The Rock Wall

From the TOPS news: Discipline is choosing between what you want NOW and what you want MOST (Abraham Lincoln)

– On Independence Day, we were independent. I kinda had a stomach bug and Kimball gave our Boultinghouse roses some much-needed attention.  Grandpa Alvin Boultinghouse’s mother brought a bush all the way from Washington state by covered wagon. Mom had a start off of it planted by a REA pole west of the house. She called it “my little monthly rose.”

My sister, Margaret, has three rose bushes she got off of Mom’s bush. She gave me eight starts which had been doing quite well until this year. Last year they had probably a hundred blossoms the first time they bloomed, then tapered off with later bloomings. Well, this year they didn’t do as well.

Until a few years ago, none of the Boultinghouse cousins had any Boultinghouse roses. Those roses spread by stolens or rhinezones. They put out the start underground on a “root”, that is about half the size of my little finger. You have to dig carefully to be sure it has put down roots before you cut it off the main vine, then you can either let it grow in place for awhile or go ahead and transplant it.

Between Margaret’s bushes and mine, I got five starts going and gave them to Debbie (Hydeman) Swirzinski at the Miller/Boultinghouse family reunion one year.  Three of them died and she had two doing well in her yard… until a friend of her husband, Mike, volunteered to mow their yard. He took one of the little buses down to ground level. But the other bush is doing well and should be ready to put out some starts.

This spring, I cut 10 ten-inch sections of new vines and shipped them to Charlotte Wiggins so she could get some starts for herself and me. She had them in little containers ready to do their thing when her hired man set a box on top of them and killed them all. I immediately sent Charlotte 10 more cuttings. She has them planted and we are waiting for results.

My goal is to get Boultinghouse roses into the yards of Boultinghouse grandchildren. I accomplished that with Debbie.  Oh, another of the Miller grandchildren has a bush I think, Murnie Ingram Fast. Margaret gave it to her.

Stay tuned. I’ll let you know if we get more. I’d guess you didn’t know rose culture could be so complicated. I didn’t. If there is an easier way, please tell me.

– We had July 5 visitors late. Davis, Erica and Ben had been n Ft. Scott helping her mother sell fireworks. Reese kept Erica’s grandparents, Jim and Pat Summers, entertained.

The minute Davis walked in the door, he went and hunted up our new kitten, Jack, the one he and Erica recommended we adopt to replace Caddeaux. Reese petted him.

Then Davis put on a fireworks show for us. We were on the deck and he was on the ground. I was relaxed on the picnic table seat waiting for the show with Erica, Ben and Reese. They were listening to him. I wasn’t. The first thing I knew, they all jumped up and ran past me to the east side of the deck.  I later found out that Davis said, “Oh, (shoot). RUN.” Seems the first firework he lighted, fell over… towards us. He hunted up some concrete blocks to serve as a base for the rest of the show.

Reese was not a fireworks fan. Erica kept the baby’s ears covered.  Kimball went inside. Jack and Caddee didn’t like the explosions.

Everybody was happier when it was time to sit down at the dining room table for hotdogs, fresh blueberry pie and ice cream. Reese liked the pieces of hotdog Momma fed her. Ben tackled one of the big hotdogs by himself. We learned that Erica doesn’t like blueberries. She didn’t want her own dish of ice cream but she sure helped Davis eat his.

-I was in LCN Graphics last week when a lady walked in and immediately introduced herself as Barbara Copeland, wife of our former High School Principal Dave Copeland. She told me that their daughter, Brittany, a friend of Adrian, has a son who is 14 and another who is 6, I think. I asked Barbara about her neck. She told me I probably meant Brittany who was in the vehicle when another car hit them out by True Value east of town. She said Brittany still has trouble with her neck.  Adrian has a huge scar on her knee even though she was wearing a seatbelt.  I told Barbara I was talking about her neck in which a chiropractor broke the interior of a blood vessel when he popped her neck and she had to go all the way to Arizona to get a proper diagnosis. It’s fine now.

Barbra and Dave have fun each year at the Picnic selling pork rinds and kettle corn in their booth on Spring Street.

Their son, Justin, who is a superb musician and ran a music store in Nevada, got into cyber security. He is doing so well that his wife, who is an attorney, doesn’t work.

She asked about Adrian and said the last time she saw Adrian, she was pregnant. She asked, “What did she have?”

I swear the Devil made me do it. I instantly answered, “A baby.” That sparked a round of laughter at LCN. Then I told her she had a little boy, Snider, on Sept. 9 of last year to join Van who turned two on Oct. 28.

The big news, both she and Dave have retired, he from being a beloved superintendent at Bronaugh. Then he taught a superintendent class. One of his students, or maybe his only student, was our new superintendent, Heath Oates, who Barbara said is a “nice guy.”

If we keep getting reports like that from people we know and trust, we may start to believe them.         KL