Charlene With Stockings

My wife Charlene is a servant. Not only has she served our family for over forty years, but also she helps others. She serves as a youth coach at our church, volunteers at a food pantry, and sews for Operation Shoebox.

Operation Shoebox is an organization started in central Florida by a woman who has five sons serving in the military. A few years ago (2003), she got the idea to fill shoe boxes with goodies and a personal letter to send them to military personnel serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.

They no longer send shoe boxes because the postage was prohibitive. Now they send bags. Charlene is one of the volunteers who manufacture the bags.

At Christmastime, instead of bags, they make Christmas stockings. The photo depicts the stack of stockings Charlene made for the 2006 Christmas shipment. As you can see, she didn’t just settle for slapping together a couple of pieces of material. Each one was made with the special care and love that only Charlene can give.

Operation Shoebox recently sent their 200,000^th package to military folks in Iraq and Afghanistan. Congratulations, Operation Shoebox!

© 2007 – 2008, J. M. Erickson. All rights reserved.

Chartwell

This is one of the daylilies that I acquired since moving to Florida. It’s done brilliantly here. Perhaps I’ll replace my non performing varieties with more southernly hospitable varieties.

I now have eight daylilies blooming, making our front yard very colorful.

© 2007 – 2008, J. M. Erickson. All rights reserved.

Monster

This is one of the daylilies I brought from Indiana. It hasn’t performed well here in Florida. This variety is very prolific in Indy, but it barely hangs on in this heat. (By the way, it’s now 7:21 pm and 86° outside. The bloom is the only thing that hasn’t changed from the North to the South. This blossom is roughly 10 inches across, but it sits on a stem that is only 12 inches tall. In Indy these used to be 25 inches tall. They also used to produce three or more fans each year from the primary ones, here I started with two fans three years ago and there are only four now.

I have a couple of other varieties that are doing poorly in this climate. I suspect these varieties, which go dormant in the winter, expect a longer cold spell than the few days we get here in central Flordia.

© 2007 – 2008, J. M. Erickson. All rights reserved.