Our Five Year Retirement Anniversary 3/22/2012

Quotation To Remember: Middle age is when work is a lot less fun and fun is a lot more work.? ~Author Unknown

O, blest retirement! friend to life's decline -
How blest is he who crowns, in shades like these,
A youth of labor with an age of ease!
~Oliver Goldsmith

Quotation To Remember: The trouble with retirement is that you never get a day off.? ~Abe Lemons

Quotation To Remember: When a man retires and time is no longer a matter of urgent importance, his colleagues generally present him with a watch.? ~R.C. Sherriff

Quotation To Remember: When a man retires, his wife gets twice the husband but only half the income.? ~Chi Chi Rodriguez

Quotation To Remember: Life begins at retirement.? ~Author Unknown

Quotation To Remember: A retired husband is often a wife's full-time job.? ~Ella Harris

Retired is being twice tired, I've thought
First tired of working,
Then tired of not.
~Richard Armour

Did You Know? - A meadow is a field vegetated primarily by grass and other non-woody plants (grassland). The term is from Old English m?dwe. In agriculture a meadow is grassland which is not grazed by domestic livestock but rather allowed to grow unchecked in order to make hay. It may be naturally occurring or artificially created from cleared woodland.

Quotation To Remember: I've been attending lots of seminars in my retirement.? They're called naps.? ~Merri Brownworth

Quotation To Remember: Retirement:? It's nice to get out of the rat race, but you have to learn to get along with less cheese.? ~Gene Perret

Did You Know? - Wisteria (also spelled Wistaria) is a genus of flowering plants in the pea family, Fabaceae, that includes ten species of woody climbing vines native to the eastern United States and to China, Korea, and Japan. Aquarists refer to the species Hygrophila difformis, in the family Acanthaceae, as Water Wisteria. Some species are popular ornamental plants, especially in China and Japan.

Did You Know? - Wisteria vines climb by twining their stems either clockwise or counter-clockwise round any available support. They can climb as high as 20 m above the ground and spread out 10 m laterally. The world's largest known Wisteria vine is in Sierra Madre, California, measuring more than 1 acre (0.40 ha) in size and weighing 250 tons, planted in 1894 of the Chinese lavender variety.

Did You Know? - Iris is a genus of 260-300 species of flowering plants with showy flowers. It takes its name from the Greek word for a rainbow, referring to the wide variety of flower colors found among the many species.

Quotation To Remember: I'm retired - goodbye tension, hello pension!? ~Author Unknown

Retirement: World's longest coffee break.? ~Author Unknown

Quotation To Remember: Retirement has been a discovery of beauty for me.? I never had the time before to notice the beauty of my grand kids, my wife, the tree outside my very own front door.? And, the beauty of time itself.? ~Hartman Jule

Did You Know? - Camellias are evergreen and small trees up to 20 meters tall. Their leaves are alternately arranged, simple, thick, serrated, and usually glossy.Their flowers are usually large and conspicuous, one to 12 cm in diameter, with five to nine petals in naturally occurring species of camellias. The colors of the flowers vary from white through pink colors to red; truly yellow flowers are found only in South China and North Vietnam.

Did You Know? - Windows and doors are an important architectural feature of the Chinese garden. Sometimes they are round (moon windows or a moon gate) or oval, hexagonal or octagonal, or in the shape of a vase or a piece of fruit. Sometimes they have highly ornamental ceramic frames. They window may carefully frame a branch of a pine tree, or a plum tree in blossom, or another intimate garden scene.

Did You Know? - A moon bridge is a highly arched pedestrian bridge, which in its wooden form may require the walker to initially climb (as one would a ladder) and also when descending. This type is associated with gardens in China and Japan. The moon bridge originated from China and was later introduced to Japan.

This type of bridge was originally designed as a means to allow pedestrians to cross canals while allowing the passage of barges beneath. When constructed using the climbing ascent and descent this had the further advantage of not using space from the adjoining fields for approaches.

As part of formal garden design the bridge will be placed where its reflection is seen when the water is still. The half circle is intended to reflect in the calm water below the bridge, creating a full circle between bridge and reflection, a reference to the shape of the full moon.