Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes...

"For time and the world do not stand still. Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future. "   ~ John F. Kennedy


The end of August is drawing near and the beginning of September will soon be here.  This time of year has always been a time of change for me and this year is proving no different.


My older son has moved to Florida to attend graduate school there.  After a very stressful week of living in temporary housing, he moved into an apartment down there today.  Next week he will have orientation meetings for his new school.  He is also busy chasing down leads and looking for a job there.

My younger son's girlfriend will be leaving on Friday this week to move an hour away from here to the university where she will be taking classes on her way to becoming an accountant.  I'm not sure who will miss her more, my son or me!

My younger son went today to the high school to pay workbook fees and pick up a parking pass and get his locker number assignment and turn in the required beginning-of-the-school-year forms.  He will be a junior in high school this year and his classes begin next week.

I will be facing some changes soon too.  Our local Chamber of Commerce offers a nine month Leadership class which I will be taking starting in September.  The library is paying my tuition for me to take this class.  It meets once a month, and I will be learning more about various aspects of our county's history, government, educational system, and legal system, among other things.  With this class I will also be attending a two-day retreat, a city council meeting, and a school board meeting and working with others in the class to do some type of community service project after the class is over.  I'm excited and a little nervous too about taking this class.  


I have no picture to show you of the Leadership class, but here's a picture of a little tiny change in my life from this week that I can show you.  I was given a gift certificate for a manicure at a local salon recently and last night I went and had my nails done. I thought they turned out pretty well.  (The daisy was not part of the manicure.  I just held it for the picture since it was going to be for my blog.)   :-D

We are changing all the time and so is the world around us.  My younger son wanted to try growing watermelons this summer.  Since we don't have a garden, I told him he could plant watermelon seeds in my flower bed.  The vine has grown so much that it has nearly taken over the flower bed and is now growing over the edge of the driveway.  It changes some every day, or so it seems.  


There are several little watermelons growing on the vine.  I hope the growing season will last long enough that they can mature and get big enough and ripe enough to eat.  The watermelons right now range in  size from about as big as a marble to one that is about twice the size of a softball.  The squirrels (darn tree rats!) have gnawed off a few of the little ones, but we put pepper and bone meal around the plants trying to deter them from getting the rest of them.

These last two photos are of the same melon taken just three days apart.  Can you see how much it has grown?  This is the one that is now about twice the size of a softball. We had a couple of days of heavy rain which gave it an extra boost.

Change isn't always easy and sometimes it can be quite difficult, but it is necessary and will happen whether we like it or not.  Change is usually a good thing.  Without change, we would be standing still and becoming stagnant instead of growing and improving.  Without change, how would we ever know what a juicy, red, ripe watermelon tastes like?  Without change, we can't learn new things and expand our horizons.  Without change, there is no future as pointed out in the quotation by John F. Kennedy in the beginning of this post.  Without change in the clouds and the sky, we would never get to see a beautiful sunset like this one.