Tag Archives: garden

Lent Has Brought Us To This Maundy Thursday Prayer

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Maundy Thursday Chalkboard Prayer Vigil

Every year, on this day, Maundy Thursday, we come to the Lord in prayer, as Jesus did with his disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane. On that night, Jesus asked his disciples to watch and pray… because our spirit is willing, but our flesh is weak (Matthew 26:36-46), and then Jesus was betrayed by one of his own inner circle friends. Every year at our church is slightly different, but each year, this evening is set aside for prayer, the Lord’s supper, and meditation on what our Lord went through on Good Friday. I love that image above from last year (see also Messages from the Heart to God in Chalk Board Prayers :: Photos) where everyone wrote their prayers in chalk as they moved through the night.

I looked back over and read some of my journal entries from that night a few years ago, and it’s amazing what that great spiritual discipline of meditation can do for the soul.  In my entry from 2009 I wrote this sentence after being there for an hour or so.

It is almost impossible to wrap your mind around what everything here tonight represents in history. I understand nothing, but I love what I don’t understand.

There are only a few more days of Lent for 2012, today being Day 44 (if you count Sunday’s), and our reading today came from the Book of Common Prayer (only $2.99 on Kindle by the way). Something I don’t get a chance to read all that often, but love its wisdom.

Almighty God, whose dear Son, on the night before he suffered, instituted the Sacrament of his Body and Blood: Mercifully grant that we may receive it thankfully in remembrance of Jesus Christ our Lord, who in these holy mysteries gives us a pledge of eternal life; and who now lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

May that be the prayer for today.

Trying to Figure out How to Tell a Thousand Stories Simultaneously

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I came here, in part, with the hope of being able to tell some stories through pictures, now, with a few days left on this trip I don’t even know where to begin. There are a thousand stories for every scene and situation that we come across. If I have time, I’m going to post a few here tonight while we still have power (it’s off and on). Yesterday we went to a few houses to install rain catches. I know nothing about installing these things but the lady of the house came out to get water in this 50 liter jug(?) thing and I couldn’t believe she was going to do this by herself. As you can see below I couldn’t even carry it by myself. This lady, and several others were around the front of the house and they got to laugh at the two white people trying to carry something a woman did every day. There were really sweet ladies. For some reason I haven’t figured out yet, the kids when you take their picture (for the most part) grin from ear to ear but the adults go stone-face when their photo is taken, so many of the adults, like these three woman in the photo below were laughing with us and smiling until the second we took the pic. They are pretty amazing.

The first shot below shows the rain barrel that was partly full of rain runoff. I am filling the blue bucket with a pan to take it back to her house. The second shot and third is just trying to life the can which had to weigh something like 70 pounds at a minimum. The lady in the shot below is who we were taking the water to and if you look in the back behind her that house (the lady sitting in the opening) also had a great story. The shot of me with the little boy actually ended up being Tonya Styles sponsor child who was watching us install the rain catch systems (so if anyone on Facebook can tell her it’s over here that would be great).

A Nasty Tomato Hornworm Caterpillar Closeup

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This is just about as perfect a photo of the day as I can get for summer in the south. These nasty things attack our tomato plants every year and they look so much like the plant leaves they are almost impossible to see. The only part you see is the evidence they were there (an eaten plant) and until you find them they will continue to devour everything in sight. They can get enormous in size if you don’t kill them quickly. Luckily this one was small, smaller than my little finger. The EXIF metadata is over here if you are interested in the macro shot.

Purple Iris Blooms and Double Knockout Roses Today :: Friday Feet

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Today is Friday again, can’t believe how fast these weeks are going by. Today the Friday Feet post comes from my garden just about 50 feet from where I am typing out this blog post. The cool thing about a flower garden is having plants that bloom at different times all throughout the year, and as Spring moves on, the next in line is the Iris. They just started blooming in these magnificent purple blooms (although they come in a huge variety of colors). These flowers below were shot using my wife’s Nikon D90 and basically this is how they came right out of the camera. I did very little post processing editing with these particular flowers, they really didn’t need it, the colors were incredible.

This week has been, thankfully, a week of getting back to the routine of things, a week without a doctors appointments, which we were both thankful for immensely, and a week that flew by in a blink of an eye. I had so many blog posts I either started or wanted to get started this week and just never got back to them. I do have several book reviews that I want to get out but they will just have to wait for another day. Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend.

Photos of Spring Wildflowers and Dogwood Blooms

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Wild Flower in Bloom

Wild Flower in Bloom

Wild Flower in Bloom

Spider Web in the Sunset

Dead Cedar Tree

Closeup of Dogwood Flower Bloom

The flowers around town tell us it is Springtime but for the last week or so it has been nothing but cold and rainy so last night before it got dark I did another photo walk-through in the back yard (see part 1 Backyard Dose of Spring Flowers // Photos). There were plenty of wild flowers blooming and the Dogwood trees are still in full bloom down here.  I always think that if a photo needs an explanation it isn’t very good, but… the one with the sun in the middle was a spider web wrapped around a branch and the last photo is the very center of a Dogwood bloom.

If you walk around outside long enough you can always find something of beauty, even if it is actually in the eye of the beholder.

Closeup Photos of Dogwood Blooms in Spring

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dogwood buds

dogwood buds

dogwood buds

Pine Cone Buds

I didn’t really think about it like that until this year, but life seems so fragile sometimes, even if we live out the average life span for this country, we will only see, or recognize, this time comes around 50-80 times on average, if we are lucky.  I think the first 5-10 Spring season changes don’t really count since we can’t comprehend what we are looking at, but I have already experienced 37 Spring’s in my life, so as the flowers bloom and leaves start to fill the trees again, I am keenly aware I have about 35 down and 35 to go, so to speak.

I am amazed at God’s symphony that we call Spring.  Almost so slowly we don’t notice, the buds on the trees come out and things go from brown to green in a blink of an eye.  Last week in what I hope is winter’s last hurrah, I shot some photos of the Dogwood blooms on a tree in front of our house.  It survived the snow, the ice, the cold, to bring us the images below.  Of course down here in the south, no Spring is complete without the bloom of the yellow pollen from the pines.  I took the other shot a few days ago just before all the pods started to release gallons of yellow pollen that now covers every square inch of everything.

These photos are of the Dogwood in bloom just outside out living room window.  Just the smallest blooms, waiting for a warmer day to arrive.  The closeup of the pine tree below covers us in a bath of yellow pollen for several weeks, but it is still a beautiful sight when you know warmer weather is on its way.

View of Our House from a Tree Swing :: Friday Feet

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Tree Swing in the Field

This is sort of a follow up to Do You Have a Quiet and Peaceful Place to Hide? which for some reason is one of my highest traffic posts and also A Foggy Summer Morning in Auburn Alabama (both different views of the swing).  This is yet another view from our tree swing, this time looking back at my house.  This is where I ate lunch yesterday.  Sometimes when I should be going to the dog house, I just go the tree swing.  It is my quiet and peaceful place to hide, where no cell towers or wifi reaches (at the moment), just wind, trees, and birds.

Friday Feet

This also serves as the first post of what I am going to try to make in a series of posts called Feet on Friday.  A popular shot on blogs and Internet sites is that is your own feet standing somewhere.  We are all in different places every week, I thought it would be good to take the popular foot shot on Friday and post it, so this is the first one.

Red Double Knock Out Rose in Bloom in Summer

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Double Knock Out Rose in Bloom

This week has gone by in a blink. Yesterday we planted 5 oak trees before breakfast trying to avoid the mid-morning heat and by about 10am it was to hot to do anything outside. I looked over at our rose bush today, a red Double Knockout Rose (or aka a Double Knock Out Rose) and it was in full bloom.

Thinking again like I was yesterday, I went out to try and capture a photo of the bloom before it got way to hot outside. As my luck would have it, the wind was blowing like crazy.

The Red Double Knock Out Rose Bloom

Normally this time of year they are covered in red double bloom flowers but this one was not planted to long ago and it sat in the hot dry drought we have going on for several weeks looking rather pitiful. Two days ago Deb put some rose food around its base, and now, blooms everywhere.

This variety of rose is a sister to the Knockout Rose which can get to be a very large, tree, shrub sized rose bush. The Double Knockout is quite a bit smaller and well suited to our very young garden. I took this shot this morning, about 7am, before it got really hot outside.

The wind gave me fits as it decided this morning was the morning to blow, continuously, but I was still able to enjoy a small amount of time to smell the roses this morning before I went to work.

Planting Red Crape Myrtles and a Weeping Willow

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Planting Crape Myrtles

Wow, what a busy weekend (including Friday here). We stared off the weekend Friday night with the most wonderful thunderstorm. Since we hadn’t seen any rain here in what feels likes years it was a pleasant site. I took several photos of the lightning, one is in my post, Lightening in the Sky Tonight, and another is just above here. What a great site for an area of the country that hasn’t seen a lot of rain lately.

One of my favorite types of photography, just not one that you can go outside and say, ok, today I am shooting lightning shots. To see the larger version just click on the image above. The bolt actually started out of the top of the clouds in the upper left corner and winded its way to the ground.

Saturday – Trees, Trees, and Trees

Saturday was a pre-Mother’s Day tree planting day. Deborah and I had planned to pick out several Crape Myrtles trees to plant along the driveway (which is about a 1/4 mile long), and a Weeping Willow tree at the end where the driveway turns up to the house.

We went to our local Plant World which usually has a huge selection. They didn’t. There was a great Weeping Willow we would come back to get, but it was off to Lowes (in the rain) to check on the other possibilities. We found 8 red Crape Myrtles that were going to look just great planted on the driveway.

After discovering how hard it was to plant trees in rock hard dry ground we were looking forward to something a little easier. So, off to plant the Azaleas we got on Friday for the walkway. It was a long and exhausting day, but in a few years the driveway should be very pretty. In total, we planted 8 Crape Myrtles, 6 Azaleas, 1 Weeping Willow, and left of bunch for the next day.

Lightning in the Sky

Sunday – Choosing our Words and Some Veggies

Sunday started off about 3am with a wild bit of lightening and then the power went off. Don’t mind right now, but come summer that will be a hot hot night. It was off for about 2 hours, finally came back on right before we got up. Good thing, we are on a well system, so without power, we have no water. We had a wonderful service on Sunday, see Acceptable Words in Your Sight, and tried to spend the day relaxing. What was left the Saturday was to get the Sweet Potatoes in the ground. We picked up about 16 plants on Saturday and had to get them in the ground.

Everything Else

I did receive a bit of new music on Friday. Sort of a strange mix today, but on the list for this batch was:

  • Sting – The Soul Cages
  • Green Day – American Idiot
  • Nickelback – The Long Road

These all came from my music trading pals over at lala. A bit of an administrative note for this blog. I have decided to post a daily digest of my Twitter conversations here on this blog. Simply for me to see what transpired throughout the day. This information will not be posted on any of my other blogs. This week promises to be a busy one with work and a few other things going on in the middle of the week.

Sunday is Our Day of Rest with a Husqvarna Chainsaw of Course

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Scott's Chain Saw

Today was going to be one of those relaxing days of doing nothing and enjoying this unbelievably beautiful weather. Well, the weather was gorgeous today. I was looking forward to our worship time today since we have been out of town the last few Sunday’s, and it was incredible. A series on missions, which I was told ahead of time to expect something “different”. Well it was different all right, and very uplifting and challenging (see The Mission Field is Fluid for details) service.

Before we left for church I was able to work on some photo scans of old family members and add them to an older blog post piece. I love looking at and working with images of all kinds so this was an enjoyable start to the day.

There is Always a Tree to Move and Grass to Cut

I started working on a blog post over on scottfillmer.com and stopped to do some of my daily walk about. Short today, only about 2 miles but after lunch it was decided that a fallen tree on the road needed to be cut up and moved for fire wood for next winter.

I like getting the chance to work with my dad and working outside so we cut up the tree that Alabama Power deemed un-necessary and a bother for power lines. It still needs to be split up for fire wood, but it is better than rotting on the side of our driveway.

Scott and Larry Picking Up Tree

Of course once the tractor is out, better cut some more grass, there is always grass to cut.

Nature in View

This morning before we left for church we had 4 deer drink from the pond and then walk across a shallow section of the pond. This was about 8:30am, not when it was dark at all. We often have deer come by at night but not usually during the day. Probably has to do with the missing 100 acres of trees that was taken down last week bordering our property. It was nice to see the deer in the day light. We did have a visit by a very large woodpecker who found our Dogwood sapling a nice place to sit. The woodpeckers are all over the place now.