As readers know, mariner is an old fogie. He has learned, however, to pretend he still is a young person. He has also learned that, rather quickly, he is kidding himself. He has adopted a gardener’s life as a replacement for a career. As his wife will attest, he has more projects than he can handle and deliberately sustains this overload. “Keeps me thinking”, he says.

One project was to build a rabbit-proof garden space for vegetables, plant management and a supply depot for the tools and paraphernalia associated with gardening. Well, mixed with all the other chores associated with gardening, the project was not moving. Add to that the mariner’s constant trope that he belongs to a special union that requires him to work eight hours a day but allows him two and a half days to complete it, and there is no hope that his physical limitations and his work plan together were achievable.

Enter a life-long friend living on the East Coast. Last November, he traveled to mariner’s home in Iowa for a week to set posts and make gates. The weather that week had temperatures in the thirties with constant snow, sleet and rain, and a soil of a very muddy nature. Still, with great persistence, he set the posts and made the gates.

He returned this past week with a wonderful new girl friend as well. He set the fencing while his girl friend weeded mariner’s gardens. Needless to say, this was not a come-and-go event. It took a lifetime of mutual support in life’s good times and bad times for their allegiance to become firm and unchallenged. Unlike the political clouds and economic storms that make up life today, these personal experiences among genuine friends (and family) are what REAL life is like.

Try to find a pattern of life that depends on genuinely loved friends and family. Use it or lose it.

As to the other reality, from a stratospheric view, Armageddon progresses.

Ancient Mariner