"Hey you! In the Garden down there!"

The last few days I’ve been thinking about how God speaks to me. Lots of people talk about lots of ways that they hear God’s voice. I don’t hear a spoken voice. Here’s my deal.

Most days, God shouts at me.

I’m not a very good listener. That’s why it’s good that God shouts at me.

I meet and know a lot of people who are rather intuitive and who hear God speaking directly to them. That’s not the case with me.

It seems that the way in which God has chose to speak to me—or perhaps the way that God has taught me to listen—is much more indirect. God speaks to me through grace.

In a way, God seems to be saying “don’t do as I say, do as I do.”

When I say God talks to me through grace, I mean that I see God in the blessings in my life—big and small. And when I pay attention to the fact that God is talking to me, I realize God is shouting.

The crazy, colorful blooms on the sunflowers at Perkins are not a whisper. They are a loud shout. So are the ten-foot tall sunflowers in my neighbor’s plot. I am amazed at them, and wonder at how they spring forth so tall and confident among an otherwise messy field that a few crazy souls are attempting to cultivate.

Sunflowers are a blessing. They are God’s grace in physical form.

So are pumpkins that grow from fingernail-sized seeds into twenty-foot vines with huge leaves and numerous basketball-like fruits. Vines that love the burning sun and humid July heat, heat that makes the rest of us wither and retreat to dark shade, hoping for a cool breeze.

Seven-foot tall corn plants are God’s grace. Even complete with Japanese beetles to be caught and aphids to be out done, the corn is amazing and beautiful. It has nourished—provided grace if you will—to hundreds of generations of people in the so-called new world for thousands of years. It did so before Christ, and it did so to those who knew nothing of him.

These are some of the ways God has been shouting at me lately.

The shouting happens nearly every day. Some days it seems to be with great frequency, almost unending. Sometimes I hear. Sometimes I listen. Rarely do I understand. In the best moments, I am guided to wonder.

Lately I see God’s grace in the routine growth of the plants at Perkins, and the passing of the summer days and all the weather summer brings. Yet God also shouts at me through other acts of grace throughout the year.

Perhaps the biggest wonder is why—when I recognize this—I don’t just set aside the activities at hand and listen a little better, perhaps trying a little harder to understand more completely what is being said. Why don’t I just drop what I am doing and listen? Why does my busy mind and our busy culture, rather than God’s shouting out, direct my actions? Is all the business of everyday life really more important?

I desire to do a better job of stopping, listening and wondering. I need to try harder. It starts with stopping. It starts with stopping the other voices that shout at me and beg for my attention for their own sake.

I don’t desire to echo God’s shouting. The world about me does enough shouting. I desire to share the acts of grace through which God is revealed. I need to make it a habit of doing as God does, as God acts, sharing grace.

Stop. Listen. Wonder. And share.

Sunflower View

As the sun passes overhead day by day and summer marches on into August, new things keep appearing in the garden. This week it was the first sunflowers.

I've always liked how sunflower blossoms follow the sun across the sky.

Because of the way we planted our sunflowers along the north side of our community garden plot, they seem to be keeping watch over the garden.

They get to watch the peppers begin to fruit, the tomatoes turn red, the beans climb, the squash run, and the corn reaching for the sky.

But most immediately, they are keeping watch over their smaller cousins, the zinnias, as they bloom at their feet.

Simple Confusion

After a week or so of trying, I finally fixed my pulse sprinkler. Now these sprinklers are a pretty basic type of garden equipment, and have probably been around for a long time. Clearly, they were invented long before the time of modern plastics, as the best ones are made of brass.

It turned out that a pretty large chunk of rust had made its way from the Perkins plumbing system into the sprinkler head. But this is not what I thought was the problem.

Being a community garden, implements are often shared. When the sprinkler stopped returning, I assumed that someone sharing the sprinkler had clogged the linkage up with dirt. Mislead by my assumptions, I disassembled and reassembled the sprinkler countless times to no avail.

It's interesting how our assumptions about our community can mislead us.

After a few days of mulling the problem about, I came back at it with fresh eyes and tried new solutions. Initially I experienced no more success.

Then I saw the little nozzle nut staring me in the face. I cracked it open and there it was—a piece of bright maroon rust jammed in the opening. Simple as that. And nothing to do with my garden community.

Just a random physical event.

These old sprinklers are simple, almost elegant in their design. Yet when things go haywire, it’s amazing how our complicated brains can cause us to stumble around in the dark.

Simple, yet confusing to the easily mislead mind.

My How You've Grown

"My how you've grown!" The line fit's both Abbey and the garden these days. The pumpkins and the corn love the heat so much they are growing a noticeable amount every day. Each time I visit the garden, I spy a new pumpkin in the patch.

Abbey is also growing in many ways. It's not just her size that is changing, but her personality too. Some days she wants to spend time with her Daddy, other days she almost seems to wish he would just stay at work or go off to Perkins by himself.

Her interactions with Julie and me are increasingly animated and more deliberate. Sentences are slowly getting more and more complete. When I asked her to smile big for the camera tonight, she opened her mouth so wide it wasn't a smile, but a big, gaping hole.

And these days when I ask her for a kiss, she is more likely than not to end the kiss by blowing in my face.

New Path in Lowell

Tonight Abbey and I meet Clare Cain and Matt Rowbotham and his wife out in Lowell to scout a potential new route for the North Country Trail through the Lowell State Game Area. Earlier, Clare and I were frustrated with her negotiations with the DNR and their refusal to consider any trail that did not follow existing openings in the woods—such as illegally used two tracks. As a result, I was skeptical that an appropriate route could be found that would be an improvement upon the existing trail in the area.

I was pleasantly surprised tonight.

The path Clare and company lead me on through the woods was excellent right from the start. As one leaves Lowell and gets to the end of North Monroe Street, the road passes some majestically tall honey locusts and a fragrant stand of red pine that signal the coming woods.

The path cut across the corner of an abandoned Boy Scout archery range and immediately began to climb a bluff along the Flat River. The views in the summer are scenic, but are sure to be outstanding in the fall and winter.

The trail then turns and enters a beautiful beech-maple forest. My mind quickly wandered to images of first peoples living in the woods thousands of years before the arrival of Europeans. What a spectacular place this must have been before the farms, dams and roads that now define the area.

It’s amazing what a little familiarity with a piece of land can do for planning a hiking trail. Clare spent some time to walking and exploring the area and came up with a fantastic route.

I’m eager to see this new trail established and used to showcase the North Country Trail to the residents of Lowell.

And I’m sure Abbey wouldn’t mind returning another summer day to sample a few more of the blackberries found along the way.

Beans

One thing the hot weather does for sure is grow beans. And one thing the soil at Perkins does is grow sweet beans.

When I was weeding yesterday, I picked off one good size bean and snacked on it. My goodness! Was it sweet!

At breakfast this morning, I suggested to Julie that we should have green beans for dinner tonight. The plan was that I'd stop at Perkins on my way home and we'd get them in the pot before too many of the sugars turn to starch.

As it turned out, Julie's mother invited us over for dinner. So we brought a basket of green beans and a bouquet of zinnias. The beans never made it into a pot of water. Julie and her mom tasted a few raw and the decision was to serve them up raw.

Simple, modest green beans. I planted them because I had the extra space, and I'm delighted that I did.

Squash Days of Summer

I never really understood the saying "the dog days of summer." According to Wikipedia, the name has little to do with canines and everything to do with the stars and hot weather. The dog days "get their name because the period this occurs is often during the time the star Sirius, known as the Dog Star (and the brightest star of all as seen from Earth), both rises after, and sets before, the Sun and is hence lost in the latter's glare. This period of invisibility, for Northern Hemisphere observers, is caused by the fact that the position of Sirius in the celestial sphere is well to the south of the ecliptic."

And I had images of panting hounds hiding out under the front porch in the cool dirt...

Being a gardener, a more appropriate name to me would be the "squash days of summer." During this same time, the squash plants begin to run and grow with vigor. You can almost see and hear the vines stretching out as they jump the garden boarder and make for greener pastures. Although they are known more for their long vines, huge leaves and quirky fruits, squash are definitely under-rated for their amazing flowers, which bloom best in the coolness of the morning.

Earlier this week, Grand Rapids temperatures climbed into the high 80's. While that's not all bad, dew points have also climbed into the 70's. That makes it rather uncomfortable for us Homo sapiens. But squash and pumpkins seem to thrive in the warmth and the humidity. The humidity keeps the leaves and soil moist, although the fog and dew in early morning do make prime breading weather for powdery mildew and the sort.

Temperatures are projected to soar into the mid 90's this weekend. I should have planted a stake by the end of a pumpkin vine to measure the growth after a few days. My guess is that it will be in feet, not inches.

I don't know how the squash can handle the 90+ degree heat in the blazing sun. As for me, I'll be like those hounds...looking for a good shade tree and a reliable breeze.

Chasing Goodness on a Hot Day

Yesterday’s rain turned today’s heat into a sauna. And while it’s no excuse, the heat and humidity had me feeling rather crabby and stressed. The end result was that my brain shut down and I was more than a little short with those I love, especially Julie.

After the night quieted down, I got to thinking back to when three friends and I got off the trail a week ago after hiking 140 miles. My friend Andy noted the blissful, laid back feeling that overcomes one after so many miles on the trail. He asked me if the feeling while hiking the Appalachian Trail, or afterwards, was anything like coming off a week’s hike.

I told him that it’s much the same, just that the intensity is different. But I also noted how fragile the feeling is, and how hard it is to hold onto a trail state-of-mind once other modern distractions fight for your attention.

I have to work harder to hold onto a trail state-of-mind. It’s a good place to be and rather indescribable to those who have not experienced it. Time becomes less important. Stuff becomes less important. Tasks become less important. People become more important. Being good to people, and being surrounded by those who value goodness become very important.

I wonder who I would be today if I had not gotten doses, large and small, of a trail state-of-mind.

It makes me think of a line from a Gillian Welch song called “Everything is Free.”

“Someone hit the big score.
They figured it out,
That we're gonna do it anyway,
Even if doesn't pay.”

Money, time and achievements are poor measures of what is good. Goodness is measured in a different way and is best realized when you're with those you love.

My hiking companion for much of the Appalachian Trail, dandelion john, puts it more directly in one of his songs entitled “A Mile in My Shoes.”

"But I’ve been feeling a little different
Since the day that I came home-
I tend to hold my lover longer,
And my how all the kids have grown.

And lately it holds my interest
Holding down the chair
Around the family dining table
Used to be after eating I’d be out of there.

And the people they laugh and they wonder
But how can I explain-
Why these days I don’t mind walking
Even if it’s out in the pouring rain."

It’s hard work to hold onto goodness, to practice goodness, to do goodness. I need to work a little harder at it, especially on hot, humid days.

God willing each day, I’ll do a little better.

Living Life Like a Kid

Today a long awaited rain finally came. It's been raining since mid afternoon—a wet, grey evening.

Tonight I had to come home from work a bit early at 5:00pm so that Julie could buzz off to a meeting. When she got back, I had to run out to a 7:00pm meeting of my own.

Once Julie left, Abbey and I sat down to a dinner of rice, bean and kale burritos (yes, we have a lot of kale and chard these days).

After a quiet dinner, I dropped on the couch and flicked on the TV to watch the six o'clock news. After five minutes of that, Abbey walked up to me and said, "noisy." I asked her if she wanted me to turn off the TV and she said yes.

I asked her if she wanted to listen to some music and she agreed. I turned on a local community radio station that was playing a little roots music. I asked her if she wanted it louder, to which she promptly said, "no!"

I asked, "Softer?"

She said, "Yes."

Then she said, "Softer...softer...softer..." until I had the volume turned all the way down. She smiled.

I flicked the radio off.

I asked her if she wanted to lie down and listen to the rain. She agreed. We curled up on the couch and listened to the rain, the passing cars, and the birds.

After ten minutes or so, she started to ask, "Mommy go?" I told her Mommy went to a meeting. She kept asking, and I kept answering. To break the monotony, I began to sing silly songs to her about Mommy going away and Mommy coming home. The songs, and the rain, soon had us drifting off to sleep.

Once again, Abigail reminded me how to live life to its fullest by enjoying simple pleasures like an unexpected nap on a rainy evening.

Peas and Deer

Abbey helped me clean out the old peas in the garden tonight. As we plucked out the tired, old vines, we found a couple of old pods worth opening up. We popped the peas inside into a bowl, and Abbey popped them into her mouth.

The peas and Elmo kept her busy while I seeded some pole beans, fall lettuce and some more basil.

We also stopped by the Perkins plot. It's a cool evening and the moon will almost be full tonight, so I can’t help but think the deer will be back.

I've been doing some research on deer prevention and I've learned that fences must be 8' tall. Other strategies include double fences and even a single strand of wire 3-4 feet off the ground and 3-4 feet outside your main fence. I guess such things easily confuse deer.

I've also read the bit about hair clippings hanging in bags in the garden. While I might be a bit odd, that strategy is too far out for me.

I've also heard about soap. But I visited a friend with soap bars hanging from her fruit and ornamental trees—and she still had deer browsing every morning.

So I've employed the one remaining method about which I've read. I sprayed my plants with a mixture of one raw egg to one quart of water. I did this late last week and when I visited the plot on Sunday, it did indeed have a mild foul odor.

We shall see if it works.

And Back to the Garden

While I was gone, the neighborhood deer breached the fence and sampled some of the delicacies in the Perkins Garden. I had some tomato plants severely pruned and some large squash leaves ripped right off. Two squash plants were uprooted and the deer even munched down some mild chili pepper plants. My neighbor's giant sunflowers now just look like giant poles. But most all will recover.

Tonight I thinned the big corn patch (planted in three biweekly successions so we'll have fresh sweet corn over six to eight weeks). A little blood meal and this stuff is shooting right up and turning dark green.

I've also been picking Japanese beetles off of the zinnias every night I am in town. I'm keeping pace with them, but they're still there every night. I pluck them off and send them swimming in a tub of soapy water.

Zinnias are starting to bloom, so it shouldn't be long and I'll be gifting cut flowers about the neighborhood.

Back to Babylon

The hike from Croton Dam to Hodenpyl Dam wet well. I haven't posted recently because all that time away caught me in a lurch. When I returned home, bills had to get paid, gardens weeded and watered and a billion other chores tended to. On top of that, Julie and I had to go up north again this weekend to lead a mowing crew on the North Country Trail. Early July is when the bracken ferns get the highest and hide the trail in many places.

We dubbed this hike the Dam 2 Dam hike. In between the two dams, there was a lot to see--forests of all sorts, oak savannah prairies, huge wetlands, rivers big and small, glacial ponds, and loads of deer. We saw an unusually high number of spotted fawns this year, often twins. Other animal sightings included two sandhill cranes hiking the trail, numerous redtail hawks, a bald eagle, a hognose snake (pictured) and a bevy of songbirds.

The hike ended up being closer to 140 miles, and we only got rained on twice, both times at night. The second time was a little crazy, as we camped on a rather exposed knob on a clear summer's evening. The knob with the view (picture) is dubbed "Far Away from the Maddening Crowd," and it was.

Shortly before midnight a vivid thunderstorm rolled in. Given our exposed location, we secured our camps, donned our rain gear and high-tailed it for a lower location with smaller trees. Fortunately the storm only lasted for ten minutes, then it was back to bed.

All photos for this entry are courtesy of Andy Mytys, the only hiker of the four with a camera.