Thursday, September 27, 2007

The Blessing of Rain!!

God blessed us abundantly. It rained a good hard steady rain for quite a while and then even kept raining lightly for a bit more. Ginny lives fairly close to me. She said they got an inch and a half in the rain gauge. It was really dry around here. If you walked across the gravel driveway you would see dust blow up. Now, we have puddles in the driveway. Puddles are a good thing!!! This rain is bringing in a cold front. The low tonight will be in the low 50's and in the high 40's the next two nights.
When I go out to do chores in the morning, the little calves are usually down at the far end of the pasture. Whatever the grasses and weeds are that grow there, they do not eat them. They like to lay down in the higher grass. Clover, (the little girl) is the spotted one standing up. Our little light colored steer is Phil A. Mignon. The darker one belongs to our neighbor. I can't remember his name. I was walking out to feed the sheep this morning and it was so quiet and still. I could hear a horse clopping down our road. One of the Amish was out early to get somewhere before it got too late. The grass was a bit wet from the rain, which was a welcome thing. The sheep are always so glad to see someone in the morning. We lost our little ram lamb. He went down quick. We babied him for over a week and thought he was getting better. It is one of the sad things about a farm.
You can barely see the pond in this picture. If you click on it and make it bigger you can see a little bit of water. It is WAY down though. The weeds have grown up high around it. Do you notice that some of the trees on the tree line are just losing their leaves without changing colors? =( I hope we get some color.
Here is a close up of the pond. Those tall weeds on the right of the picture may be cattails. If they are, they are new to being there. However, you can tell that they used to be under water some. There are some fish in there and lots of frogs. I can hear the frogs out there singing right now. The window is open and it is almost to the point a sweater would feel nice.
Even the weed patches had pretty much dried up. The goldenrod took the drought really well. The iron weed was short lived this year. The Joe Pye weed was even shorter.
Here is a picture of Southern "Belle". She is the dog that gives the most trouble. It is not all the time, but there are times she will NOT listen no matter what. I could easily get rid of her, but the guys both love her.
This is a little weed patch growing out by the barn. Look at those flowers. They are a miracle. Each one has so much detail, yet they are all alike. God created so many beautiful and intricate things that we often take for granted. You can also see a red clover bloom there. They are very drought resistant.
This is my sedum. Every year I think it is going to do good. Then a cat or a dog or someone will fall on it, walk across it, etc. It all falls down and spreads out really ugly looking. Can you see the pink blush on these. Can you sedum? =)
I am so grateful to God for all that He has given to me. First of all, He gave me His Son, who came and died in my place a death He did not deserve. Then He offers me eternal life with Him as a gift. He bought me and paid a high price for me, the ultimate price. Now, I belong to Him and I am to do what He would have me to do. So many churches preach salvation as a "fire" escape only. They leave out the Lordship. They leave out that we are no longer our own, but we belong to Him. We need to do what He wants us to. We can find that out by reading His Word. It is alive and for today. If you knew that you might die tomorrow, what would you do different? Who would you make things right with? Who would you finally remember to call and tell them you miss them and love them? None of us knows if today is all we have. We need to live each day as if it could be our last.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

Thank you, darling, for lovely pictures and beautiful thoughts.
:-D

Frazzled Farm Wife said...

Loved your post today.

So glad that you got the rain that you needed.

The one thing I love about living on the farm is taking in all of God's beautiful creations but you are right...sometimes we do take them for granted.

Kelli said...

Beautiful pictures and post, Marci. I love the smell after it rains.

Kelli

Sondra said...

I really enjoyed reading your post. I felt like I was reading a section from 'The Budget'! It is so nice to hear about your nice and simple everyday life on the farm as sometimes I get overwhelmed with all the "drama" of the peoples lives that I hear at work everyday.
I love the beautiful pictures also!

Paula said...

Marci,
The blessing of rain. I agreed with that when I lived in KS. Since moving to the NW, it's a bit harder. Thanks for the lovely photos. Your flowers are beautiful.
Paula