"In the world but not of it"

In a lot of ways, I think we truly are "in the world but not of this world". I mean, look out my windows! The world rushes past, seemingly oblivious to the quiet space on the cul-de-sac. While they follow the 'madding crowd', we lock eyes with a doe, flap our wings about the turkey vultures, and -- what's this??? a swarm of bees????????? The doe came quietly into the park across the road, grazed, stood and watched the bunnies, and finally left.

As I sat in the swivel chair, enjoying the sunlit vistas, knitting away on a prayer shawl for Heather Bouws, my acute peripheral vision distracted me from knit-one-purl-one. My trusty camera captured turkey vultures. In my research I was surprised to learn they live here only in the summer, wintering in much of the southern US and in South America.

Saturday mid-morning, adrenalin-laden Isaac Moss came to be a part of preparing the land we are co-sharing with him at 48th and Stanton. Because he had a little down time, we asked him to take the Honda and trim the grass around the house. Everything was normal at that time. We sat down for supper at 7 p.m. before heading over to Pruis' to plant corn. Looking north from the table we saw something odd in that young maple tree just outside the window.

Again, doing some of that research that I love, I learned that honeybee swarms may take a temporary rest en-route to a new and more permanent home. This swarm seemed smaller on Sunday morning. At 8:30 a.m. we left for greeting, church, a retirement open house in East Lansing, church again, a check-up on the broken culti-mulcher on Isaac's land, drop-off of the prayer shawl at Bouws' place, and home again by nine p.m. The swarm moved, and not into the hollow tree adjacent to the swing set. Whew!

The Day After

Whoa!!! 2.5 inches of rain beginning, maybe, at 3ish a.m.? Vi Flokstra just a bit south and west of Krols on Riley Street got an inch and a few tenths. Krols had 2.5. Schreurs and others around there had 1.5. Up at the Bauer land, maybe a couple tenths. But, we had 2.5. Sure are thankful for the big push of the last two days (not to be confused with The Big Push)............................... This photo shows the improvement at the corner and in Brian Hoppen's field due to the recent repair of the culvert by the road commission. If you look in the distance you will see the field that is flooded due to the county drain being overfilled by so much run-off.

Just south of the barn a bit, on the west side of the road, is our soybean acreage here at home. It had a lot of water flooding it, but that will go down fairly quickly when the county drain is able to accept so much surface run-off. Because of the tiling underneath and because no plants are above the ground, we will see minimal damage from the rain. The matting of the floating corn debris could be the only problem.

You can see from this photo that the water really is moving through our property. Shown here, the outlet that receives water from the soybean field...

Soybean planting 2012

PTL! When the week began we hoped some of the beans would be planted this week. Now, when the rain went north and south but not here, so much more than expected is already in the grounds. As of tonight, the 55 bean acres at home are planted (including the plot), as are the 20 at Bode and about 35 of the Glupker bean acres. Approximately, 45 acres of soybeans must still be planted. Clouds and unsettled weather lent tonight's work at Glupkers' a panoramic view of God's handiwork.

Guess who's living in our backyard?

Super supper!

I really meant to take a photo of last night's supper, but was way too consumed with my role, so you'll just have to develop you picture mentally...

Mike and Emily's church sponsored a men's retreat at Maranatha, author Michael Wittmer of GR Baptist Seminary serving as the speaker. At Mike's invitation, Don, Eric and Mike K joined him.

So, knowing that Emily, Lea Anne, and Elizabeth have their hands full and would feel a bit overwhelmed by the weekend w/o dads, I made plans for last night. I asked Natalie's help and then told the girls that their kids were invited to have supper at Grammy's while they went out for supper.

So, from 6-9, Natalie (14) and I had supper and played and kept the peace with Jason (10 and of limited help), Nathan (7 and entertaining but way over the top stimulating), Boden (5 and excited to be with all the boys), Heidi (3 and really wanting to be read to for hours on end), Caleb (2 and strong and active and coordinated like a three year old with terrible twos mentality), and Logan (certainly and completely 2 and always wanting to do everything that Nathan and Boden and Caleb do).

I bought Valentine-themed paper serve ware, fixed mac n cheese (I'm not dumb!), cooked carrots for the token vegetable that I ate, opened cans of fruit cocktail for the token fruit that I ate, finger jello that saved the day a couple times throughout the evening and, after all, I got to send them home afterward, hot dogs which are classic kid food that a couple of them scarfed down. And, for the piece d resistance, Natalie made vanilla cupcakes that we frosted on the spot and sprinkled with their choice of junk -- colored sprinkles, chocolate sprinkles, green sprinkles, or red sprinkles.

While I did the dishes, Natalie read to Heidi and Jason tried to supervise the boys in the basement. Fortunately, the meltdown did not occur until my dishes were about finished. So, I ordered them all up to the living room, turned out all the lights, and turned on the little camping lantern Don got for Christmas. Then we all sat together on the floor and read stories. One more rescue with the finger jello, and we saw the headlights in the driveway. Whew! We made it!!!

This morning, I'm going with Liz and the boys to pick out yarn for the baby stuff. Yikes!!!

Only a bit of snow in this southern winter

Here we are in Michigan!!! and on January 19, during the first good snow, we saw traffic backed up westbound on I-196 probably due to the usual semi-jacknifing, two cars way down in that ditch by us that is much deeper since MDOT dug out the fill, and numerous slide-offs on the way to GR.

Sunday's event was deeper and slick but nary a slide-off in sight.

Crazy, but wonderful! Christmas Holiday