Chilly nights
23/09/12 05:29
I went out to do a few chores after supper last night and ended up putting on a jacket. It shouldn’t surprise me. After all it is late September. Chilly evenings are normal this time of the year. It is about 39 degrees outside at the moment, a fine temperature for this time of the year. The days, however, remain warm, with highs in the upper seventies. And it remains dry – brittle dry, with conditions ripe for a fire all around.
We’re still getting plenty of tomatoes out of our garden. The tomatoes like the warm days and we don’t have to put too much water on the garden to keep them growing. We’ll have tomatoes until frost. I doubt if I will bother covering the plants this year. Usually when we make it to October without frost, I just harvest what is left on the first chilly night and call it good for the year.
I’ve never been much of a gardener. I’ve worked more or less at gardening, depending on the year. We have a nice location in the back yard and over the years I have hauled in a lot of fresh topsoil. In addition, we have a small composting area that provides additional soil for the garden. The truth is that the main thing that keeps us from having much of a garden is laziness. I don’t particularly like to weed and some years I let the weeds get ahead of me. But we always seem to have a few tomato plants and, in recent years, I have been planting sunflowers. I just grow them as natural bird feeders and for the joy of the bright blossoms. They have to be in the fenced garden area. Whenever I’ve tried to grow them in other parts of the lawn, the deer eat them before they produce flowers. Even in the garden, they will poke their noses in as far as they can and much whatever they can reach.
I’d rather have the deer than beds of manicured flowers, I guess, because I don’t do much to try to deter the deer from eating what they please in my yard. I’ve fenced off the vegetable garden and a couple of young trees that need a little break to get started, but the rest of the yard is open to sharing. We plant lots of marigolds. The deer don’t seem to like them. But every now and then, we can see where a deer, perhaps a young fawn, has given even the marigolds a try.
If we had to survive, or even grow a significant portion of our food in our garden, I would have to put a lot more energy into gardening. I know it is possible to produce a garden that contributes significantly to a family’s nourishment. I’ve seen some of the great vegetables grown locally. But I seem to always find plenty of other things to do with my time.
I’m heading for Cleveland this afternoon. It will be the final meeting of the United Church of Christ Educational Consultants team. I’ve been a part of the team since the beginning. I can’t remember the exact year of the development of the team but it was at least eighteen years ago. Over the years, we have provided connections between the church’s national setting and conferences and associations for the purpose of providing resources for education. For some folks in the church, we have been the face of the church’s national setting and the “go to” for ideas, information and resources for Christian Education.
Things are changing in the national setting of the church. There have been plenty of budget cuts over the years as the denomination has lost membership and local churches have changed patterns of giving. We have always been pretty good at living within our means, but we have fewer means these days than was the case a few decades ago. One of the reactions to the circumstances has been restructuring. Some of the restructuring has been good, giving increased efficiency in the way we do ministry. But attempts at making the church run in a more businesslike fashion fail to understand that the church isn’t a business. We have to be responsible with our funds and fair to our employees and we have many other features that are like businesses, but there is a fundamental difference. We don’t exist to make money. We exist to do ministry together.
In both Matthew and Luke Jesus says, “Whoever tries to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will preserve it.” I sometimes put it this way: “When you’re in the business of resurrection, you have to put aside your fear of dying.” My e-mail in-box has been full of notes from friends and colleagues lamenting the ending of the Educational Consultants program. I admit that there is a bit of sadness and nostalgia in me as I pack for this trip. But I am also firmly convinced that God is doing new things in the church and that the ending of one avenue of service means new opportunities for different ways to do the work to which we have been called. If we focus all of our attention on what has been, we fail to see the new things that are occurring.
The church is like any other institution – it has a healthy sense of self-preservation. When times get tough people go to work to save their own programs and positions. I’m not in favor of throwing out everything we have been doing and forgetting our history, but I doubt that my efforts are needed in order to provide continuity between what has been and what is coming.
Like the garden, the church is going through a change of seasons. There are some who are sad as they take in the last harvest of the year. There are others who are eager to get in and dig things up to make room for future plantings.
Me? I’m just enjoying looking at the sunflowers.
We’re still getting plenty of tomatoes out of our garden. The tomatoes like the warm days and we don’t have to put too much water on the garden to keep them growing. We’ll have tomatoes until frost. I doubt if I will bother covering the plants this year. Usually when we make it to October without frost, I just harvest what is left on the first chilly night and call it good for the year.
I’d rather have the deer than beds of manicured flowers, I guess, because I don’t do much to try to deter the deer from eating what they please in my yard. I’ve fenced off the vegetable garden and a couple of young trees that need a little break to get started, but the rest of the yard is open to sharing. We plant lots of marigolds. The deer don’t seem to like them. But every now and then, we can see where a deer, perhaps a young fawn, has given even the marigolds a try.
If we had to survive, or even grow a significant portion of our food in our garden, I would have to put a lot more energy into gardening. I know it is possible to produce a garden that contributes significantly to a family’s nourishment. I’ve seen some of the great vegetables grown locally. But I seem to always find plenty of other things to do with my time.
I’m heading for Cleveland this afternoon. It will be the final meeting of the United Church of Christ Educational Consultants team. I’ve been a part of the team since the beginning. I can’t remember the exact year of the development of the team but it was at least eighteen years ago. Over the years, we have provided connections between the church’s national setting and conferences and associations for the purpose of providing resources for education. For some folks in the church, we have been the face of the church’s national setting and the “go to” for ideas, information and resources for Christian Education.
Things are changing in the national setting of the church. There have been plenty of budget cuts over the years as the denomination has lost membership and local churches have changed patterns of giving. We have always been pretty good at living within our means, but we have fewer means these days than was the case a few decades ago. One of the reactions to the circumstances has been restructuring. Some of the restructuring has been good, giving increased efficiency in the way we do ministry. But attempts at making the church run in a more businesslike fashion fail to understand that the church isn’t a business. We have to be responsible with our funds and fair to our employees and we have many other features that are like businesses, but there is a fundamental difference. We don’t exist to make money. We exist to do ministry together.
In both Matthew and Luke Jesus says, “Whoever tries to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will preserve it.” I sometimes put it this way: “When you’re in the business of resurrection, you have to put aside your fear of dying.” My e-mail in-box has been full of notes from friends and colleagues lamenting the ending of the Educational Consultants program. I admit that there is a bit of sadness and nostalgia in me as I pack for this trip. But I am also firmly convinced that God is doing new things in the church and that the ending of one avenue of service means new opportunities for different ways to do the work to which we have been called. If we focus all of our attention on what has been, we fail to see the new things that are occurring.
The church is like any other institution – it has a healthy sense of self-preservation. When times get tough people go to work to save their own programs and positions. I’m not in favor of throwing out everything we have been doing and forgetting our history, but I doubt that my efforts are needed in order to provide continuity between what has been and what is coming.
Like the garden, the church is going through a change of seasons. There are some who are sad as they take in the last harvest of the year. There are others who are eager to get in and dig things up to make room for future plantings.