A Magnificent Day!

Saturday Ginny, Patricia, (our grown, youngest daughter, who is staying with us this week while hunting a new home) and I overhauled the jungle path at the foot of our garden. Over the winter we had not worked this area of the yard at all and thick tangles of vine and undergrowth had nearly blocked the path.

Again I vowed, as I do every year, to never let this happen again.

Upkeep is important.

Things do not stay in order without continual care.

Must be some spiritual lesson here but I keep missing it.

The three of us chopped Kudzu, smilax, wisteria, and creeper vines. We weed-whacked and raked and removed fallen branches to clear the path to the bridge over the hole.

Had to restring the cord in the trimmer four times and weed-bits so caked my body that I looked like the wild Green Man of Celtic legend.

New neighbors moved in next door as we worked but I was too busy to do more than give them a friendly wave of greeting. Plenty of time to get to know them in the future.

“Why did you build a bridge over this big hole in the ground?”, Patricia asked. “Why not just fill in the hole”?

She was off to college and out in the world back when I build that bridge.

My black lab, Sheba, our dog which lived with us for 17 years, had dug that hole. The old dog loved to lay in her hole in the cool ground on hot summer days. That was the only hole she ever dug in our yard and she’d made it a good one. A huge, deep hole.

A huge fallen oak tree lays along one side of the bridge, a vine-covered fence on the other. Overhanging camphor limbs and wisteria vines create a charming tunnel, or covered-bridge effect. Some garden statues, small child’s table set up for fairies to dine, and some old toys nestled in odd nooks lend a mystic air to that area of the jungle path.

And back ten years ago, rather than disturb my favorite dog’s snuggle place, instead of filling in her hole in the middle of the path, I gathered scrap lumber and build a long bridge, about 20-feet in length, over it.

Dog lovers are crazy.

And even though Sheba has been dead for years, I have no intention of filling in her hole. I feel that would be some sort of betrayal.

No rational reason for this feeling.

But that’s the way I feel.

So Sheba’s hole stays.

I’ll build a new bridge when this one gets too rickety.

So, the three of us worked like crazy re-potting flowers, mulching leaves, weeding flower beds, mowing grass, throwing out vast amounts of clippings and debris.

It would have taken me weeks to get all this done by myself.

In the late afternoon the postman delivered the proof copy of the Richard Rogers Diary from t he printer.

The book looks magnificent!

I gloated.

Modesty means having an honest opinion of yourself. Not a low opinion, nor an exalted opinion, but an honest opinion. I think I would have admired and pleasured in this book even if somebody else had done it.

So, before beginning to proofread, I preened over it.

Looking for mistakes and imperfections comes tomorrow.

Time enough for that.

Today, I relished in the look and feel of this new ancient book.

I’m pleased with the book and with myself for my part in producing it and I present it to the Lord Christ as a thing that I treasure and I hope He takes pleasure in His part in making it possible.

After working from dawn to dusk, we were too filthy and covered with plant clippings to go inside the house; but Donald and Helen came by bring a huge feast of Chinese carry-out.

Helen, a graphic artist, designed the book cover for the Rogers Diary.

We set up a table outside in the twilight. Ginny covered it with her best tablecloth and decorated it with a crystal candelabra to blend with the cartons of food and paper plates.

We feasted and talked long into the night as the moon rose bathing the yard in white glow.

As a for-the-hell-of-it gift, Donald & Helen brought us a set of underwater lights for the swimming pool. Makes our pool look line a flying saucer had landed in the depths, like in that movie Cocoon. We all got in the pool and lounged talking in the twilight and admiring these strange lights.

Donald and Helen had spent the day doing yard work at their new home and refurbishing a bathroom from toilet seat to ceiling fan. They also replaced a back door and planned other improvements.

So we all talked about home improvements, computers, Patricia’s hunt for an apartment of her own (she’s been couching around with us and siblings for a week at a time — inconvenient for everybody but we all think she’s worth the trouble). We talked about car shopping, our granddaughter’s band camp, the Bible story of Ehud and Eglon, the fat king of Moab, bougainvillea vines, blogs, and a computer 3-D animated rendering program that Donald is working on.

Once a loud train passed on nearby tracks and we all enjoyed a spastic train-dance — all that is except Ginny who’d taken out her hearing aids when she got in the pool and who did not hear the approaching train. She thought the rest of us had gone insane when we started to dance in the moonlight.

Some women do marry beneath them.

By the end of the evening we all felt tired out of our gourds but too content, satisfied, and happy to want to quit. We engaged in a group hug and all reluctantly winded to our appointed places.

Now a lot of work remains to be done in our garden but thanks to the heavy work of this day, it looks manageable.

And this evening’s spontaneous garden party in beautiful surroundings proves that all the work is worthwhile.

Thanks be to God.