our guns away so there will be a free run.  Think again, Bucko!!  Enough BS.  I don't need to say more.  It's all been said before.

Our weather has not been too bad.  We had 1/2 inch of rain this weekend.  Not enough, but anything is good.  At least it settled the blowing dust.  The spring winds have came a little early.  I am afraid this year is going to be ugly.  We have all of our seeds and will start them soon in the house.

Time to play like a horse turd and hit the trail.----God Bless--johnnyb

The Ninja applicants

We have kind of been under the weather this week..Both of us has the good old crud.  Haven't felt much like posting anything.  I did come across this cute story and thought I would pass it along.

The mighty Emperor had lost his trusty and most beloved Ninja. He sent word out through the lands for a new one. Three Ninjas responded: a Chinese Ninja, an African Ninja, and a Jewish Ninja. He took the Chinese Ninja into a room, and opened a small box. A fly flew out and the Ninja went "whish" with his sword a the fly was in two pieces. "Fine, fine", said The emperor and called in the African. He once again opened the box, a fly flew out and the Ninja went "Whish, whish" with his sword, and the fly was in four pieces. "Fine,Fine", said the emperor and called in the Jewish Ninja. He opened up the box, a fly flew out and the Ninja went "whish" with his sword and the fly kept flying around. "What does that show that you can do. The fly is still flying around?"
Without a moments hesitation the Jewish Ninja said, "Circumcision"!

Archaeological Discovery

An archaeological team, digging in Washington DC , has uncovered 10,000 year old bones and fossil remains of what is believed to be the first Politician.

 

Have a good one.  God bless-johnnyb