The newest addition to the botanical gallery…
Eupatorium maculatum – Spotted Joe-Pye-Weed
Botanical | Joe-Pye-Weed
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Raspberries
The raspberries are out in full force at this time of the year. After a long three days in Hill City, navigating Sturgis Rally traffic and listening to the roaring engines and blaring music, the silence of the woods was a welcome relief. It always is a pleasure, but this time it was a relief.
We picked and ate for an hour and a half or two hours, and barely made it through any of the berry brambles! We walked in probably a quarter of a mile, along a rocky, rutted logging trail, and on either side – down the slope on one side, and up the slope on the other – the brambles were plentiful and thick. We could have picked for hours longer and still not canvassed the whole berry patch! I’d never seen anything like it.
We enjoyed the antics of a little red squirrel, the occasional glimpses of moles in the tall grass, and the gentle song of the wind in the pine trees. The berries were smaller than garden-grown ones, but so much sweeter. Even the not-yet-ripe ones were sweet, and I never once tasted a bug inside. So either the bugs out here taste better than the ones back in Illinois, or there were truly fewer insects!
In a week or two, the rosehips will be ripe–I’d love to get back out there to pick rosehips, so we’ll see if that makes it into the schedule.
Taking time to enjoy life, to spend time with friends and family and to revel in God’s beautiful creation…These make for a fruitful, bountiful life. The more I spend time in fellowship with my brothers and sister in Christ, and the more time I spend in fresh, clean air without the noise of traffic in the background, or the smell of asphalt and fastfood, the more time I spend without worrying about the clock, without the hurry and race of town life, the more I love these beautiful blessings from God.
Sundry Sunday adventures
The Sabbath should be the central day of the week for Christians. Not because the Jewish ceremonial law still applies to Christians (Matthew 5:17 is clear about the ceremonial law and Christ’s redemptive coming having completed it), but because God has given us a day which we still, 2000 years after Christ was raised from the dead, which we still set aside to be a time of devotion to God and fellowship with other Believers. What a gift! If you’re not enjoying it to it’s fullest, you’re sadly missing out, and I recommend a prayerfully considered change.
And by “enjoying it to it’s fullest,” I mean taking advantage of the fact that Sunday is the one day of the week where a substantial part of the day is set aside for worship of God and fellowship with other believers. Why wouldn’t a Christian want to savor that time, and make it last as long as possible? The world is a lonely place, and as the world becomes more hostile to Christianity, I find fellowship with Believers sweeter and sweeter.
And what a day–What a day! After a wonderfully applicable sermon about fully identifying with Christ, and our lives being dictated by what we believe about God and what we desire, we headed over to Stockade Lake to give Anna a dipping, and to celebrate through a baptism Anna’s decision to publicly identify with Christ. What a joyous time, to celebrate a Believer’s desire to fully identify in Christ! Our culture calls us to identify as many things–Anything we want, really. But to identify with Christ? How counter cultural! What a blessing to be able to identify with Christ! How humbling and wonderful and glorious.
After the baptism, we went back to church and were officially welcomed into the membership of Southern Hills Bible Church, and enjoyed our weekly potluck, which was all the better for it being with our own church, the congregation of Believers we have chosen to attach ourselves to. God willing, we’ll be there for years to come.
And as if that wasn’t enough, some of us “young people” headed out on a hike, enjoying an extended time of friendship and fellowship and reveling in new relationships centered around one important thing: Jesus Christ’s redemptive work in our lives. What a gift. All of us young people, Hannah and Jacob, Roy and Jessie and Isaak, Sarah and I, all of us are relatively new to this congregation, and, speaking for myself, I have been tremendously blessed by these new brothers and sisters in Christ.
If you’re reading this wondering how in the world a bunch of Christan (homeschool or homeschooled) kids can possibly have fun together, let me tell you, it doesn’t take alcohol, it doesn’t take R-rated movies, it doesn’t take cell reception and texting, and it doesn’t take rebellion against rules and authorities. We know how to have fun and how to spend time in a meaningful way, and it doesn’t take anything more than another person with whom to share life. But we had more than that. A wooded path is an invitation into God’s beautiful Creation. Fellowship with Believers is a glimpse into eternity. The delicate petals of a flower are a living testament to God’s handiwork.
The unceasing conversation, the frequent laughs, the mutual enjoyment of God’s Creation, all made for a delightful afternoon. We explored an old mine tunnel, marveled at grass snakes and flowers, stones and toadstools, got soaking wet in a little downpour, talked theology and politics, delved into one another’s lives, and, speaking for myself at least, we could have gone on for hours more.
And hey, I even found an arrowhead. A little bonus for today.
July | In Hindsight
Penstemon glaber – Sawsepal penstemon
So we have come to the end of our fifth month in our new home. In some ways, things are still getting settled into place, and in others, we’ve found a routine. God continues to amaze me with His goodness and His love and His providence. He has provided a church home, friends and community, work for all of us (shout-out to my Dad–He went on a radon testing trip to Chadron yesterday! Getting things going!), blossoming family relationships, good health and safety, and the blessing of living where we’ve always wanted to be. God is good. So good.
Over the past month or so, we did the membership class at church and are soon to be welcomed officially into this church. The meetings were encouraging, insightful, and spiritually awakening. The past few years were hard on my spiritual well-being. Not hard on my faith–If anything, the last few years have drastically strengthened my faith in God and His love for His children. But I found myself spiritually exhausted. A lot of things contributed to it, I know, but my prayer has been that God would re-awaken my heart for Him. And He has–And I couldn’t be more glad.
Mariposa lily
I’ve done some more thinking about the next few months and next year, and what I can be doing now to be making myself more home-based. I’ve realized, particularly over the past month, that I am as much a homebody as ever, and that I really (really, really, really) don’t like town, even a small town like Hill City. A full week of working in town is exhausting, even when I am not doing strenuous work, while a day of sweat and dirt and gasoline and chaff leaves me feeling mentally alive. Even when I’m wheezing from the dust and my arms are itching from my allergy to spruce trees. Time to make myself more home-based, or at least rurally-based. We’ll see how that progresses.
July was a busy month! We spent time with friends, went hiking, worked like crazy, saw rattlesnakes, hunted wildflowers, celebrated my Grandma’s 92nd birthday, house-sat for my uncle and his family, we had hail storms and thunder storms and our first stretch of 90 degree weather, I’ve learned about push rods and drive belts and greasing up a lawnmower, we visited with Dad’s college roommate and his wife from eastern South Dakota, Sarah and I drove Spearfish Canyon and saw the waterfalls, and we completed a membership class at our new church. It was a good month.
What will August hold, I wonder?
Rattlesnakes on the ridge
We live under the shadow of a snake-infested ridge.
Okay, so that’s a bit of a stretch, but rattlers have been seen from time to time on the ridge above our house. Yesterday, I went out to my truck, parked to the right of the old chicken coop, just in time to see two entwined rattlesnakes come tumbling down the face of the ridge and disappear behind the chicken coop.
After a rush of some heavy adrenaline while we made sure the pets were all out of the way, we went back to observe. We watched one of the snakes slither slowly back to the top of the ridge and that was that. Or so we thought. Fifteen minutes later, we heard rattling and ran back over to watch the show. Two snakes, probably the same two, were entwined and rattling furiously above the cliff, on a steep grassy slope. Their curious dance brought them further and further down the slope until they tumbled in a writhing mass off the face of the ridge. Once again, we watched as they slithered back to the top. That was the last we saw of them, and Sarah and I left for an evening hike with Jessie and Roy, two friends from church who live in the neighboring town.
But when we got back that night, and after we had been standing in the yard talking for twenty minutes, Jessie suddenly said, “That’s a snake over there. He’s a big one!”
Sure enough, there was a rattler, coiled up not twelve feet off at the end of our sidewalk. And there had been people coming and going for the last half hour!
We weren’t entirely sure what to do with it, but he sure couldn’t stay there. We watched him for twenty minutes or so, amused by how he reacted to shadows passing over his body when we waved our hands in front of the yard light, listening to the fascinating sound of his rattle, and amazed at how long he could hold his body up, unmoving and perfectly silent. Beautiful and dangerous. We kept our distance.
Finally, it was time to get rid of him. Roy picked him up with a pitchfork like a piece of spaghetti on a dinner fork, and took the angry, rattling creature over to the ridge.
Fortunately, seeing rattlesnakes in this quantity or with this frequency is rare. But it was all still a little unnerving.
We let him go this time. But Mom’s determined to get rid of it for good if we see it again.
When hotwire isn’t so hot
After chasing three bull calves back through the fence over the course of the evening, and watching them practically stroll back under the hotwire, I decided I should test it myself. Some calves are just fence crawlers–It’s like a hobby for them. But most animals (including the Dog) are deterred by a little well-placed hotwire and a friendly zap on the back or the nose or whatever unfortunate part of their body happens to touch it.
Now, this hotwire isn’t particularly hot. If you’re two-legged, it isn’t really any worse than the little zap you get on any piece of metal during the winter months, but if you’re four-legged, I think it must be considerably worse. The Dog touched it once while she was wet, and she made a bee-line for her dog house with her tail between her legs. Poor thing.
So I touched the fence and nothing happened. A quick inspection of the solar panel battery house made it clear. We’d apparently had a feathered visitor who pecked out the button on the back, and pecked out the “charged” light. Well. Must’ve turned the fence off in the process, if he didn’t disable the zapper completely. Funny.
Song Dog Journal 