Catching Up..

Last week was full of days that truly were balanced work days, a little regular work that has been on the to do list for months, some work that is actually on this week’s calendar page and some storm damage fixin’ involving both sorts of dirt.  But pretty much this post is dealing with backlogged work, I’m now caught up with some October work.  Some.

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So while I was reading last week’s Mass Readings (yes, I occasional read from the Mass Readings, the residual Catholic in me always manages to come out somehow)  I thought it was fairly timely, a little about love and a little about cleaning – perfect for February.  

The one that was about love – fairly powerful.   It was in fact about the power of love. 

for love is as strong as death,
its jealousy unyielding as the grave.
It burns like blazing fire,
like a mighty flame
Many waters cannot quench love;
rivers cannot sweep it away.
If one were to give
all the wealth of one’s house for love,
it would be utterly scorned.

I’d say that was fairly powerful, couple that with the whole one-ness bond that God says marriage is and boy howdy no wonder He speaks of bloody clothing when we choose to dismiss a spouse, and head to divorce court.

The cleaning part, well that comes from the Mary and Martha story, and Jesus telling Martha that Mary has  indeed chosen the better thing, to be at His feet, Hoovering up all He has to say, contemplating and taking it into her being, ignoring distractions that seem to consume Martha, at the very least Martha’s attention.

I don’t believe we are ever told Mary and Martha’s ages, maybe even if we aren’t told specifically, some wonderful Bible scholar can stand on his head, spin four times and come up with a fairly close approximation of their ages.  But I’m not sure I need to know their ages, they could be young and just figuring things out or they could be old and one of them knows what is important and the other is a foolish meddlesome ol’ biddy.  We don’t have to be young to be foolish.  We don’t even have to be fools to be foolish.

Thursday or Wednesday in the Mass Readings there was a passage that really struck my eyes, as if for the first time.  (You know that feeling don’t you Dear Reader, it isn’t just me is it, that can read something several times over the course of her life, come across it again and then all of a sudden see something as if for the first time?)

When Solomon grew old his wives swayed his heart to other gods; and his heart was not wholly with the Lord his God as his father David’s had been. Solomon became a follower of Astarte, the goddess of the Sidonians, and of Milcom, the Ammonite abomination. He did what was displeasing to the Lord, and was not a wholehearted follower of the Lord, as his father David had been. Then it was that Solomon built a high place for Chemosh the god of Moab on the mountain to the east of Jerusalem, and to Milcom the god of the Ammonites. He did the same for all his foreign wives, who offered incense and sacrifice to their gods.

The Lord was angry with Solomon because his heart had turned from the Lord the God of Israel who had twice appeared to him and who had then forbidden him to follow other gods; but he did not carry out the Lord’s order. The Lord therefore said to Solomon, ‘Since you behave like this and do not keep my covenant or the laws I laid down for you, I will most surely tear the kingdom away from you and give it to one of your servants. For your father David’s sake, however, I will not do this during your lifetime, but will tear it out of your son’s hands. Even so, I will not tear the whole kingdom from him. For the sake of my servant David, and for the sake of Jerusalem which I have chosen, I will leave your son one tribe.’

The bulk of the story I knew, the particulars would have been a bit fuzzy, but the part that struck me, struck me as if new information…

That he was old!  Not that he actually became old, but that when he became old that is when the shenanigans of having multiple foreign wives pulled his heart away from the one true God!

Why do we constantly think that when a person gets old they are set.  If they were good and followed God they will continue and if they are jerks and idiots and despised God they will continue in that manner?

Why do we continue to think that, put stock in that lie when God clearly tells us it can just as easily be the other way?  Solomon was no slouch in the God department either, he wasn’t just a pew warmer, he was a pew builder, the first in fact, AND his faith went south.  (please don’t tell me that they didn’t have pews in the temple and so I’m wrong, you know what I am saying here).  And it seems as if we also continue to insist on the flip side of the coin, believing that some folks can’t be saved and transformed, due to the perceived distance from God or the person’s age.

It is like so many other things, we, in this worldly steeped Christian culture of ours, buy, just because it is the norm, or what we want to believe for our own sake, or it’s what the media presents to us so often.  We go merrily along in life operating under the lie, that for the most part folks don’t change once they hit certain ages.  We have our personality by childhood, if not birth, and once we’ve gone to youth group and been caught afire for God that we’re pretty much smooth sailin’, as long as we show up most Sundays and frequently on Wednesdays and “serve” for a few good years.

But in God’s reality, no one is beyond the saving grace of God through Christ and no one is immune to the conniving of Satan.

So last week was not full of the mediocre mild weather that the weatherman predicted, it wasn’t as bad as all that, just not as good as “they” claimed it was gonna be.  In spite of the rain it became a fairly productive week.

I didn’t get more sandy loamy clay hauled to the parking lot, but I did get the berm built up with the top soil I removed and then flattened the berm and readied it for planting. And then Bet and I did indeed plant. 

Once again procrastination pays off.  After I moved the soil and shaped the berm, I had a nearly blank slate and one that could well remain blank for quite some while, if it weren’t for a job that had been left undone. 

Every year I put a lot of my spring flower bulbs in tubs because the carnivorous moles on this farm have turned omnivorous and wipe out most of my bulb plantings.  Tulip bulbs are their favs but they will also ruin some others, they have also been known to eat every last pea seed in a wide bed of peas or follow a line of sweet pea seeds down a fence.  So either the voles can actually hire them to dig tunnels in very specific places according to what is planted or the moles like to munch a little crudité with their worm and bug delights. 

Any way, that is my theory based on my experience and therefore why my tulips go in tubs.  Last year I also put a lot of my daffs, hyacinths, muscari and crocuses in the tubs just for looks sake.  But I should have taken them all out between summer and fall to divide up the tulips and redistribute them, I’ve been know to keep tulips from one year to the next and to get them back to bloom stage if I take care of them properly, but sometimes they just happen to hit the bottom of the priority barrel, like they did this year. 

But hey, like I said, procrastination has paid off, because now as I am pulling apart all of the spring bulb tubs, I was able to plant the daffs, hyacinths and everything else but the tulips into the parking lot berm.  The tulips will go back into tubs, deep ones this time for some of the offsets that are too small to bloom well, deep keeps them from setting more bulbs and the production of offsets is what makes tulips peter out and not be perennial.  

But then they have moved to near bottom of the priority list again, so if I get to the tulips and their latent care it might just be a miracle.  I’ll be tending seed setting and cutting fuchsias in the HHH, planting peas and potatoes in the Hoop and preparing a display and holding area for the bare root berries that are coming at the end of the week. Not to mention helping Dirt carve a way out back for the rock so that we can order up gravel and make a proper parking lot for guest at the Market Shed.

Lambing season should be starting soon.  Not sure I’m ready for the lack of sleep and disrupted work.  But I am very ready to see the little lambs with their mommies.