A Late Veteran's Day Post

As I have mentioned in a few posts my Dad has been diagnosed with Congestive Heart Failure and has been in and out of the hospital for almost 2 mos now. He is a WWII vet, he enlisted in the Navy at the age of 17, at the time he had never been more than 25 miles away from his home in North Washington, IA, they were put on a bus and taken to Des Moines and from there to California for boot camp and then to the Pacific Theater, he spent 4 years away from Iowa, he was on the first ship that went into Japan after the Japanese surrendered. He earned a purple heart and other medals, he gave all of these to my son last year along with his Navy uniforms. My daughter in law had a shadow box put together, it is a great display. My grandson took it to school along with the uniforms on Veterans Day, the teacher invited some WWII vets to the classroom. These are a couple of the photos, makes me proud of my Dad and of my grandson.

Memed by Shady Gardener

I have been memed by Shady Gardener so I must think of 8 things that someone might be interested in :).

1) I love to learn new things and wish there were more opportunities around here to take classes.

2) I must spend some time outdoors each day, no matter what the weather or I feel all out of sorts and that is not a good thing :).

3) When I retire I want to train one or both of my dogs to be therapy dogs.

4) When I retire I want to volunteer for the adult literacy program.

5) I wish I could retire tomorrow :).

6) I enjoy my own company.

7) I wish I worked in a library.

8) My garden is my refuge.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Reiman Gardens

We got snow today!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And it was the pretty kind that sticks to trees, unfortunately it was dark when I arrived home so I was not able to take pictures, but I enjoyed watching it snow from my desk at work.

Real life keeps getting in the way of my blogging, darn it! My Dad is home from the hospital again, he is very weak, I cannot believe how quickly his health has deteriorated. We are having a quiet day tomorrow so tonight I am going to update my blog and visit other blogs that I enjoy reading.

Tonight and over the next few days I am going to share some pictures that I took last summer at Reiman Gardens my favorite place to day trip to. The Butterfly House is wonderful! My birthday is next month, my husband asked what I wanted, I told him a day trip to the Butterfly House and to see the Christmas lights at Reiman.

This was an interesting ornamental pepper plant that was in a pot. One year several years back I was into the ornamental peppers and had several different varieties. They really are fun to grow but in this zone they have to be started in the house in January for the plant to mature to watch the peppers turn from green, to black or purple and finally red. I would love to have a wide variety of the peppers again to start from seed.