I did not write last night because I was too tired when we got home.
The day started with Bill going to the YMCA and I had already done the laundry by the time he left, so I went walking. Along Riverside Drive are many signs telling of the businesses that can be found along the street or on side streets. I have often seen the sign for Black Eyed Susans Green house but never found it. Last week in the paper they had a piece about Black Eyed Susans where they were deadheading the geraniums. I decided to follow the signs and see if I could find the greenhouse. I did and it is 1.6 miles from our home. They open at 9am and I was there at 8am but the lady let me in to see the pretty flowers. I love being in Green houses. When I visit Watters Green House in Prescott, I have to be very stringent with myself or I would buy just about everything they have. I love gardens and flowers and plants in general. I told the lady there that I would love to own a greenhouse but she assured me that I would only love it if I worked there – owning is very difficult. That may be so, but I still love the fact that the seeds planted in the plug pots get transplanted and continue to grow and give me peace.
Bill came home and after we had breakfast, we went to the Maine State Museum, connected with the Archives and State Library, and we were entertained with a Piano accordion group called The Maine Squeeze. They played all kinds of songs and it was great. I thought that no one played the piano accordion any more – they seem to have gone out of fashion…..replaced by electric guitars as the music maker of choice. In Toowoomba there was a big following of piano accordion players and there were lessons available. My mother said I would not be taking lessons in this instrument because it was so heavy of an instrument that I would have round shoulders as a result. I also had to have a backpack for my school books because if I had my books in a carry case called a ‘port’ which is short for portmanteau that I would get round shoulders form carrying the port. My shoulders are becoming rounded from sitting at the sewing machine and the computer in spite of my mother’s best efforts.
After the concert, we went into the museum and saw the rest of the displays there. Some months ago we took time off from digitizing to go see the upstairs display of the 1950’s home. It is a well put together museum and in spite of what a man in Pittsburgh said about the Carnegie Museum, I think that we can learn a lot from Museums. His take was that museums were a passive way to learn and not too productive. Well, I don’t know about that. They have a complete coal burning Locomotive as the center piece of this museum here. The curator said that they dismantled it to bring it to the museum and set it up right at the entrance. I overheard a little boy exclaim in wonder – “Would they let me ride in that?” I do not know how many tons the engine weighs, but I suspect that there is great reinforcement in the floor to hold it up. They have looms set up in the one area. They are relics from the weaving industry they used to have here. It stirred in my heart the desire to once again own a Baby Wolf loom. I truly did like weaving and because of my cataracts I was not able to see to thread the heddles but now that I can see better (the doctor also fixed my astigmatism quite a bit) I think I would like to go back to weaving. However, I would have to take lessons again because I think I have forgotten just about all the stuff I had learned. I think I would like to have an 8 harness loom. Four harnesses would be adequate but I could do much much more with 8 harnesses. The trouble is that there is not enough time in the day to do all the stuff I would like to do………..like quilting, paper sculpture, weaving, sewing, photography, gardening and going out to eat with my friends. Too bad they only have 24 hours in the day. In any case, they had about 8 looms of varying sizes all threaded and some with yards and yards of fabric already woven. The light in this room is very low but as the curator pointed out, prior to this they only had candles and people lost their eye sight quickly in this business due to the dim lighting. The lights they have in the museum are actual bulbs that they had in the weaving mills and that is way too dim for me to even see to thread anything let alone hundreds of heddles. They even had a carding machine there and a mechanical spinner that spun yarn on hundreds of bobbins at the same time. I was totally amazed at what I saw there.
Bill loves coupons and some coupons came in the mail from Burger King, so we went to Burger King to eat lunch. Two Whoppers, two fries and two drinks for $6.99 which is a pretty cheap meal at that; There was a family from church there at the same time and we sat and ate with them.
We left BK and went over to Manchester to the Longfellow Greenhouse. They are having their open house next weekend but we plan to go to the Temple next weekend. I love this greenhouse. It is a much bigger operation than Black Eyed Susans and much much more commercialized. They have loads of veggie plants, flowers, trees as well as fertilizer, house plants, bird related things and terrariums. They even have cactus, of all things, but not as wide a variety of cactus as we find in Arizona green houses.
The church was having a fundraiser for the youth to go to camp and to accomplish this, the members were asked to bring food for a potluck dinner and then they had an auction of donated desserts. I had been asked to provide a Fruit pizza which I did and there were various cakes, cookies and baked goodies for the auction. One little boy kept bidding and bidding even against himself because he did not understand how an auction worked. It provided lots of laughter and when he was awarded the plate of cookies that he bid for, he did a victory dance like they do in the football games when they get a goal. It was hilarious. Some people bid $200 for a pie and my fruit pizza fetched $75.
Yesterday’s activities were needed to relieve the pressure of the last few weeks and we hope that the next weeks of our mission are smooth sailing with no reworks.
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