08 Feb 2004 #0406.html

Greenhouse

. . .

Dear Paul and Kate, Melanie and Jared, Bridget and Justin, Sara, Ben and Sarah, Heather, Audrey, Rachel, and Matt via hardcopy,

cc: file, Andrea, Tony Hafen, Sara and Des Penny, & Maxine Shirts

Welcome to "Thoughtlets." This is a weekly review of an idea, belief, thought, or words that will hopefully be of some benefit to you, my children, with an electronic copy to on-line extended family members. Any of you can ask me not to clutter your mail box at any time.

"Several times this week I have thought about these Thoughtlets.

On Wednesday I finally caught up with sending Sara hardcopies of past Thoughtlet's, which I had got behind on printing out, and had not mailed to her in Africa. I'm still 20 behind in giving Matt hardcopies of Thoughtlets, since he doesn't have an e-mail account he regularly signs on and reads. Both Roice and Rob came by this week, and as you can tell by the MAIL TO list for the last several years, they have each requested to be removed from the Thoughtlet e-mail list. So whenever I see them, I think about this effort and wonder if it will ever be of any use to them. I wonder if it is of any use to the others who receive these notes, and sometimes epistles, and never have time to read them, or who simply trash them. Then I think about how I wish my Dad, my Mom, my Grandparents, and others had taken the time to leave more description of their legacy, of my heritage, and I re-resolve to keep up the effort.

Andrea recorded Joan of Arcadia on Friday evening, because we went to a Seminary Teacher dinner and satellite broadcast. It was about a High School Debate Team, with - what is becoming THE common subplot in the media more and more controlled by a few homosexual writers - graphic descriptions of someone who beat up on a gay pastor with a baseball bat. The part that got me thinking about Thoughtlets was where Joan helped a boy who stutters recognize he found his voice in writing. As I heard this, I thought, `Even if few read the stuff I write, in a very real way, that is what the Thoughtlets have done for me, they have helped me find my voice.' Of course, it has proven worthwhile to have a companion who cares, who sees things which I am blind to, and who is willing to edit things which distract from getting my points across. Thanks Andrea.

Yesterday, as Andrea and I cleaned out the greenhouse, I was wondering what to write about this week. I realized I have been doing this for 7 1/3 years, and I still seem to find more and more to write about each week. The only time I duplicated a name and did not realize it was with the title Book (../9822.html), which I renamed the duplication as Book II (../0342.html). There has been some replication of content, and yet not nearly as much as there is in other areas of my life: like family - kids going through the same stages and discovering the same things anew; church - repeating basic principles again and again and again through reading the scriptures again and again and seeing new meaning each time; and work - where each interpretation project or geophysical concept follows the same basic process over and over. As Andrea and I were working in the greenhouse, and as my mind went back to the years when I put a lot of time into growing things in the greenhouse, I realized I have never written about the greenhouse on the south-southeast corner of our house.

This week seemed particularly full, and so there are a lot of different things I could write about.

There were family things, including the visits from Roice and Rob, receiving a Christmas present in February, Jared's birthday, Melanie's status as she enters the final stages of her pregnancy, Matt's on-going struggle with school and with grades, my struggles with finances and not closing any of the very good opportunities I keep working on - yet, Andrea's creative teaching of seminary - including having the kids build an alter to Baal in the Relief Society Room when the carpets had been taken out to be replaced and there was little issue of making a mess as water was poured on the sticks to soak them before Elijah called fire out of the sky to consume the alter (she didn't demonstrate the last part), etc.

There were church things. For instance, I taught all of the Young Women last week, so the teachers could all go to a special Relief Society meeting with the Stake Leaders. I was asked to talk about the importance of the Home Environment and creating an environment where the spirit of the Lord can dwell. I could write a book about my thoughts regarding this. It is lesson 5, and I covered all of the points in the lesson. I also sang `The Wooden Shoe' as an introduction (../9806.html), and `I Once Saw a Family' as a conclusion (../9652.html). Somewhere in the middle I had the girls take turns reading The Nellie Unthank Story. In fact, I think this story is so important, I'm going to repeat it here, before I talk about the greenhouse. And before I repeat it, I remind you that one of the reasons for sending these Thoughtlets is so you kids have a source of reference material where you can go for talks or papers or pondering or to escape for a while. The thing that struck me as I read this story in preparation for the lesson was that it was written by William R. Palmer for the Instructor in April of 1944. He writes about recalling Nellie Unthank. I remember Dr. Palmer. Mom used to take me to see his museum of Southern Utah Indian artifacts and she introduced me to him. His interest in science was one of the reasons I became interested in science. And he wrote:

`Privation and hardships were the common lot of the pioneers who braved a home in the Great Basin. These conditions repeat themselves with such universality in early Utah life that they may be taken for granted. But there is a story unlike any other and surpassing most of them in the qualities of sheer heroism. It is the story of a woman who in spite of crushing handicaps carried on the highest mission of womanhood nor asked for pity or assistance that was not bestowed upon all wives and housemothers. Her name was Ellen Purcell Unthank, but she was called Nellie by her friends and kinsfolk. Nature did not bestow uncommon beauty of form or features upon her, and circumstances denied her the advantages of education and culture, but the master sculptor, time, chiseled deep, strong lines of courage, strength, patience and kindness upon her face. Year in and year out she scarcely moved outside the limits of her own dooryard. Pain was the price of every step she took, and her physical world was bounded by the vision from her own humble doorstep. Nellie, when a child of 9 years of age, left her home in England to come with her parents and sister to Utah where they could worship with others of their faith and assist in building a new Zion here. She was youngest in a family of thirteen. The father worked hard in the factory but there was never enough income from his labor to supply the family with more than the barest necessities. The circumstances of the family in England were such that the children were often put to bed without supper so that the missionaries who chanced to call might be given food to eat. Nellie's mother, Margaret Perren Purcell, attended the first meeting of the Mormon church in England. It was held in the Rev. James Fielding's church, Vauxhall Chapel, in Preston, July 30, 1837. Only eight days after that first meeting, nine converts were baptized by Heber C. Kimball in the River Ribble. Two days later another baptismal service was held and Margaret Perren Purcell was one who accepted the ordinance on that occasion. She was probably the second woman in England to be confirmed a member of the church, the first being Miss Jeannetta Richards with whom Margaret raced to the water's edge. Great prejudice developed at once against the new church because of its claims to new revelation and a restored Priesthood, and some who joined were afraid to let the fact be known. Three months after Margaret Purcell was baptized, her husband, Samuel Purcell, much troubled in mind about what might happen, made the humble confession to his wife that he had secretly joined the Mormons. The joy of both was beyond expression when she confessed to him that she, too, had joined the church a month earlier than he, and had prayed every day that he would see the light and accept it. May 2, 1856, the father and mother with two children, Maggie, age 14, and Nellie, age 9, sailed from Liverpool on the ship Horizon for America. On the vessel were eight hundred fifty-six saints bound for their Zion in Utah. Unable for financial reasons to purchase wagon outfits to cross the plains, many of this company of emigrants under Captain Edward Martin stopped nine weeks at Iowa Hill to build handcarts. It was July 27 before they were ready to make the start. Because they were to pull their own provisions and supplies by hand, the weight of their loading was cut to the last possible pound. No extra clothing or bedding or food or cooking utensils could be taken. If the nights grew cold in the mountains, they could double up or build camp fires to supplement the warmth of their bodies. As long as the weather remained open, they made excellent progress and they were a happy, marching, singing army on their way to Zion. As they passed Florence, Nebraska, there were 576 persons in the company and one hundred forty-five handcarts. Trouble fell fast and heavy upon these brave souls when snows began to fall upon them as they reached the mountains. They were poorly clad and with insufficient bedding to sleep warm, and the prairie fuel, the buffalo chips, was soon covered deep in the snow. Food ran short and the daily rations were repeatedly cut until they reached almost the vanishing point. Still the company struggled on. Deaths were now occurring every day. The aged and the weak sat down to rest and never arose again. Every morning there were some whose eyes never opened to see the new day. The dead were wrapped in a sheet and buried in the snow for no one had the strength to dig a hole in the frozen earth. The church sent men in the spring to inter these bodies, but wolves had done their work and few of the scattered bones could be identified. Nellie's parents were among those who died and were laid to rest in snow banks. But those who died and were laid to rest in the snow, perhaps were most fortunate of all. They were through with their suffering and had gone to their reward. President Brigham Young in Salt Lake City, knowing that the handcart company was out on the plains, grew very anxious about them. Winter hand set in early and he knew they were out in the snow. At the opening session of the October Conference he called for volunteers to go at once to their rescue, and some teams were started before nightfall. The handcart company was found almost buried in snow sixteen miles above the Platte River bridge. Nellie Purcell had here tenth birthday there. The company was in a truly pitiful condition. They were dying fast from starvation and cold and nearly all of them had frozen hands and feet and ears. The two orphaned children, Maggie, age 14, and Nellie, now 10, had no relatives to especially look after them. Nellie's feet were badly frozen. The rescue wagons gathered them up and took the sufferers to Salt Lake City, where the church saw to it that they were cared for. Poor little Nellie, nothing could be done to save her feet. When they took off her shoes and stockings, the skin with pieces of flesh came off too. The doctor said her feet must be taken off to save her life. They strapped her to a board and without an anesthetic the surgery was performed. With a butcher's knife and a carpenter's saw, they sawed the blackened limbs off. It was poor surgery, too, for the flesh was not brought over to cushion the ends. The bones stuck out through the ends of her stomps and in pain she waddled through the rest of her life on her knees. Nellie and Maggie came with handcart friends to Cedar City, and both of them married here. Maggie became the wife of Jack Walker, and reared a large family. Nellie became the plural wife of William Unthank, and she, too, raised a goodly family. William Unthank's first wife, Mary Ann, was a cultivated English lady but she bore him no children. She encouraged William to take another wife, and he took two. Ellen Pucell and Margaret Smith were sealed to him on the same day and in the same ceremony. Margaret was a widow and had a little home. William built a little house for Nellie just across the dooryard from Mary Ann. Mary Ann was kind to Nellie. She waited upon her in sickness and helped her raise her children. She took one little girl and reared her as her own. While William was building that little adobe house in Mary Ann's backyard, Nellie lived in a one-room log house in the lower end of town. It had one door and two windows, a dirt floor and a fireplace with a smooth rock hearth before it. Nellie kept dampening and scraping that dirt floor until she had it as hard and smooth as pavement. That floor was never swept. It was mopped up every day with a damp rag and no spot of dust or stain was ever left upon it. Every Saturday the hearth was whitened, clean muslin curtains were hung at the windows and around the goods boxes which served as cupboards. Old timers who remember, say Nellie's little log home was neat and cozy, and there was a fragrance in its very cleanliness. Those stumps were festering, running sores as long as she lived. She never knew a moment of freedom from pain. To her, pain and suffering were the normal condition, and freedom from it was the rare moments of forgetfulness. Dr. Geo. W. Middleton offered to trim her legs up by cutting the bones off further up and bringing the flesh down over the ends so they would heal and enable her to wear artificial limbs, but the horrors of that first amputation were so vivid in her memory that she could never consent to another operation. And so Nellie Unthank waddled through life on her knees. In poverty and pain she reared a family of six children nor asked for favors of pity or charity because of her tragic handicap. William was a poor man and unable to provide fully for his family; so Nellie did all she could for herself. She took in washings. Kneeling by a tub on the floor she scrubbed the clothes to whiteness on the washboard. She knitted stockings to sell, carded wool, and crocheted table pieces. She seldom accepted gifts or charity from friends or neighbors unless a bundle of darning or mending came with them which she could do to repay the kindness. The Bishop and the Relief Society sometimes gave a little assistance, which Nellie gratefully accepted. But once a year, to even the score, she took her children and cleaned the meetinghouse. The boys carried water, the girls washed the windows, and Nellie, on her knees, scrubbed the floor. This heroic woman gave to William Unthank a posterity to perpetuate his name in the earth, and he gave her a home and a family to give comfort and care to her old age. In memory I recall her wrinkled forehead, her soft dark eyes that told of toil and pain and suffering, and the deep grooves that encircled the corners of her strong mouth. But in that face there was no trace of bitterness or railings at her fate. There was patience and serenity, for in spite of her handicap she had earned her keep and justified her existence. She had given more to family, friends, and to the world than she had received.'


The theme of my message to the Young Women was that they need to keep their room clean, like Nellie kept her cabin clean. For, quoting Delbert L. Stapely in the October 1974 Conference:

`Good habits are not acquired simply by making good resolves, though the thought must precede the action. Good habits are developed in the workshop of daily lives. It is not in the great moments of test and trial that character is built. That is only when it is displayed. The habits that direct or lives and form our character are fashioned in the often uneventful, commonplace routine of life. They are acquired by practice.'


And I told the Young Women, this starts with keeping their rooms clean. Monday morning when Andrea came back from Seminary, she said when she asked the girls about my lesson, one of them said, `I went home and cleaned up my room.' Then Tuesday night the missionaries came over for dinner, and I went out on splits with them. But I wasn't going to write about the church things. I am going to write about the greenhouse.

There were work things I could write about. I had interesting meetings with a group called Seismic Insight, who are out of Bountiful, Utah, and who are doing a geostatistical approach to unraveling seismic data. I kind of expected the topic for this week would be NAPE, for it was the North American Prospect Expo on Thursday and Friday, and I spent both days at the new and expanded George R. Brown Convention Center. There were a lot of interesting discussions, promising leads, and I really don't want to write about any of these until one or more turns into an actual contract which will allow to meet our financial commitments and to get out of debt.

So I decided to write about the greenhouse. The story of the greenhouse starts in Dallas and with the conversion of a young man whose name, I believe, was Brian Lavery. Bryan lives in Homestead, Florida now. We were kindred souls. Bryan ran a commercial greenhouse in Dallas. I was his Elder's Quorum President. I would go over and work with him in his greenhouses. I loved the work. We were close friends. Once one of the big ice storms hit Dallas, and Brian's heaters went out. He was going to loose everything he had growing. I made a run across town on the ice streets to help him heat up the greenhouses. It was a scary experience.

We lived on Hanover Street, just north of Lover's Lane. It was our first house. I liked the house because it had a greenhouse in the back. Bryan helped me set it up so we could grow a lot of material. I learned about perlite from Bryan. I learned how to mix mulch, sand, and perlite and to fill flats full of pots at the same time. And I learned how to pull off branches from plants and to create hanging baskets. I grew dozens of hanging baskets in the greenhouse on Hanover Street. I saw this as a way to make extra money, and the only thing I never figured out was how to go about selling the plants. I didn't want to do it, and did not know anyone else who wanted to. I just wanted to grow the plants and to enjoy working in the greenhouse. We had a neighbor that thought we had a commercial establishment in our back yard, and she reported us for breaking the homeowner's deed. It was a hassle. That and the fact we only had a two bedroom house and Roice and Ben were about to be joined by Paul was the reason we sold the house on Hanover Street, with it's beautiful little greenhouse, and moved across the street from Ed and Carole Gray on Lockmore.

And that was the end of having a greenhouse for several years. Yes, we grew tomatoes and had a garden on Lockmore Lane, and on Blue Quail Drive in Missouri City. But it wasn't until Landmark went public and we finally had some money that it was time to put in another greenhouse. And then we had the problems with the neighbors on Emerald Green. It was against the deed restrictions to put in a greenhouse. I had my lawyer, Ed Rogers, call the homeowner's association. This wasn't a very good move. Roice's friend Andy Bowling's Dad, who lived across the street and down a couple of houses was the person I ended up negotiating with. We put up a 9 foot fence to hide the greenhouse, and lowered the greenhouse by 4 feet, so it didn't come off of the edge of the roof. And finally we got approval to put it in.

The greenhouse represents Kolob, or the source of the original DNA which was used to populate planet Earth with different species, each after their own kind, as described in the different scriptural accounts of the the creation story, in Paul and Kate's painting of the backyard. The greenhouse was where I chose to have my photo taken for the teleconference in December of 1990 (http://www.walden3d.com/w3d/papers). According to my spreadsheet of production from the greenhouse it was the 16th of January 1991 when I picked the first tomato from the greenhouse. It had a value of $16,451.21. The spreadsheet says I ate it after Melanie refused to eat it. I gave the second tomato to Sherry Sump, my administrative assistant, on the 22nd of January. On the 26th of January I gave three tomatoes to the Principals at HyperMedia, and on the 29th I gave six tomatoes to the ward welfare committee. This meant I had delivered or eaten 11 tomatoes, and the cost per tomato had dropped to $1,495.56 each.

Over the next few years I came up with a tomato index:

2 Green Peppers per Tomato 8 Jalopenia Peppers per Tomato 19 Bean Seeds per Tomato 4 Ounces of Beans per Tomato 4 Cherry Tomatoes per Tomato 0.25 Ounces of Ginger per Tomato 4 Ears of Corn per Tomato


By April 22nd of 1991 I was down to $181.78 value per tomato. This did not include additional costs for seeds, mulch, gas to heat and run the swamp cooler, etc. Then the greenhouse got hit by white fly and everything died. The next entry was not until May 8th of 1992, when I recorded picking 2 Jalapeno Peppers. By December 25th of 1992 the value per tomato equivalent was down to $91.71 each. The next year was not very strong. In fact the last entry in the spreadsheet is on June 15th of 1993, and the value was down to $59.87 per tomato equivalent. This was for a tomato equivalent cumulative count of 274.78 picked tomatoes. And then HyperMedia collapsed, and I'm still recovering from the financial failure of that experience. There have been a lot of Aloe Vera plants and air plants that have come out of the greenhouse since then. However, they were not counted, and they really don't have a nutritional equivalence to tomatoes, so the next tomato grown in the green house will still cost about $59.00, based on the original investment. Hopefully we will do better when we build a greenhouse as part of a new kind of city or as the base unit of a thermal power tower up the side of Cedar Mountain. As was discussed with both Paul and Melanie tonight, `all these things are for our good and give us experience' (Melanie thought this should be the theme of the thoughtlet this week).

Anyway, I have not done much in the greenhouse for the last 10 years. The single leaf of Air Plant picked up in Hawaii on the way back from China once kind of took over the greenhouse. Along with the ginger plant from Nell Turner, and the Aloe Vera from my Dad. When the swamp cooler rusted completely out, I pulled it out of the greenhouse. I tried to grow a hanging basket once, and it died from lack of water when I got busy or went on a trip. I had problems with plants dying from too much water, which I found out by sending samples to Texas A&M University. It has been a good experience for me, and it is certainly not an example in cost justifiable spending, at least not based on $59.87 per tomato equivalent.

A couple of years ago Andrea and I cleaned the greenhouse out and planted a couple of hundred aloe vera plants. We did this again on Saturday. It took from 10:00 until 2:00. It does look a lot better than it did. And now we need to figure out what to do with a couple of hundred aloe vera plants. Melanie, do your Young Women need a fund raising project for camp?

Saturday after picking up Matt from work at the Mall, Andrea and I went to see Miracle, the new Disney movie about the U.S. Hockey Team. It is a good movie, and even though I'm not much of a sports fan, I enjoyed the movie. At the end it showed photos of the actors and told who they represented and what the person was doing now. I thought it was saying what the actors were doing, and Andrea corrected me. It is worth everyone going to see, and it would be worthwhile for three grandsons to see in the next years. It does depict how much work is required of a real champion.

Today was quiet. In Sacrament Meeting I wrote another possible stanza for Prime Words based on a talk by William Townsend, a relatively new member of the ward:

`Each of us are commanded to repent Avoiding the consequences of suffering Providing joy to our Savior for the blood he spent As we do our part to achieve salvation'


The dinner/broadcast for seminary institute teachers on Friday night came to my mind a few times today. President Packard, Acting President of the Quorum of the 12 Apostles, was the main speaker. He warned that the world is only going to get worse and worse, and that we must work in our homes to protect children from the Satanic flood that is and will cover the earth. He also pointed out how much stronger the youth of the church are today, than they have been at any time in the history of the world. Seminary is an important program, and this fact certainly came through in the evening's talks. I was particularly touched with his testimony of Jesus Christ. He started off talking about the sudden end of World War II, and of his being on a tiny spec of an island in the South Pacific, and going to the top of a cliff and watching the waves, and deciding he was going to dedicate his life to being a teacher. Then at the end of his talk he said, `I know no more now that Jesus is the Savior of the world than I did when I sat on that tiny spec of an island in the South Pacific 60 years ago. But now I know the Lord.' A statement not unlike Dr. Palmer's words: `But in that face there was no trace of bitterness or railings at her fate. There was patience and serenity . . .'

The same kind of feelings I have found, and hope to find again, in my greenhouse."

I'm interested in sharing weekly a "thoughtlet" (little statements of big thoughts which mean a lot to me) with you because I know how important the written word can be. I am concerned about how easy it is to drift and forget our roots and our potential among all of distractions of daily life. To download any of these thoughtlets go to http://www.walden3d.com/thoughtlets or e-mail me at rnelson@walden3d.com.

With all my love,
Dad
(H. Roice Nelson, Jr.)

. . .

Copyright © 2004 H. Roice Nelson, Jr.