An Elephant's Eye

Our garden experiment is working. Our corn has sprouted...about 2"-3" tall!

Old-timers at home used to say that your corn needs to be as tall as an "elephants eye by the 4th of July". Not sure we are going to make that, but our corn is up. Clearly Sam and Madison did not plant the rows in a straight line...

That is so surprising!? (insert cynicism here)

Challenging Books

I recently read Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell. I had heard good things about this book for some time, but had other books to read and enjoy. I had to be in the mood for this one since I read a lot of books about re-imagining the church. Rob's book more than anything challenged my approach to scripture which can be pretty elementary since the majority of my ministry energy is spent on simplifying Biblical truth for others. I found Velvet Elvis refreshing and challenging and I felt a renewed desire to dig deeper in the context of scripture especially from the Hebrew point of view and understanding.

I am about 3/4 through Jesus for President. Shane Claiborne will always mess with your head. I enjoyed Shane's first book, The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical. He is a "red-letter" Christian who has found he understands the words of Christ best when he does what it says, (Weird huh?)thus he lives in a commune with others who work part-time jobs so they will be free to participates in community development in urban Philadelphia. Jesus for President was a great follow up book to Velvet Elvis. There is a stream of thought in the two that Christianity and all that that means has been hijacked by popular culture and watered down to the point that it is ineffective. Not new to me necessarily, but be warned if you read that there are no sacred cows with Shane. It is Jesus first, last and only.

Read.

Rototiller

For Mother's Day Deb wanted a garden. Actually she reminded me she has wanted a garden for 17 years. This past Saturday I rented a tiller and tore up the backyard. Our garden is roughly 24'x 15'. A nice little patch of loveliness. We planted tomatoes, peppers (Green and jalapeno), cilantro (salsa anyone?) beans, corn (Instead of a fence our kids joked that we now had "privacy corn") pumpkins, watermelon, broccoli and squash. We surrounded the edge garden with marigolds with the two-fold purpose of keeping bugs out (they don't like marigolds) and to please the neighborhood association (we didn't get permission in this very persnickety neighborhood). It is a happy little garden sure to unite our family with daily weeding. Deb is happy and honestly I am too. It was fun.

By the way...the tiller will wear you out. The goal of the tiller...plow ahead. The goal of the user...hold it still. Bad combo.

Thank God for Advil.

We will be sharing loads of tomatoes soon!

Myanmar

In times of overwhelming catastrophe it is often difficult to know how to respond. The cyclone in Myanmar according to U.S. reports left 100,000 dead and over a million homeless. Countless relief agencies are at work including the United Methodist Committee on Relief. You can donate here to assist in relief work there. 100% of what you give will go to folks desperate for help. Don't just pray...act.

Rite of Spring

On my recent trip on the Appalachian Trail I happened upon a morel mushroom. Where I grew up in the hills of southern Indiana it was a annual rite of spring for folks to hit the woods and find mushrooms. You have to know what you are doing and what to look for and I would caution anyone who isn't sure to take a pass. But for me when I found that mushroom I was immediately taken back to my boyhood when Dad and I would hike through the hills and look for them. Dad would pretend he could smell them and would tell me to look in certain areas where he had obviously seen them, but I hadn't. We would bring sacks home full of them and we would slice them and soak them overnight in salt water. The next day Mom would batter them like fish and pan fry them. Man they were good...so good my sister and I used to fight over them. When I moved to the mountains of Kentucky for college I heard of old-timers finding "dry land fish." When I inquired further I found that they were talking about morels. They do taste somewhat like fish. I got an e-mail from Dad this week that simply said, "The Mother Load" It had a picture attached. I opened the picture and this above is what I found. For those who are unaware, this is a HUGE morel.

Glad you are out hunting Dad.

Bear

One of the funny things that happened on our Appalachian Trail trip was when a bear came near camp and played pinata with our food bags that were hanging(apparently wrong) in a tree. That night around 1:00 a.m. I heard the bear break a limb and fall to the ground. The pictures are the remains of a couple of foodbags and a water bottle he chewed on as well. For a full description you can go to my friend Larry's Lowe's blog (under links, blogs and burritos).

Before I left on my trip my inlaws said to watch out for bears. I laughed it off of course.

AT Pictures