Lonely Cottage

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  “Among the few features of agricultural England which retain an appearance but little modified by the lapse of centuries, may be reckoned the high, grassy and furzy downs, coombs, or ewe-leases, as they are indifferently called, that fill a large area of certain counties in the south and south-west. If any mark of human occupation is met with hereon, it usually takes the form of the solitary cottage of some shepherd. Fifty years ago such a lonely cottage stood on such a down, and may possibly be standing there now. In spite of its loneliness, however, the spot, by actual measurement, was not more than five miles from a county-town. Yet that affected it little. Five miles of irregular upland, during the long inimical seasons, with their sleets, snows, rains, and mists, afford withdrawing space enough to isolate a Timon or a Nebuchadnezzar; much less, in fair weather, to please that less repellent tribe, the poets, philosophers, artists, and others who “conceive and meditate of ple...

Exciting days

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These days are certainly getting exciting . . .

We just finished "Nick at Night", our VBS program at church. The format was based on John 3, Nicodemus visiting Jesus at night; however, the delivery of the program was patterned after the Nicolodeon game shows. The entire event took place on Wednesday evenings at the downtown public park. We had live music, lots of kids and plenty of games. I don't think many people went home very dry each night because of all the water games played (I made certain I was one of the dry ones).

Last night was so hot that with the heat index, it was about 110 degrees. Though I was sweltering, I kept the water flowing! The station I was in had no shade, so when I moved to get out of the sun at one point, one certain individual thought to be helpful and dumped a bottle of ice water down my back. I just about went into shock, to say the least.

August is just around the corner! I am teaching a Sunday School class more regularly now and some final decisions are being made as to our permanance there. I start teaching "Christian Ethics" on the 16th and "Pilgrim's Progress" on the 21st.

I am getting excited also about getting the Fall garden going. I would like to plant some 16" rows and mixed rows instead of single rows to increase our yield. I am settling into doing a salad garden as opposed to a full vegetable garden--though I would like to plant a fuller garden in the spring. Right now I am wanting to get lettuce, kale, radishes, carrots, cabbage, spinach, snap beans and perhaps some winter squash in the ground. If I get that much in, I will be happy. I think I missed the chili season, but cannot find anything stating it could not be a late summer/fall vegetable. Thinking about pumpkins, too.

Am loosing the battle of the summer squash bugs right now, but tomatoes are coming in nicely!

Poor astronomy this summer--either too cloudy at night, or the bug swarms were too much. Maybe those were clouds of bugs . . .

Oh, and congratulations to STS-114 on their successful launch. Happy flight and safe return ladies and gentlemen!

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