cheerfulmonk.com

I planted my second celery stump September 7, 2025 and it had already started growing by the next day:

September 8, 2025

Here’s a picture of it taken September 12, 2025. It’s the one on the left.

I tried planting it as soon as it started putting out a little root, but I knew it wouldn’t survive because celery like a lot of sunshine, and our apartment doesn’t have it. I was surprised it looked perky as long as it did. It looked fine went I went to bed September 29, but it had wilted by the time I got up the next morning.

September 30, 2025

I gently tugged on the stalks and they came out.

September 30, 2025

Sigh. I won’t try celery stumps again. I’ll stick with my shade-loving pothos for my window sill. They love it there.

October 3, 2025

four lines of poetry that have been going through my head the past couple of days.

Every clod feels a stir of might,
An instinct within it that reaches and towers,
And, groping blindly above it for light,
Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers;
—June by James Russell Lowell

C. Fred Alford, Pixabay

mxart, Pixabay

Russell was talking about summer, but a lot of people would think of spring. Not me. It’s the beautiful days and cool nights of autumn that energize and motivate me. What about you?

October 2, 2025

We’re talking about having a big project done up on the land. It could go smoothly, but things can always get complicated of course. For some reason that reminded me of a friend years ago. Her husband was remodeling their kitchen-family room (one big room). It was taking forever and she was the one spending the most in the unfinished mess. She had to laugh when her little girl said to her even younger little boy one day,

You know, Bobbie, when Daddy dies you will have to finish this room.

October 1, 2025

Kaitlin and I have been talking about how to notify people what’s going on if I were to stop blogging. I have a firewall which is sometimes tricky to get behind, so we decided it would be easiest if she just told people in comments to my last post. It’s probably not necessary, but she could also tell people by commenting on their blogs, using the links to their user names when they comment.

I decided to make sure that worked so I tried going to cheerfulmonk.com straight from DuckDuckGo, the search engine I use (unlike Google it preserves privacy). But when I tried it, this is the first thing that came up:

None of the other listings took me to my site either, and I was curious to see what else IPAddress.com had to say:

Cheerfulmonk.com is a personal blog that emphasizes the philosophy of life as a shared adventure. The site features a variety of content, including reflections on daily experiences,
travel stories, and insights into personal growth. The author shares a positive outlook on life, encouraging readers to embrace joy and connection with others.

The blog is designed to foster a sense of community, inviting visitors to engage with the content and share their own experiences. Through thoughtful writing and relatable
anecdotes, cheerfulmonk.com aims to inspire individuals to find happiness in everyday moments and to appreciate the shared journeys we all undertake.

I don’t know what AI program they’re using, but this one blew me away. And don’t the words “sharing”, “connection”, and “community” describe why we all love blogging? I am so grateful for you all and that we can connect through blogging.

September 30, 2025

The Other Coast

September 29, 2025

Wizard of Id

This reminds me of when Kaitlin and Torben came to visit in 2008. They talked us into switching to Apple, so we all went to Santa Fe to buy my first Macbook. This is the picture of us “partying” when we got back to the apartment.

I smile every time I think of it. What’s your idea of a great party?

September 28, 2025

It turns out they won’t install the new stairs for a while. They plan to replace other stairs in the complex and will do them all the same day. No one knows when yet.

But, they did widen our sidewalk so it would be easier to clear it in winter. We expected it would take a couple of days for the concrete to harden, but they started walking on it the next morning. Shows how little we know. 🙂

The most exciting part of that project is it now connects our sidewalk to the sidewalk in front of the laundry room! Notice the new angled section.

Before we had to step off our sidewalk and walk across the beginning of the drainage ditch to the other sidewalk. It was easy enough if a car hadn’t parked right up to the curb. In that case we had to either walk on the parking lot and go around the back of the car or else put our hand on the car for balance as we walked in the drainage ditch in front of it. Not a serious problem, but enough of a nuisance that we are ecstatic the problem has been fixed.

They embedded pipes in the sidewalk so water can still drain from the parking lot.

How cool is that!

September 27, 2025

This was yesterday’s Word of the Day from Spanish Dictionary:

As soon as I saw it my eyes lit up and smile spread across my face. I was surprised that it resonated so deeply.

Have you ever reacted like that to words, phrases, or pictures?

September 26, 2025

For the past 50 years to get from our second story to the sidewalk we walked down 15 steps,

and then up 8 steps.

But the stairs are rusting out so they are going to remove them and replace them with stairs going straight down to the new concrete pad they have installed.

They say the installation will take less than one day, but we don’t know exactly when they’ll do it because they poured the concrete yesterday and it has to dry first. I will let you know!

September 25, 2025

My backups are working again.

When I asked for help they replied,

We can help you to configure the backup, but can you please provide us with the hosting credentials/FTP login details?

Huh? I thought about that for a while, then realized we went through something like this years ago, when I first set up the daily backups. So I looked at what I had saved about Sucuri and found an FTP user name, password, and port number. I gave it to them and it worked.

If you are curious about FTP, here is an explanation. I’m not interested in the details so won’t read it, but I’m glad I saved the information. Otherwise I would have had to contact my hosting service and get it again.

It pays to stay relaxed and patient when these things come up — it gives our minds a chance to dig through old memories. And it helps to write things down!

September 24, 2023