Thursday, August 31, 2017

Let Me Get This Straight

There's no global warming but the United States in Texas has just experienced the most costly natural disaster of record and the amount of rainfall in some areas is greater than any other single weather storm in US history.  They say the amount of rainfall is in the trillions of gallons, equivalent to the amount of water that flows over the Niagara Falls in several days.  Niagara Falls dumps about 45 million gallons per second or 3 trillion gallons per day compared to the 13 trillion gallons dumped by Harvey.  Imagine this: all the water hanging out over you in the clouds.  That's a lot of water up there.

Can you even imagine how long eternity or forever is?  You're right, it's nearly impossible but it is a very long time especially compared to our meager lifetime of some 70 odd years.  Yet, we believe that a God who can love more deeply than any of us will damn a person to hell forever for messing up during a lifetime on earth.  Even a human wouldn't impose that punishment on a bad dog.  Perhaps God has a plan to love us into goodness.

Back to global warming.  The forecast for the next seven days in Oregon, the first seven days of September, has high daily temperatures exceeding 90˚F.  By the end of that stretch of warmth, the record for the most days over 90˚ in one year will have been matched or broken.

Life in the foothills of Oregon was been quiet.  Oh, Gail still goes to the clinic most every day and I spent about three days in the hospital with a small intestine obstruction which corrected itself when they relieved the pressure from above and we remodeled the side shed on the garage about the time the total eclipse of the sun occurred.  Otherwise, we're watering plants, pulling weeds, trimming bushes and trees and feeding the domestic and some wild animals.  We're not mowing; there's nothing growing in the lawns of pastures.

The crocus, the fall variety, are blooming.  The blackberries are ripening.  We dug the potatoes, typically with about three to four big potatoes near the top of the soil.  The wild turkeys have eaten the tops off the carrots, again.  We pulled the cucumbers, seven biggies, and harvested four pints of pickled green beans that the deer couldn't reach.  The tomatoes are doing well; we canned ten pints of tomatoes along with pickling the beans.  It is harvest time even if the temperatures are late summer.

With no major projects on the horizon, the days will be filled with little jobs around the yard, making wooden things and doing some catchup cleaning in the barn and garage, and maybe the house.