DeRay's 80th Birthday Celebration - Part I

THE DAY BEFORE

 

"Where's Aunt Amy?"

"She's still teaching school."

 Brooke, Elizabeth and kids:
Brigitte, Isaak, Klarissa and Karlton

showed up around 8 Am

“How do you get your kids to work so hard?” DeRay asked Brooke.  “I could never get my kids to work like that.”

“I was way better than they are,” he told his Dad.

Brooke was a remarkable child.

“I could be a father right now because I can cook eggs.  But I can’t be a daddy because I’m not in work,” he said when he was three years old.  We had a grill on our stove.  He stood up on the stool so he could reach to fry himself an egg while we were still sleeping.  He stood on a stool all day turning the wooden handle to squeeze out the tomato juice when he was six.  He made bread when he was 9 and was doing genealogy with Grandma when he was 11.  But wait!  This is not about him. It's Dad's 80th birthday celebration.

Klarissa says it's fun to work with your whole family.

Yip, even Eddy unloaded the dishwasher to help.

 Pizza, salad, and ice cream for the workers.

Even though we very much appreciated and needed help in the yard,

it’s hard to accept the fact that your kids

can work 10 times faster and better than you can. 

 Karlton and Brooke tromped the load down.

 Isaak just got his license and Grandpa let him drive to the dump.

 Brigitte was "trimming" this flowering bush
but before anyone could stop her,

it was gone.
"Look at the great view of the garden,"
she exclaimed from the kitchen window.

 Ed Denny welded the broken chair; Elizabeth and Karlton put it back together.

 They left around 5, dead tired, 
ready for a shower. popcorn, and a home movie.

"Less of a fire hazard," Brooke exclaims, "with the fireplace on the deck."

Bamboo Bean Poles

DeRay took out all the rose bushes.  This one hid behind the bamboo.

He transplanted all the Swiss chard and lettuce.

DeRay designed, planted, transplanted and hoed

every weed himself in his vegetable garden.

The sprinkling system is new.

He has drilled 4,800 tiny holes in the pipes

12 holes per foot;

120 holes per pipe,

 40 pipes - 30 last year and 10 this year.

 

 From our bike rides around town,

especially The Utah House, Brent and I gathered seeds.

This is our wild garden.

Easy.

 

 Where the flowering bush once grew
before Brigitte chopped it down. 

It’s our own George Washington story,
as Brigitte points out.
Maybe she’ll be President of the United States someday.

She is going out in Political Science at Utah State.
We always thought her dad would be

President of the United States

because he was born when we lived in the garage

while building our house on the hollow:

Equivalent in our day and age to being born in a log cabin;

you know, humble beginnings like Abraham Lincoln.

This is the graveyard of the beautiful Blue Spruce

that blew down just before Christmas

when we had one of our infamous East Winds.

 The Inevitable End