Rivenrock Gardens Cactus Blog

  New products development can take a great deal of time, and this product was no different,
but we are happy, and proud to be able to say that our cactus is now an ingredient in the
new Aveda product line called ‘Green Science Skin Care’.

  Yes, four different products in that line,
and each one has our Opuntia robusta organically grown cactus.

   Wow, cool!

   This line of products started selling a couple of months ago in parts of Asia,
and now is selling at your own Aveda Salon near you.

   It is a fun thing to be knowing that people the world over will be using and enjoying products that have our cactus as an ingredient.

James (Jake) and Eugene Dicus circa 1943… in Missouri

My uncle Jake passed on this month. He was a pretty funny fellow, I think that might be because he was a shorter fellow in a family that tends to run a bit tall. Maybe that’s what made him such a talent at one-liners and a truly inspired poet who could see a story and make a humorous poem about it in minutes.  It also made him a bit of a fighter when he was a younger man…. the stories I’ve heard.

   I suppose with the hard life his family had in the Ozarks made for someone who tried to see the humor in everyday things…. while they also worked and fought hard to get out of any scrapes they were in.

   He wrote his own eulogy….. I enclose most of it here… but some is a bit too ribald for publication on a family site.   The part I cannot include was the last paragraph… the minister would not read that portion aloud at the ceremony either. Trust me, it’s funny, but if the Pastor will not read it aloud, I’d best not print it.

 Jake’s Eulogy
By James Dicus

In-state lies ol’ Jake
dressed fancy for Elain’s sake
as he lived, so should he die
laugh with him, do not cry.

No fancy duds, no jewelry fine,
short in stature, also mind.
Now he lies, he’ll lie no more.
Ends the life of this insensitive bore.

Of his deeds, some good some bad,
made some happy, others mad.
A humble man, short and fat,
If it could be done, he’d try that.

He’d read, paint and write a poem,
Strange, this fellow: content at home.
If he was here, this he’d say…
“Bingo Elaine, go right away!”

Of his friends, and this is true,
wasn’t much he wouldn’t do.
What else to say? it’s all been said.
kick his body, make sure it’s dead.

   Yeah, I always enjoyed seeing uncle Jake.

  So just today, on the radio I heard a song that made me think of him…

~Jamey Johnson~
‘In Color’

I said “grandpa whats this picture here
its all black and white it aint real clear is that you there?”
He said “yeah i was 11, times were tough back in ‘35
thats me and uncle Joe just tryin to survive a cotton farm in the great depression.

“If it looks like we were scared to death like a couple of kids just trying to save each other
you should’ve seen it in color.

“Ohh and this one here was taken over seas in the middle of hell in 1943
in the winter time you can almost see my breath that was my tail gunner ole Johnny Magee
he was a high school teacher from new Orleans and he had my back right through the day we left.

“If it looks like we were scared to death like a couple of kids just trying to save each other
you should’ve seen it in color.

A picture’s worth a thousand words
but you cant see what those shades of gray keep covered
you should’ve seen it in color

“This one is my favorite one.
This is me and grandma in the summer sun
all dressed up the day we said our vows.
You can’t tell it here but it was hot that June
and that rose was red and her eyes were blue
and just look at that smile I was so proud.
Thats the story of my life right there in black and white

And if it looks like we were scared to death like a couple of kids just trying to save each other
you should’ve seen it in color.”

A pictures worth a thousand words
but you cant see what those shades of gray keep covered
you should have seen it in color.

  You can see the video of this song at ‘In Color’.

The Lions scream on the hills

Originally written in April 2006

  The Lion, the witch, and the wardrobe is a marvelous book series for children. Written by C.S. Lewis it shows the majesty of righteousness and has a Christian type character which I think all Christians would recognize.

   It has recently been released as a movie version which I think fully captured the books intent and meaning. I am well pleased with how Disney Pictures did the movie. The stunning computer work which created the full scope and ‘other worldliness’ of the books was so well done as to be mesmerizing.

   While watching the movie, and the beauty of the ‘King of Narnia’, the Messianic Lion Aslan, Vickie and I had to discuss our own Mountain Lion. He comes through our area on occasion, eating deer and goats, scaring people, and giving us all a good reason to walk about armed to the teeth.

   People sometimes report seeing a Mountain Lion here, but more often we just hear it screaming near the house. There have been times when I was in the orchard on the hillside, some ways from the house, and I hear it screaming near the house as I am walking home. It is unnerving to walk toward a scream like that, knowing you are walking toward something your entire being is screaming at you to walk away from. It is at times such as this that I will pick up a few stones to throw at it if I see it, to keep it from charging or stalking me. If I am still in the orchard I might pick up a pitchfork and ax from the shed and walk home with those in my hands. I feel like a peasant from a Frankenstein movie, marching on the castle toward the monster to do battle with archaic weapons.

   There was another time that I had to walk to the well in the dark and cycle the pump on. The lion was screaming outside near the house. So I went out with a shotgun and flashlight. As I was waiting for the pump to fill the tank I walked along the road so I was away from the brush. A neighbor came driving by, parked some ways from me with his lights on me, and hollered cautiously out the window “are you OK John?” It was a touching moment, and I could hear the worry in his voice evaporate when he heard me explain the reason I was standing along the road with a shotgun.

   But this all began with a talk of the Chronicles of Narnia, did it not? Well, Vickie and I had to remark during the showing of the Lion Aslan that our own Mountain Lion has been unheard by us for half a year now. Perhaps it is dead… and then the silence was deafening. You see we have a pond next to the house, it is full of frogs that chirrup all the night long on their orgy of excessive tadpole making. And when the frogs stop making noise it is like an alarm ringing because something is out there and scared them. Then, through the partially open window I heard it, the scream of the mountain lion, and it was close. We walked out onto the dark porch, proceeding cautiously, making sure the skunk was not out there. We stood on the dim porch, under the overhanging roof, deep in the shadows and listened to the close scream, then farther away we hard another scream, that was repeated twice. Then our own closer lion screamed again, and the other one repeated the scream twice. Over the next ten minutes we heard these two lions call to each other across the vastness of the open canyon. And our own lion which was behind our house, perhaps a few hundred yards and to the Northwest crossed the hillside behind us to the North, it then went along the spine of the hill to our East, and then followed that to the Southeast, and eventually the two screams became too faint to hear. In the span of ten minutes we’d heard this local cat cross two miles of densely wooded land without us ever hearing anything other than it’s screams.

   I know that having a local Mountain Lion is a luxury most Americans will never know, and I relish the thought that I live in this wild area, that so befits my own philosophy and nature. I wish this area to remain remote and wild like this, and I understand the feelings of the people who were born in this canyon and regret the opening up of the land that has happened in the last thirty years. The telephone was the first to come in during the seventies. Then people started coming into the canyon settling on their widely spaced houses, mostly out of sight of one another. And we encroach on the Lions territory, causing it havoc in its normal course of business. But the lions and the other animals seem to have come to terms with the new inhabitants of this canyon, we provide food of sorts to these animals with our imported meals-on-the-hoof. Many are the chicken coops that have been broken into by bears here, or tunneled into by foxes. Few goats remain; the rest have been eaten by the lions. Owls take the occasional cat. And mice are attracted to some barns where large amounts of feedstuffs accumulate and give them food, they are seized upon by rattlesnakes as a nice food source.

   Nature is full of bounty when there are not too many of any particular species, but the ‘balance of nature’ is not a balance at all. It is indeed a see-saw with the individual species rising and falling depending upon the vagaries of weather and disease. The fox population reached a saturation point here a few years ago, we had foxes coming up nightly to search for food near our house, and Whitey made sport of chasing them away from the house, while they in their cunning minds made sport of Whitey by running around bushes and coming up behind Whitey until he was the chased. The foxes got to a certain level, and then an epidemic of distemper caused their numbers to fall quickly. Now we do not see too many foxes. And now I have only a memory of standing at night in the canyon watching as the glowing eyes of foxes search left and right, criss crossing like soldiers on a search and destroy mission as they make their way toward me, not knowing I am standing there like a stature on a rock.

   Yes, the foxes are gone, and a few months ago with the lions gone for some time I heard a pack of coyotes yipping near the house. This was a sure sign to me the lion was gone, and while I have no fear of coyotes, I’d rather have that dangerous lion around ‘cause he kept the deer population down, and they eat my cactus. The coyotes will eat our cats. When you have lions around the coyotes stay away (they are pretty smart critters).

   Seasons come and go, the tides rise and fall, and populations and empires wax and wane. There is a time for everything, and we can only guess at and apply our learning to predict the future. Hope for the best, but prepare for the worse. As for me, I put a lot of trust in Mossburg, and Smith and Wesson.

The Rose
~Joe O.~

Blond, handsome, tall, blue eyes
Strong and proud in his uniformed guise
Proud to defend the “Fatherland” and Rhine
Walking back from the village
In the bright Bavarian sunshine
To his unit not far away
A smile in his heart
A girl on the path not far ahead
Standing near the old castle tower

“Guten morgen! A beautiful day.”
They speak their names, so much to say
An hour seems a minute on this day
“I must go.” he says. “Will I see you again?”
“I will be here tomorrow at ten.”
She gave him a rose from the bush nearby
They said auf wiedersehen, goodbye
They meet again, and again, and again
Giving themselves to each other in time

One day something new is on her dress
A star on her shoulder
To show her pride, they told her,
In being a Jew
A sign of unspoken foreboding, they knew.
“It does not change us.” they said.
“We will always be together.” they said.
We will meet here in secret
You will know I am here
When the rose is at the tower door
And the candle is in the window there.

They came in the night to take her away
To a place where she’d be happy, they’d say
He came the next day and there was the light
The rose was there, but the girl not in sight
He waited, and waited, and waited more
Until there was nothing but to go in the door
And the soldier was never seen again.

It is late evening, summer 1961
I walk from the village to the old castle door
I see a candle in the window above
As I get closer I meet an old man there
Tall and handsome his blue eyes show despair
“I’m waiting for her” is the first thing I hear
As he points to the castle door
I looked and a beautiful rose is there on the floor
I looked up and the candle light no longer shone
I turn to speak and the old man is gone
Was I dreaming? I rub my eyes
I turn back to the castle door
And there at the entrance sits the forlorn rose
Now clearly long dead on the floor

I have often seen a light in the tower
And I thought I heard boots on the stairs
I never saw the old man again
But always the rose is there.

    Santa Maria was originally known as ‘Central City’ due to the Central location it occupies on California’s coast. The name was eventually changed to Santa Maria because there were mail misroutings with another Central City in Colorado.
    Santa Maria has an old part of town with buildings built of brick which is generally not used for building material in this area anymore. Cruising through an alleyway behind a custom truck shop, I saw this old door, with it’s weights to help move the doors. It was such an old style and design, yet obviously functional, and made me think of how in the old days folks used ingenuity to help them accomplish tasks. It is a little snapshot of a time a hundred years ago.    My Dad used to have a cellar on their farm in the Missouri Ozarks, when he was a kid he enjoyed slamming the door of the cellar which was a ‘trap door’ style on the floor. It had a weight stack also to help one lift it since it was huge and heavy, but when slammed down would slam into the frame with much force and a terrifically (for a kid) loud slam. One day he did this not noticing the cat was sitting on the edge, with his tail over the frame. The door chopped the cat’s tail off, the cat screamed and ran off into the woods, but came back a few days later with the stub healing well. For the rest of his life that poor cat was a stub-tail, but it did not seem to affect him adversly after he healed.

  When I was a young kid I was raised with the old American work ethic that actually had much of it’s roots based deep in the old Prussian/Germanic concepts of morality, family and working hard and honestly for family and society. This concept took hold in the USA with a vengeance, yet after WWII in Germany the liberal concepts of social reform and ‘looking after others’ took precedence over working hard. Hard work was rewarded with punitive progressive taxation, and the worker saw his labor going to reward the welfare system and it’s layabouts and the administrators of the system who have much to lose if their ‘clients’ became productive citizens. For several decades now Germany has been mired in liberal idealism, fighting to show itself more ‘progressive’ than the highly vaunted Scandinavian societies (to whom they have always felt a little inferior in a racial sense). Now the German economy is in the doldrums with massive unemployment, high taxes, and a raft of people unable to resign themselves to working for about the same amount they would get on welfare.
   This is a system that the old Prussian dictators would see as intolerable, and in the old days they would line a few thousand people up to walls and have them shot, and the rest of the population would see the value in ‘honorable work’, the economy would rebound, the people would be happy workers, and society and the state would benefit. But now the liberal societies are having to perform a re-molding of character with a massive public relations and information campaign. This campaign is called You are the wings! You are the tree! You are Germany!
   I support the German government in this endeavor, Germany needs reforming, and the German character needs to find itself again. So long after the ruins of WWII have been scattered, and the smoking ashes have gone cold, still the ravages of that great conflict to liberate the people are causing suffering. This is the way of all wars, and Iraq will be no different.
   This is a little bit I took from the article.

    Optimism and confidence are based on the principle of achievement, which the campaign constantly calls upon. People who are confident that their efforts are constructive in some way create self-confidence, they are, as the campaign demands, prepared to take risks, they are mobile and flexible. But this is an experience many Germans have been incapable of having for a very long time. The principle of achievement is being overridden. There are - as everyone knows - too few jobs which allow people to prove their mettle and move upwards. Alternative job structures are at a very rudimentary level still, aside from the black market. And even among the employed there is a widespread suspicion that the future is in no way dependant on how hard you slog. In a situation like this, a call to give yourself a kick up the arse and start ripping up trees means little more than a call to vandalism. Because ripping up trees as a metaphor for performance no longer has much currency in most people’s lives.

   If liberalism gives us the ruined economies of Western Europe and the obliteration of the work ethic and defilement of the environment as happened in Eastern Europe, it is a wonder that there are people in this country who espouse liberalism.
   Thankfully we have not yet totally succumbed to these concepts, I hope we never do.
   If you wish to see the German Version for the internet of the campaign click here. I did, and I must admit, it made me miss Germany some.

It appears that the people with the most courage were the first to die here.
Maybe that is true everywhere
~Elena Filatova~

    Europe along with most of the rest of the world has seen a continuous succession of wars. Rarely is a generation allowed to go without some conflict between itself and some neighbors. When one studies history one can become quickly caught up in the futility of humankind; how our petty squabbles can degenerate into full-scale warfare and the killing of millions.

    And now I find a website with some really interesting first-hand amateur excavations along the sites of both ancient and more recent wars in the Ukraine. This is particularly fascinating to me since some of my own family fought in this area in the Second World War. The website is called The Serpents Wall due to the ancient town fortifications stretching for miles along the river.
    The author has a companion site called Gulag Tales in which she has stories she got from local inhabitants of the Soviet Prison System called the gulag (again, I had two uncles locked into that miasma, both of whom lived through the ordeal).
    And she also has another site; Chernobyl-Revisited, detailing her motorcycle rides through the Chernobyl area. She carries a Geiger counter and has information on the effects of radiation. It is a striking montage of photos of a place she calls ‘The Land of the Wolves’ as nature is now reclaiming this area from the humans who had to leave after the nuclear disaster of 1986.

Sometimes God picks the flower
That is still in full bloom;
Sometimes the rosebud’s chosen
That we feel he’s picked too soon.
Sometimes the flower is fading
With petals floating down,
But God knows the perfect time
To gather flowers from the ground.
There is a heavenly garden
In which God takes great pleasure
Because He’s placed within it
The loved ones that we treasure.
He walks among the blossoms
Giving them eternal rest,
And I know that it must please Him
Because He chose our very best.

Follow your dreams

    Follow your dreams, and work toward them with diligence and intelligence.
    Someday when you’re old and live in your mind, you will regret the dreams you never tried for, more than for the dreams you tried for that never made actualization.

    We watched ‘Racing Stripes’ tonight. It is a truly delightful movie about a zebra who aspires to be a Kentucky Derby Racer. The movie is made charming by all the animals that are anthropomorphized through digital effects and voice-over’s by well known stars.
    This movie is a characteristic Disney production in that it ignores reality, and shows the depths of life’s possibilities through extreme characterizations.
    But it also shows the realities of life in that what we aspire to accomplish, we can usually attain through perseverance, training, and proper preparation. And we should never let the nay Sayers stop us from our quest: to attain the highest level of excellence we can in whatever our chosen field may be.
    It is also such a special movie, that only the most hardened and bitter would not have tears at some time during the showing of this movie. And they would not be the ones to watch it anyway.
    The talking animals, from the singing jive-talking flies, the humble goat, the racing-technique smart but physically inadequate Shetland Pony, the gangster Pelican from New Jersey, and more all conspire together to help their zebra buddy realize his dream: to be a Kentucky Derby winner. And together, they all do it, and win the top honors.

    I’ve known people of all stripes (no pun intended) in my life, and the saddest ones were the ones who never had a dream, something high and lofty to reach for. To dream, is to reach far. But not to dream, that is a real sadness. Perhaps in some ways, dreams are more real than reality. For from the ether of dreams can come the reality of a fulfilling life.

    Don’t give up on your dreams, don’t give up on your life!

    Persistence is needed in life, and if you think you’ve had it hard on your clawing way to the top, think about what President Abraham Lincoln went through. We all have huge amounts of power in us, it is bred from all these generations of living through the adversities of life, and we can make it! But you can’t stop.

   The last e-mail I got from a good friend, just a few days before he died in a vehicle accident was “follow your dreams”.  And he was a fellow who worked hard and diligently for his dreams, he was in the process of selling his two homes in California and moving onto acreage in another state… he was driving to that new home when the accident happened. He was only a half year from retirement.  He got religion just weeks before the accident, and I’m glad he did. God Bless you Jay.

~Desiderata~
‘Max Ehrmann’

Go placidly amid the noise and haste,
and remember what peace there may be in silence.
As far as possible without surrender
be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly;
and listen to others,
even the dull and the ignorant;
they too have their story.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons,
they are vexations to the spirit.
If you compare yourself with others,
you may become vain and bitter;
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.

Keep interested in your own career, however humble;
it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs;
for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;
many persons strive for high ideals;
and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself.
Especially, do not feign affection.
Neither be cynical about love;
for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment
it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years,
gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.
But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.
Beyond a wholesome discipline,
be gentle with yourself.

You are a child of the universe,
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God,
whatever you conceive Him to be,
and whatever your labors and aspirations,
in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul.

With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful.
Strive to be happy.

Max Ehrmann, Desiderata, Copyright 1952.

‘One-Way Donkey Ride’
~Mary Black~

There you may stand in your splendor and jewels
Swaying me in both directions
One is the right one, the other for fools
How do I make my selection?
The city lies silent in the warm morning light
The sand is as golden as saffron
Oasis of love, sweet water of life
God bless the poor ones who have none though they have tried

Someone is drowning down there in the flood
But this river will dry by tomorrow
Is it ocean or stream, this love in my blood?
Bringer of joy or of sorrow?
The end of the journey must soon be in sight
Birth is the start of the swansong
Oasis of love, sweet water of life
God bless the poor ones who want some, but are denied

No one is given the map to their dreams
All we can do is to trace it
See where we go to, know where we’ve been
Build up the courage to face it
While we fumble in the darkness where once there was light
Roaming the land of the ancients
Oasis of love, sweet water of life
God bless the poor ones whose patience never died

While we stumble in blindness where once there was sight
Searching for trees in the forest
Oasis of love, sweet water of life
God bless the poor ones who have none though they have tried

God bless the poor ones who want some, but are denied
God bless the poor ones whose patience never died
God bless the poor ones on that one-way donkey ride

Originally Posted April 1, 2005

  Painted Ladies, the small butterflies that resemble the large monarchs have made a huge pilgrimage to the Central Coast the last couple days. Huge volleys of them roam the countryside, I see thousands crossing the highways before me. On my travels along the coast I have had my windshield splattered with yellow spots from their fragile bodies as I drive heedless and full of wonder through these little colorful denizens of the fields and vales.

   They make their yearly pilgrimage from Old Mexico to the hills of the American West at this time. And this year with the huge amount of rain and the recent warm weather their numbers that have survived the trek this far are beyond any I recall ever seeing.

   At this moment the world waits as a Pope lies dying in a dark room in the Vatican. This Pope, a deeply committed man, the idol of my deceased grandmother is soon to pass from this world. He will come into the arms of a loving Creator and will sit at the feast tables of the New Jerusalem. My thoughts and prayers go out to him, and to all who regard him with the high level of respect he has accrued throughout his papacy. He is a refined man, yet a common man, one of the men of the earth. Born into a common family in Poland, he worked with his hands as a young man, and never lost his touch and connection with the common man. On the wall in my grandmothers room to this day is a photo of the Pope. A photo of a strong man, firm of face and rugged in body and spirit. His connection to the peasants of Eastern Europe is perhaps what drew my grandmother to him. She was also of common peasant people of Eastern Europe, and the Nazi and Communist invasion of her homeland was the same as what the Pope encountered. Yet from both families, triumph from the ashes and smoking ruins of a devastated Europe was the end result. True, none of our family made it to the height of power and influence of the Pope, but when you come from starvation and nothing, to get to the point of even a warm house and plentiful food is a high achievement.

   And now, with butterflies stuck in my grill, and the sad news on the radio, I travel these lonely roads; alone, but not lonely. I am surrounded by the awesome beauty of these coastal hills, the verdant green, rolling on in wave after wave of velvet-lining over geologic formations squeezed and folded by seismic forces. The Pope came as a seismic force into our lives through Poland from God, and the butterflies come with the soft flutter of wings through Mexico from God. And my tires roll on, through the day, a continual succession of miles eaten up by rubber as my life continues, and the butterflies and the Pope die.

   God bless them all.