What I am Reading

Reimagining Church
By Frank Viola

This is a stellar book. Proper church community in my life, not the apostate spectator sport most churches are today, is what is missing.

If it isn't already in my community then we will build it.

Frog Pond

As Sam and Fang run along the edge of the pond,  frogs leap for safety into the cooling water. The small green lives are ignored by the dogs whose only interest is in their rowdy play. Eventually the dogs will find the water and return to leap on me with muddy paws.

The frogs in the water surface to glare back at the interlopers. Their small heads dot the pond in the last rays of the evening sun. Soon the pond will belong only to the vast clouds of mosquitoes, who would find any warm blooded spectator to be a Godsent boon beyond imagining.

Proper Pentas

Some of the Pentas look a little wilty but most are doing fine. The bees ignore them so far. The flowers cost little and require no work. This time of the year they fill the spaces where vegetables died. They provide us with beauty and that pays their rent.

The coons are enjoying the prickly pear we did not harvest. We took our fill and left the rest. Seed-studded crap piles can be found scattered about. The cactus and its plans for world domination are evidently served by these nocturnal beasts.

The pond can now be walked across, with the water deeper than my head only in about an eight foot gap in the center. No rain in the forecast. Still we hold on. Plenty left for our needs and the garden.

The heat now is brutal. We have about two more weeks to endure it until the summer begins to wind down. A daily swim makes it easier.

Life here is good. This place feeds the soul in ways I've never known.

It's a Boy!

Praise God! My friend Kelly and his wife delivered a healthy baby boy in the wee hours of the morning. She's been about a week overdue so we've been praying for a healthy arrival and God did not disappoint.

Kelly has been helping me finish up the workshop and we're now at a point where it is clearly a two man job. So while he takes maybe a two week break from the work, I threw a tarp up to complete this big knife order I've had pending. It's not the best solution, but we must endure. I can make this work out ok so long as we don't get a torrential rain and mighty wind.

So we're back in the knife business!

Beauty in the garden

Is there any vegetable flower more beautiful than that of the okra plant?

Taller

The workshop is getting taller. Another week or two and I hope to be done. Work mostly occurs now only on Thursday and Friday when I have the other men here to help. From here out it requires more teamwork.

God willing, these walls will stand for decades and my sons may even put this structure to good use.

Flowers for Ernie

We're having a problem here in that our honeybees don't have enough forage to eat at this part of the summer. The big blooms are mostly done and everything is sort of just simmering in the heat. There's a few things blooming here and there (mostly in my garden) but not enough to keep my bees going. They've been dipping into their honey supplies and lack the forage to resupply.

So I went to the garden center today and loaded up on flowers. I planted two big flats of something called "pentas" simply because at the store there were bees all over them going crazy. So if town bees like them then I guess my country girls will too. I also got a couple of oleander bushes (trees?) and some honeysuckle. We're going flower crazy here.

I've never had the time nor inclination for ornamentals but these are both permaculture AND forage for my bees. In a strange way, flowers will help us survive. I had never considered that before.

So we'll make the desert bloom.

(NOTE: Yes, I know I do not live in the technical desert. The geotype I live in is called "arid scrubland", not desert, but since I spend most of my days walking on sand and rocks in 100+ degree heat then it's close enough to a desert for me. About 40 miles west of me the land drops off the mesa down into the actual desert. Of an evening when the wind turns then sometimes the deep desert sands blow up and turn the sunset blood red.)

It's a visually stunning place.