Garden of Thought

So... I was at Bible Study last evening. The windows in the room look out at the bend in the building where the two wings come together. I watched a crow fly up onto the roof there with what appeared to be half a burrito, a great find for a crow. It spent some time happily pulling bits off to eat, then stopped and looked around, considering what was left. As I watched, it carefully hefted it up, carried it to the edge of the roof and stuck it into the gutter, cawed a few times and flew off.

Apparently a roof gutter makes a great safe for a crow's treasure, as he came back shortly and reached in for a couple more bites, then flew off again. Didn't see it come back while we were there and then it got dark. Now I need to send a note to our handyman to let him know, lest the mystery of the mummified gutter burrito be too baffling to him in the fall.

We need some updates to the hall at our church, the window coverings absolutely scream 1980s with their dusty rose and country blue, so I proposed we have a tea to raise some money for new curtains. It got approved and the date is now set for September 26 - all of the sudden my little daydream about serving a pretty tea is a reality and I've got to get my act together and figure this out so I can assemble and direct a team to do this.

I eyeballed the room and calculated we can seat 30 people in the nice dining area without it being too crowded for comfort, so if we do 2 seatings that'll let me sell up to 60 tickets. At $18 each, minus the cost of the food and tea we should still be pretty good. Time for a learning curve - so many recipes to look at, I'll need to narrow it. Sweets are easy, sandwich fillings are traditional, but does anyone have a favorite savory they've encountered?

It's definitely "that season" again - coming from a Christmas party that had rockin' gingerbread cake with spiced whipped topping and cream-cheese-and-nutmeg stuffed dates to holiday events with everything from brandy beans to peppermint cookies going by it's hard to know what comes next.

We have our church Christmas event this coming Sunday, so I'm busy making marshmallow popcorn balls and green tree-shaped spritz for that, at the rate we're going I may not even need to make any Christmas cookies this time around as we'll already be full up on enough goodies to cause us to all roll out the door like that girl that turned into a blueberry in the Willy Wonka thing... but y'know... there's still those soft sugar cookies with lemon in them... and the peanut butter balls dipped in chocolate....and that amazing fruitcake with all the wine in it....

What are you making this year? Any extra good things orbiting past you?

Phoo! I'm tired, must be time for bed.  Tomorrow is our big church picnic for Easter and I'm up to my ears in fixings for a huge green salad, glorified rice and two big pans of peach cobbler. Yay!  Plus I'll be doing the face-painting on the side. Makes for a busy but good event. I just have to finish one salad and I can hit the hay.

I'm attending two churches, my main one and the one that rents space in the main one, so I get to help with two Easter picnics, one this weekend and one next weekend, complete with two rounds of face-painting and two rounds of kiddie egg-hunts, probably going to walk my feet off but it's always such a cheery time with visitors that only come out of the woodwork for major holidays as well.  Thankfully, it looks like a clear day, it's been pretty rainy here, so we may be blowing in the breeze but at least we'll be dry.

Have a lovely Palm Sunday weekend, all!

This probably sounds crazy to people who aren't Christians, but my church has been teaching about prayer and with it fasting and the different kinds there are, so now we get to practice - we're all fasting together for the next three weeks with three times available for corporate prayer each day as well and I'm so happy!

I love it when we all get to do things together and I love prayer, so this is wonderful to me.  It's going to be a challenge (I've never done one for three weeks running before), but that's the idea, to stretch us a little.  It's all voluntary, with only guidelines suggested, some are just giving up one meal a day, others are just cutting out meat, etc. for a time, a small number of more experienced folks are going to try just liquids for at least part of it.  We all get to encourage one another and discuss how it's going a couple times a week too.

Starts tonight!  Yay!

I seem to be shifting gears somewhat, guess it's time to learn how to be older or something.  I have a few white hairs - this is still quite alien to me, that they've shown up amid my normally dark-blonde hair, very silver-white and kind of wavy so I guess by the time I completely run out of pigmentation I'll have this crazy poof of white.  I kind of like that, but it's still novel enough I stare at them when they are shed (Wait, that came from my head? But it's white!). 

Also shifting in responsibilities in church, having gone from young believer (pew sitter/consumer of activities) to middle (helps with activities/provides stuff) to middlin' older (in charge of some stuff / teaching / deciding).  Now I've just taken on a Deaconess position, which is kind of like an Elder-in-Training.  I'm used to watching this kind of person take care of stuff and coming alongside them when they needed extra help, now it's me.  I just hope I don't have too many rounds of "Boy, that person really needs someone to pray with them, why isn't anyone doing that? Oh wait, it's me!"  Heh. 

New seasons, new ways of Being in the World. So far so good.

Gosh, this has been such a long slog from January, I'm seriously looking forward to spring break at the end of the month just so I don't have to drive kids here there and everywhere for a few days.  Can't complain about the weather though, it's been a really mild winter and now it's a lovely, mild day, perfect for grubbing out chickweed and repotting some houseplants.  Got some funky long rubber mats for our front steps to replace the anti-slip strips, they look like a wrought iron leafy design and it really dresses it up, that and a couple new pinwheels and it's positively cheerful.

And I got a walkman! I'm a techie dinosaur to my kids, heck, I still have a drawer full of cassettes, so moving to an mp3 player of my own is quite the leap into the space-age by comparison, lol...gradually learning how to work the thing, amused by thinking to myself that at last I can participate in those memes where they want you to put your player on shuffle and do things with the results.  We must keep our priorities straight, after all! :-D

We've also had another church join us in our building to share the space starting this past week - I went to their Bible study last week just to meet some of them and they were a hoot, looking forward to making that a regular thing, I'm always up for a good study, they're always fun and/or interesting.  This weekend we're doing a St. Pat's day potluck with the two congregations so folks can get to know one another, so far so good.  Our preschool is really struggling to find students (or rather, families who can afford to pay for preschool) so it's nice to have something working well.

I'm up late (for me) waiting for my crockpot to finish cooking the lentil-sweet-potato-coconut-curry I'm making for tomorrow's potluck.  The problem with sitting up late is I often end up wanting to buy things. 

Actually, I've gotten to where I shop Etsy first anymore, I love being able to support all these nice people who make all these nice things!  Like my somewhat-local Heavenly Honey Farm, - yummers... I tried their honey lip balm and honey eye cream and now find myself abandoning my former loyalty to the mass-marketed 'Burts Bees' with scarcely a backwards glance.  Sorry, Burt!  You've been one-upped.  I went back to Heavenly today and ordered a couple of their 'pillows' of lip balms to give to our church and preschool staff for Christmas this year, yay for having that taken care of.

Now I want beeswax candles too.  Haven't splurged on one of those for a long time. Hm!

Autumn is in full swing and the trees are beautiful, the sugar-pie pumpkins are colorful on my deck and the cat is getting fatter and more rabbity with winter fur day by day, fluff by fluff.  Candy corn time!  Yellow and orange and chocolatey colored brown that doesn't really taste like chocolate but I like it anyway.  Acorn squash with brown sugar and butter melted in the hollows.  Warm slippers in the morning on the cold floor boards.  Coffee steaming up the windows as leaves go swirling past.

Just survived a houseful of teen gals for a festive sleepover, complete with shrieks and giggles into the wee hours and bodies in sleeping bags all over the floor in the morning.  Went through a lot of crackers, cheese, apples and, yes, coffee.  Now it's time to plan for things like a homecoming dance and the church 'trunk or treat'.... think I'll take the easy way out and revising the 'gypsy' theme with my bellydance stuff.

We aren't doing much for the 4th this year, I seem to be in low-interest mode for holidays this time around.  Spent the morning pressure-washing the curbs of the church parking lot while no cars were parked there, prepping it so I can repaint them, which isn't terribly holidayish, I admit, but it worked great. 

In lieu of other festive ideas we decided to get the last of the apple pies that I froze last fall out of the freezer and bake it and now the house smells fabulous.  Besides, it's traditional to associate America and Apple Pie. I'm not entirely sure why, though, hah!

Starflower passed her test and got her driver's permit this week, so I get to go lurching around with her this year while trying to cheerfully keep my composure as passenger/instructor - ah, parenthood, where the adventures never end.