Victory Garden

–noun

a vegetable garden, esp. a home garden, cultivated to increase food production during a war or period of shortages.

When my father retired from the police department back in 1976 you would have thought he was living an episode of Green Acres. While Dad was not a lawyer trying to live the simple country life, he was raised in the city, was a cop until he retired, he imagined himself a gentleman farmer for oh about a year or so.

We planted a Victory Garden, bought chickens, two cows, and had two goats. I really didn't have much to do with the garden. Mom and Dad were kind of nastalgic about it because back in WWII people were encouraged to grow them. Our budget was so tight Dad thought if we could just raise some food it would help things out.

I didn't do the gardening but my brothers and sisters did. Once things began growing they hardly did any work to it really. Once things were ready for harvest I was baking and cooking like a real fool. Every day I would gather about a dozen eggs. There were nights I had zucchini and had to look for any and every recipe I could find for it. We had so many vegetables they were actually rotting in the field. I'd never learned to can anything but I was sad when after that we never had another victory garden.

I guess I would have felt differently if I had been out there working the garden. Ths year, after watching all these docmentaries about Monsanto and hybrid fruits and vegetables, Darryl and I are going to try our hands at gardening. That's right this year we are going to have a container garden. We feel it will be better for us because we won't be using harmful pesticides.

I won't get the same amount of publicity for having one as Michelle Obama. After all she's growing a Kitchen garden. (a garden where vegetables, herbs, and fruit are grown for one's own use.) We do plan to veg-up our summer though. We're doing it for our health but also to make a quasi-political statement. We are concened about HR875 Read the original bill here. The name of the bill "Food Safety" sounds good and might make you wonder why anything would be against it except the government can even come onto your property to find out how your garden grows. Thanks but no thanks.

Some people are contemplating growing their own veggies because they feel that we our financial institutions are collapsing and we should raise vegetables to sustain us. Darryl argues that we should grow a survivalist garden. A survivalist garden will have nut trees, fruit trees and berries and most types of vegetables. The vegetables in the survivalist garden will contain several that have a high protein count such as chickpeas, sunflowers for their seeds, and pumpkin. Pumpkin gives you a "twofer". You can use the shell for pumpkin pie puree, the filling for pumpkin pies, and also for their seeds.

Darryl suggested that I keep track of what we spent on the garden and how much time we spent. Today we bought a bunch of vadalia onion starters. That cost us about $3.99. We also bought potato starters and silver queen corn seed. Altogether that cost us about $8. We also bought seed packets of broccoli, tomatoes, squash, lettuce, and peas. That cost us about $5. The dirt for the containers cost us $3 a bag and we used two bags. Most of the containers that we used we'd had form a few years ago. We did use three new ones that we had bought not too long ago for $5 a piece. Of course these things are reusable to next year we will be able to factor these costs out.

Darryl also feels we should factor in the cost of our time so I will say that we spent an hour planting everything that we planted today. We still have lots to plant but can't do that yet because it's not time to put those things in the ground yet.

Today was the last day over at the house in Acworth. Not that we spent time there this week We didn't. We drove by the house to make sure we got everything that we came with and then we drove away. I walked to the bottom of the street like I used to. I stared out at our beautiful view. I said goodby to my house and tried not to cry.


Here are the blog contets I entered:

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Prizes (5): Copy of Mrs. Meyer's Clean Home: No-Nonsense Advice that Will Inspire You to Clean like the Dickens by Thelma Meyer (ARV $19.99).

Prize: Max Fleischer's Gulliver's Travels DVD.

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Prize: Friends Forever doll (ARV $59).

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Prize: Magellan Maestro 4350 GPS (ARV $399).

Prize: Choice of eyeglasses from EyeBuyDirect.com [excluding designer frames and sunglasses] (ARV up to $100).

Edward Nathaniel Bell Becomes Virginia's 103 Execution

This seems to be a week of sad posts. My brother Bill is a former Winchester, Virginia policeman. This is why the murder of Sgt. Richard Timbrook hit too close to home for our family. They say Winchester is a city, but even back in 1999 it still seemed to be more of a very large town than a city. People knew one another through school or through relatives so the death of one person touched so many in the city. This was particularly sad because his wife was pregnant with their only child. His son Ricky Lee Timbrook II born on December 22, 1999.

Below is a newspaper account of the death of Sgt. Timbrook:

At approximately 11:53 p.m. on October 29th, 1999, City of Winchester Police Sergeant Ricky L. Timbrook was fatally wounded while in foot pursuit with a subject who violated probation. While Sgt. Timbrook was pursuing the suspect, the suspect stopped, turned around, and fired one shot from a .38 caliber handgun striking Sgt. Timbrook on the forehead killing him instantly. Sgt. Ricky L. Timbrook was pronounced dead at 12:25 a.m. October 30th at the Winchester Medical Center.

The story was all over the local news every day. This was an officer who received numerous commendations, awards, and recognition's for his law enforcement service. He served as a DARE Officer for the city school system, a Field Training Officer, a Defensive Tactics Instructor, and was a member of the Special Operations Team (SWAT). It could have just as easily have been my brother.

After the trial and conviction of Edward Nathaniel Bell, the story began to fade from view. The media found new stories to chase. Winchester actually resembles the city I was told that it always was. There is suburban sprawl from DC commuters who built their homes in the area to escape the crime and violence of the big city. The small school, where I spent my senior year with 98 other upper classmen is no longer used as a high school. The high school is now a huge sprawling brick building built in what used to be an apple orchard when my family first moved there. The very things people fled the city for, congestion and crime, are a part of the fabric of this once bucolic area.

Then today I saw an article that brought this case back to me. The headlines screamed “Virginia Inmate Forcibly Carried to Death Chamber.” Wow. Can you imagine that? Six stocky corrections officers pulled him through the doorway and lifted him onto the gurney.

Since the execution happened in Virginia I wondered if I was familiar with the case. The name of the man who was executed didn’t ring a bell at first. The victim’s name seemed familiar but not in an instant recognition. It was one of those recognitions where you ask yourself, “Where have I heard that name before?” You have to realize that I only lived in that area for a couple of years. My family still lives there but I don’t have friends that I catch up with there.

Then the article mentioned that his victim had been a police officer in Winchester. It all came back to me. The article said that Bell said, "To the Timbrook family, you definitely have the wrong person," Bell said in the death chamber, addressing the victim's family. "The truth will come out one day. This here, killing me, there's no justice about it."

We seem to be so black and white on matters like abortion and the death penalty. The shades of gray are interpreted as if you are with us or against us. I have wrestled with this topic for years. As a Catholic, I believe in the sanctity of life. Does being against the death penalty mean that I don’t honor the sanctity of Sgt. Timbrook? Does being for the death penalty mean that I don’t honor church doctrine? The often asked question arises; once again, does one person’s execution bring back the loved ones who were murdered?

I’ve honestly wondered if my belief would become more concrete if I was present at one of these executions. Would I see it as being morally right and correct or would I question my own moral fiber by having been present at the planned death of another? As the victim of a brutal crime myself I can understand the desire for vengeance. My husband often says they should execute more. Having taught students who were charged with murder it’s hard to say sure, kill them, they’re animals. Often they have relatives and friends that love them. Having taught students who were murdered, I understand the grief, anger, and desire for retribution of those left behind.

I remember years ago, another inmate at Jarret, argued his innocence to any and all who would listen to him. He had loud vocal critics of the death penalty like Phil Donahue arguing his case. In that case of Roger Keith Coleman had been convicted of murdering and raping his sister-in-law. If you heard the story told on TV you almost questioned it yourself. Was this an innocent man you would ask? At the time DNA was still new.

Coleman was asking for a lie detector test to prove his innocence. He was transported the 70 miles by van from death row to a state police post in Hanover County, where the test was administered about 9:30 a.m. He failed but you didn’t find that out until the next day. Perhaps as damaging to his case as the polygraph were DNA tests on semen samples collected from McCoy's body. By one interpretation, those tests showed Coleman among just 0.2 percent of the population that could have committed the rape. Once again we didn’t know the outcome of this until the next day. We were told that state law forbids admitting new evidence a certain number of days after trial. Donhue, kept saying over and over again, “Why won’t the governor allow DNA evidence.” It seemed as if he was saying that the evidence would bear out his claims of innocence.

I questioned whether the state was executing an innocent man in my name. I questioned whether I was a bad person because I felt he should be executed. I questioned why we seemed to care so much about the person who would be executed and ignored the life snuffed out by Coleman. Why didn’t the victim get a reprieve?

He spoke words similar to Bell, "An innocent man is going to be murdered tonight. When my innocence is proven, I hope Americans will realize the injustice of the death penalty as all other civilized countries have. My last words are to the woman I love. Love is eternal. My love for you will last forever. I love you Sharon.” (his girlfriend) That night, I prayed that we did the right thing. The whole day had been spent with talking heads saying why Coleman shouldn’t be executed.

In the end a man died. A man who was a husband, a son, a friend, a co-worker, and a father is gone. A young child is growing up without his father. The world has lost a man who wanted to do so much for his community. Police Sergeant Ricky L. Timbrook did not deserve to die. His wife didn’t send him off to work expecting to lose the person she loved. The question is, what do we do now? Do we warehouse murders? Do we put them to death? I wish I had the answer.

Bell was the 103rd Virginia inmate executed since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976. Virginia ranks second only to Texas in the number of executions since then.