7:48 am

This morning when I arose, I opened the front and back doors, put on the coffee, and stepped out onto the back deck to pray for a minute. I went back into the house, fixed my coffee, retrieved my Bible, and headed out back again. Butternut was sitting at the back door, watching something with great interest. I scooted her out of the way and pushed open the screen door (which answered with a satisfying screech) just as I heard a noise up in the woodlot. A large doe was in front of the blackberry bushes just on the other side of the fence, and when I startled her, she cleared the brush in one bound and disappeared up into the woods. Her tail was a tremendous white flag, about a foot tall, and was the last I saw of her.

Afterwards, I took a full watering can out and watered MeeMaw's Rose of Sharon bush at the south side of the house. Then I walked down to give a drink to what our neighbor Ernie calls our "garden."

Some of the people who owned this house before us made some sort of Thanksgiving/harvest display up front of the driveway, under the big pine tree. Apparently, they put a couple of bales of hay there, propped a scarecrow on them, and placed some pumpkins and shocks of Indian corn all around.

And now, years later, a squash plant and a stalk of corn have "come up volunteer," as mountain folks say. Ernie's right: it is our garden. It ain't much, but it's all we have this year.




Quote of the day:

"It is the weakness of small minds to strive after a clear-cut system in which there are no mysteries that refuse to be reduced to harmony."

~ J.C. Carlile, writing in his biography of C.H. Spurgeon