Late Summer Blessings

Lesson from a child:

If you can't climb a mountain, climb a ladder--

and eat watermelon at the top!

 

And if you can't climb the ladder (because you are lame or because someone else is on it)

eat your watermelon on the porch steps.

Either way--enjoy your watermelon!

Also, if you cannot go fishing, enjoy the tadpoles your little boys find in the little pond in the pasture. 

What a blessing to have rain often the last couple months of this summer! It changed our concrete back yard to a carpet of green (and yellow) and the brown pasture into greenery that was almost like Pennsylvania. The Lord must have seen that this Pennsylvania girl was getting famished for green!

It's true a lot of the green was weeds rather than grass, and SUCH weeds, too! Nasty ones out there now, but the children don't worry about it. They just have a ball collecting little treasures from the field.

We were delighted with a hummingbird moth that visited our barrel of flowers on the deck several times recently. Jonathan had bought me these flowers for Mother's Day, and planted them in barrels with the children's help. Three days later, between chickens and goats, the flowers were no more, and it took at least two months for any to bloom again.

A few weeks ago, I was able to buy several hanging flower baskets on clearance at a garden market for just $2.50 or $5 each, which have so brightened our front porch and back deck. 

Sam spent the day digging under a house before a footer can be poured. This is what he looked like when he came home!

Since then came much rain, filling that spot with a couple feet of water. Floods inundated large areas of Colorado northeast of us. Yesterday Sam went back to the same place because Jonathan's guys were begging for Sam's help to dig out mud now before they can pour the footer.

 

Below is a sunrise that Rose took a picture of.

Carrie brings in an armful of beautiful home-grown beets!

The gifts we got for Crystal, Sam and Carrie upon their baptisms. I was so tickled to have found these appropriately themed gift bags at a Christian book store. It's true they were in the Easter clearance section, but I thought a cross, and the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world (spoken by John the Baptist upon Jesus coming to be baptized) were very appropriate for a baptism. 

We got each a daily calendar, and gave the girls pretty journals, and a book for Sam--about how to grow in the graces of being a gentleman.

(Please don't look for any particular miracle to occur.)