sprouts

The pond bordering Blueberry Hill is as full as it has been in about two years and yet is still a foot or so from overflow. The dam was built with a 6 to 8 inch pipe through the dam as the overflow and if it gets higher than that, it is made to enable the water to run around the far side without damaging the structure itself. Of course all this is according to government regulations. Even at this it has only ran through the pipe a very few times.

The semi-local geese usually make daily flights in and land either on this pond or the one adjoining that belongs to the neighbors. They spend the day and either most or all of them make the flight back to their home pond just south of here in the evenings. It was a small mystery to me as to why they seemed to spend more time on the neighbor’s waters that those behind the house. In fact, they spent most of their time in one back corner of that pond. BIL solved the puzzle for me when he told me that the neighbor keeps a large container of corn back there and feeds them on a regular basis – they know a good thing when they eat it.

There are so many things that I need to do in tending to our little corner of the world here on Blueberry hill. Still in progress (slowly) is the muscadine pruning and to make this worse, I had rooted some of these vines for kinfolk and they didn’t need all of them. Now those extras have to be hacked out of the soil with great effort and discarded as well – not an easy task since they grow strong roots very quickly. These tasks are all to be parts of my rehab and strengthening program.

The hazel nut trees also need their many sprouts cut back at the ground and the blueberries as well. One of the small blueberry plants on the bedroom end of the house died last year and I will use one of the stronger sprouts from the older bushes to replace that one. There are enough blueberry sprouts from my original patch to start another whole patch but most of these just have to be cut back in order to not interfere with the fruiting of the parent plant in the summer.

Speaking of sprouts, our gruntmonkeys (grandchildren) are growing and doing well and one of them had a very exciting adventure just the other day. I may have vaguely referred to the local GMs moving to another house just before Christmas and they are mostly settled in and seem to be enjoying this new location. GM3 found a friend just a door over with which to play – GM3 is 4 ½ and the friend is 6 and they seem to enjoy their many adventures together.

Their latest adventure had to do with the older boy riding a tricycle down their steep driveway with GM3 riding and holding on to the back. When they hit the bump at the street, they crashed and fortunately GM3 came out of it with just a skinned knee. Unfortunately his friend broke both bones in his right arm (he is right-handed) at the elbow. One parent from each family had just glanced their way and saw them in safe activities. The neighbors spent the night at the ER getting pins put in the arm to put the bones back right.

Life can sometimes crash in a hurry and almost always we are not ready for the changes that come. It is always good to have a friend that is ready to help at any moment and at all hours. Many of us have those kinds of friends but there is One that is even closer than these, One that will be with us through all worse case scenarios, even our own passing from this life. Of course this is Jesus, the best friend we could ever have and He will be that friend just for the asking. ec