Feeling Blue

We English speakers have such an odd language, and yes, you Brits and Aussies are included.  It's not like I don't read your stuff and there certainly are plenty of you in the United States.  No worries mate, unless you are here to tell us how much better it is in your home country.  We almost speak the same language.  I do get a kick out of our differing names for things.

Blue is usually such a pretty color.  Most of the time, when there are no clouds, the sky is blue.  Where did we get the phrase, "feeling blue?"  As my RN wife could tell you, if you are really blue, you got a lot more problems than a case of sadness.

Yesterday, because the rain just never let up, everything was soggy, the backyard maintained a depth of about two inches, constantly fed by the water cascading down the mountainside. When the back yard can hold no more, multiple little creeks crossed the yard and on both sides of the gravel driveway, on the way down to the road and on to the real creek, now so full and rushing so furiously that it looks like rapids.

Twyla and I talked a bit about how oppressive it seems after 48 hours.  Ah, we humans.  The weather constantly gives us wonderful variety, yet we kvetch about it. The slowly encroaching static and statist condition that is far from our skin, but threatens to enslave us, we ignore.  If you haven't noticed yet, I digress a lot.





The poor chickens are having to tromp around in the muck.  Nothing I can do about it.  I try to keep the pen for the little chicks covered as much as possible with the plastic sheeting, but that can't keep the water from flowing underneath, and at times the sudden gusts of wind can blow the plastic off, even with twenty pound pieces of granite on top.

I chopped up some broccoli and cabbage leaves and picked some lettuce to hand feed the chickens.  If I just put it in a bowl or plate, they would have scratched a bunch of it into the mud and ruined it.  Except for looking at how well my vegetables are doing, the sight outside was a bit depressing.

Twyla was in town most of the day running errands.  Except for a little time spent outside between waves of rain, my time inside was split up by many things. Research for a fisking of Mr. Mark Ames.  Pureeing of soft cooked chicken and turkey bones for dog food. Grinding of several grains to make a couple of loaves of bread. Tending to seedlings in the greenhouse/porch. Glancing at the radar loop that showed a line of thundershowers from Pensacola up through Boone, NC.  Gotta learn how to get those screen shots.

I've had too many things happen to me throughout my life to prove to me beyond a reasonable doubt that there are no coincidences.  I mean amazing things.  Some of them were really hard to live through and deal with.  So I try to look for the good in whatever circumstances I'm in.  Am I always successful?  Oh, no.  But I keep trying.  And yesterday I found myself kvetching about the weather, even though I know that "this too, shall pass."

Unfortunately, some people can't remember that.  Last night, as Twyla and I lay in bed watching a somewhat inspirational movie, "Hachi," a call came.  Someone we hadn't talked to in months.  A friend is dead.  Shot himself.

I don't know whether to be more saddened or grateful that he was not much more than a good acquaintance. Like someone at work whom you get along great with, but you just don't have much interaction with.  And as life is just so much irony, he didn't seem like the type to do it.  Retired, seemingly well-off, with a nice house up here in God's country.  Kids he seemed to be proud of and who seemed to love him.  A sweet and pretty wife who doted on him.

But he'd suffered a stroke several months back that left him very lame on one side.  Having been a very active man, I guess he just got tired of feeling like an invalid, feeling useless.  Nothing grates at a real man more than feeling useless.  Ergo, you won't find me criticizing him for what he did.  My Master and Savior knows how many times I have come very close to the same conclusion, but His grace intervened.

I would not normally use this blog to pick on a particular sect of Christianity, even though being a follower of the Messiah and one who studies the Scripture carefully gives me every right to point out error and correct it. The idea that my friend is in hell because of this particular choice he made is a bit angering.  It would be silly to be angry about something you know isn't true.  What angers me is the anguish it creates in the hearts of the surviving loved ones.  I find it silly to believe that the Jews at Masada, who drew lots to decide who slew which families and then each other, rather than be taken by the Romans, would then be assigned to eternal punishment.  The same goes for the thousands of Jews in the Polish ghetto or in the concentration camps during Hitler's holocaust.  Scripture tells me that King Saul fell on his own sword after being wounded, but that he was then "gathered to his people."

I believe there is a hell, alright. Not because I want to, but because the only man who ever raised other people from the dead and then Himself said that it's a fact.   But I believe the only people there are the ones who wanted to go there; who chose great evil over the mercy of their Creator.  Who they are and why I cannot know until I get to the other side.  Until then, I'll not waste time trying to judge that issue.  There's a lot of other things that need to be judged that I can actually do something about.

I'm grateful to my now departed friend for making me aware of how much I have to be grateful for.

Mountain Rain

Having been a Florida boy for most of my life, rain in the mountains is something different.  There are times when  we are actually in the bottoms of the clouds, which is like being in a thick fog while it's raining.  Something I never experienced in Florida.  A hard rain in the mountains is nothing like a hard rain in Central or South Florida.  I've been in rain on the road that was so hard, you couldn't see the end of your hood.  Wipers on high were merely there to let you know you couldn't see any farther than that.  I was once caught in a downpour on Hillsborough Avenue in Tampa that had come down so hard and so fast that the runoff into the storm sewer system was causing manhole covers in the road to dance.  I'm pretty sure there are some people who find that hard to believe, but it's true.  Water was ejecting straight up into the air through the hook hole and around the edges.  Made me think of Noah's flood and the passage that talks about the fountains of the deep breaking open.

I'm glad we don't really get anything like that here. At least I haven't experienced it and haven't heard any of the locals say that it has happened.  Yesterday it rained softly pretty much all day long.  Occasionally the wind picked up a little, which had me going out to straighten or adjust the plastic sheeting over the chicks or on one of the arks.

I moved the chicks to the flat area behind the house, up from the area near the azaleas in the front most part of the yard. They are up against the beginning of the steep rise up to the next road above our house.  After putting the plastic sheeting on, I piled leaves in between the hill and the cage to provide some more insulation and hold the edge of the sheeting down.  They all seem quite content there.  The nice thing is that we can sit at the dining room table and eat or study Torah and look up and see them all there, just beyond the back porch.

We had had five straight days of dry cool weather with mostly sun.  It was quite nice, since it allowed me to be out in the yard cutting firewood wearing nothing but shorts and producing copious amounts of vitamin D.  I  think I'm beginning to see a connection between the vitamin D and sleeping better.  I'm really glad to see that most of that stupid hysteria about tanning is beginning to wane. That bunch of pseudo science and the bunk about salt have always been a thorn to me.

Because of the rain, we didn't let the fire die out in the late morning so we could clean the stove out and start fresh.  The previous three days, I wouldn't even light the fire until after 21:00.  Even CassPurr noticed the chill that becomes more felt from all that moisture in the air.  Several times a day he would end up laying at just the right distance from the stove.

About once an hour, we just toss in one or two small logs or pieces.  You could tell if the stove was hungry just by walking through the kitchen.  When I was cutting wood out in the yard the other day, I looked around our yard and just marveled at the amount of deadfall that I had available, even before I start cutting down any trees.

My winter vegetables really perked up from the soaking rain. With a steady temperature of about 52° F, you could almost see them growing.  We have picked and eaten salad almost every day.  Even gave a bunch away to friends who were visiting.  The Swiss chard has really perked up and grown more.  One of the varieties of that plant is called rhubarb, because the stem and veins of the plant are red.  Actually more like ranging from fucshia to ruby. We also have some that has bright yellow stems.  I guess you could say the Swiss chard tastes like spinach, except the leaves are slightly thicker and crunchier.  Which makes me want to say something to all my readers who might be thinking, "Spinach? Yuck!"

L -R: Broccoli, Iceberg lettuce, Brussel sprouts

I got news for you, fresh, green leafy vegetables right out of the garden don't taste anything like what you buy in the supermarket. That even goes for the fresh produce aisle.  It goes double for the frozen section, and it goes quadruple for the canned goods. Fresh greens out of my garden are as pleasant to eat as Iceberg or Romaine lettuce.  Yes, they have their own distinct flavors, but there is nothing bitter or odd tasting about them.  It's something you have to experience to understand.  Just like when I picked a pea pod right off the vine in front of a guest and had him taste it.  He couldn't believe the sweet deliciousness.  I explained that once it was picked, in four days that flavor would pretty much be gone, which is why you just can't get that kind of quality from a supermarket.

The broccoli is a bit more slow growing than I expected, but it looks beautiful.  The heads are about the size of baseballs now.  I have a dozen more broccoli seedlings on the front porch, along with several other varieties of early spring greens. I still don't see any sign that the little cabbage like heads are going to form on the Brussel sprout plants, but I must be patient.  I'm starting some Salsify once again.  I don't know if it was the grasshoppers or some other insect that likes it so much, but two other attempts at growing it failed because once the sprouts got about 3" high, something would eat it.  I'm sprouting this batch in the porch greenhouse.

I haven't posted to this blog as much as I wanted.  Not because there isn't plenty to blog about, but because I'm extremely busy keeping up with all this stuff.  One of the next projects is to build a mini outside greenhouse over an area of prepared mulch to grow some fresh greens for when the freezes get severe.  I want another mini greenhouse outside somewhere to start my tomato and pepper plants.

It's starting to get light outside, so off I go.   Shalom.

Rain Is Good

I once lived in Southern California for almost two years.

There is a hit song from the early 70's, It Never Rains In Southern California.  The song is true.  I think I saw maybe three days of rain out of 600.

It has it's advantages in many ways, but some people get tired of that after a while, as strange as that might seem. Of course, the nearly constant danger of wild fires can be enough to give some homeowners ulcers.

I've lived in Florida most of my life, in various areas, but mostly in the central or southern areas and on both coasts.  Florida may be called the Sunshine State, but it gets plenty of rain.  Rain up here, in the North Georgia mountains is different.  Because we are at about 2,400 feet elevation, often when it is raining, we are in the bottoms of the clouds.  It can be raining very lightly while visibility is maybe a hundred feet or less.  Our back yard gets a temporary waterfall, and streams form on either sides of the steps going down to the front yard.

My crops are getting a good soaking, and anybody who grows any kind of plants outdoors knows that rain has an effect on plants that artificial irrigation just can't match. I know it has to do with ionization and the lightning, etc., but the bottom line is that Adonai created it that way.  Man, with all of his ingenuity can try to imitate the wonderful engineering that he discovers in nature, but he can never quite duplicate it.

Another good thing about rain is that it can redirect your attention.  It rained all day yesterday and might do the same again today.  Yesterday, it meant that Twyla and I spent about two hours in Bible study.  I Samuel to be precise.  We take it slow and carefully.  I have the Hebrew Tanakh (Old Testament to Christians).  It has the Hebrew on the right side and the English translation on the left.  We also use the Hebrew/English Interlinear for further comparison. Then we have the Strong's Concordance to help understand some of the etymology of the words. You would be amazed at the stuff that you miss when you don't know what the original language says.  There is tremendous meaning in the very choice of the words, and how they are strung together. The Jewish sages have understood this for milennia, and it is the basis for the teachings of the Midrash, Talmud and the Kabbalistic writings, which the untrained have no business messing with.  But that's another post.

But my point is that it can be good to have your plans disrupted when it leads to things that draw you closer to the Creator.  Not as YOU think you understand Him or want to understand Him. But how He wants to be understood.  He dictated, (yes, I used that word on purpose) a message over a couple of thousand years, using more than 40 scribes; putting His supernatural fingerprints all throughout it, in order to tell us how we were designed to live and how to be in communion with our Creator.  Human beings royally screw up when they start thinking that they have the wisdom to decide what is right and wrong in their own minds and hearts. Without the objective truth of the ONE who created everything, we are pretty much just floundering around in stupidity.  I love the ending chapters of the book of Job, where Adonai finally speaks.   Go read it, and remember that epistemology is a good thing to understand. In other words, "How do you know what you know?"  A lot of people believe a lot of garbage that just isn't so, because they've never been educated how to think using logic and reason.

This is of such importance at this time in America's history that I think I shall post on the subject soon.

Shalom.