Free Patriotic Printable Tags

Oh boy, I'm just getting in under the wire here!

Below is a sheet of printable tags for the Fourth of July, Independence Day!

The Fourth was probably my most favorite holiday of all as a child -- possibly -- maybe even with Hallowe'en as "favorite." I loved Christmas Eve very much, too, but the Fourth was just resplendent in my mind. 

Since I was age 10, when I asked for an American flag for Christmas, I have flown our flag at every place I've lived. 

Until recently, I had a 40-year-old shot-off firework called "Happiness Pagoda" on display. Oh, how I loved that particular firework. It would spin, rise up to three little stories, and then have a flame inside to glow through red paper windows. I never liked the loud "popping" fireworks. I liked the pretty ones and the quiet ones, the "fountains" and the "snakes" and the "volcanoes" and the "ground flowers." 

We used to buy something called a "punk" to light the fireworks. Punks burned at a slow, constant smolder. There were buckets of punks on the counters of the firework stands. Punks were 2 cents each. The smell of a punk -- I think Heaven will smell like that. These punks were maybe eight inches long, probably made from compressed cellulose if I had to guess, with some gunpowder mixed in. The smell reminds me of the incense at High Mass. In fact, now that I think of it, punks look almost exactly like incense sticks, only uncolored, always tan.

The patience of the people who waited the counters at the fireworks stands! May God have blessed them and if they are still with us, continue to bless them richly. Their patience was astounding, as a bedraggled child put up stacks of pennies, nickels, dimes, and a rare quarter, and began a long, long laundry list of little fireworks in a shy whisper. 

Out of the past, and into the present!

We had a fifty-degree drop in temperature here two days ago, and then RAIN! And it has drizzled ever since. What a blessing and a boon to the desert! I can rest easy about "my" toads in my community garden plot, at least during this weather. 

The "ditch sunflowers" below are at least 11 feet high now. They tower over all the other plots.

I did get a picture of an unusual sunflower at the plot, right before the rain started. I think it is one of the Autumn Mix sunflowers. I don't pick them, as much as I'd like to, because some little yellow-green tummied birds were feasting on the seeds of the older blooms. Tiny little birds, like dull canaries!

 

The zinnias, despite being too shaded by the sunflowers, are starting to bloom, too. They are supposed to be the "candy stripe" zinnias, but the striping is quite subtle. I think the genetics that governed the striping went kaput.

I hope you will enjoy these printable tags, which are part of a set I have up on Etsy. But here some are, free to my Bloggie Frens. "Free and worth every penny," as they say. As always, use this LINK TO THE DOWNLOAD <---- and don't try to just save the image below. It won't print nicely. The link is stored on Google Drive and it is safe, or as safe as anything can be, I do believe.

Are you prepping for the Fourth? How do you and how DID you celebrate it?

Sunflowers on Memorial Day

These sunflowers are standing tall and still in the heat, as if they know of the solemnity of Memorial Day.

"All gave some. Some gave all."

My father was an ensign in the U.S. Navy in World War II. Beyond dirt poor and extremely thin, he borrowed as many coins as he could from friends and filled his pockets, so that he could "make weight" and enlist. His first non-home haircut, his first train ride, his first venture out of a small town in Louisiana, all courtesy of the Armed Forces. 

His first swimming lesson: He could jump, or he could be tossed from, a high platform into the deep pool below, in San Diego. After seeing a few thrown off the diving platform, he jumped, despite his intense fear of heights.

In the mess hall in San Diego, the sailors were served two "alligator pears" each at every meal. One of his buddies bit into his, right through the peel, then spat it out, quick. "It's bitter," he said. Not having seen them before, or even having heard of them, he, like many other country boys, threw them out, untouched. 

My father loved to tell that story. "I threw away a fortune in avocados," he would say, ruefully. "If only I had known."  

Something else courtesy of Uncle Sam: A Harvard education, free, gratis, no strings attached. And no say in it, either. You signed up, you took their tests, you went where they said to go. My father wanted to study engineering and serve on a ship. No, said the Navy. You are going to be an actuary.

I do not glorify war, but I do not want the wars forgotten. But as the history teacher at our school was explaining, the wars of our fathers and the wars during our youths will be as big an abstraction to today's students as the War of 1812 is to us. It will carry no emotional import, even second-hand import. Although I was not yet born, the tales of WWII are vivid in my mind, were vivid in my childhood; part of it, ever-present, really. 

His remarks really distressed me. "It's how it is," he said. "Just remember, as long as you can. Just remember." 

Kind regards,

Olde Dame Holly