Happenings

Pastoral headache

About a week ago, our pastor and his family came for a two-day visit. (We live 2.5 hrs away from church; not an ideal situation, but well worth the drive there and back for worship and fellowship. One-anothering is a bit more difficult, but we try.)

They did some good work for us: helping clean out the barn, weed-eating, milking, painting, etc. And Keith and the pastor built some drawers for the pastors' daughters' closet.

Only one injury worth mentioning--our 5yo tumbled forward off a flying turtle. Great "toy," and he does well on it, normally, but went headlong this time into the concrete, resulting in a fat lip, a scab below his nose and a slight one on his chin. A couple of drink-spills, and that was it for mishaps.

The fat lip was gone by the time this picture was taken a few days later.

Anyway, it was great to have them here, as always, and it's so nice now to see the trim in the kitchen and dining room painted, the pond area trimmed, and the barn cleaned out!

This past weekend, my sister came for a visit, which thankfully is not unusual. We celebrated Mother's Day as well as our father's birthday. We (my sister, 5yo son, and I) also had the...um...the opportunity, I'll say, to celebrate a 4yo friend's birthday--at Chuck E. Cheese's, about an hour away from here. Can you say "sensory overload"? Good folks, and it was good to see them, although not much socializing went on; just too loud there to hardly even talk with someone right next to you! But good to see them all, anyway.

The garden is beginning to produce. We've been eating asparagus, strawberries, lettuce, onions. And I believe more lettuces are ready, now, as well as Swiss chard, which I've never fixed or even eaten. I've looked up how to fix it and am looking forward to trying it.

We've spent a lot of time in the garden this week. In addition to picking strawberries, we've also pretty much finished up the planting for now, and I spent a lot of time yesterday cultivating and thinning out some of the crops. I'm looking forward to seeing how some of our stuff turns out. I feel like our upper garden this year is pretty much experimental. My parents have had a garden--the "lower" garden, here--for years, and we can always count on good stuff from there, but last year we started another one, where we are trying to keep away from fertilizers, pesticides, genetically altered seed, etc. We did this last year, but were quite lax from the start; we're trying to be more diligent this year. Thus far, we're doing much better than last year.

Mary Susan