Weekly Update: 5.3.26

Of starting things and finishing things

I knelt in the dirt, dibber in hand, making holes for green bean seeds every four inches along the trellises. My niece Eilley Mae knelt beside me, chattering as she dropped bean seeds into each hole, covering them as she went. The sun was shining, but the weather was mild, making the work more recreation than labor. It was a sweet moment, the kind that makes all the hard work and sacrifice worth it. We planted six rows of Kentucky Wonder beans this year — two more rows than last year. We hope to get a better yield, as we are getting started a lot sooner than we did last summer.

Along with our green beans, we put our okra seedlings out this week. Bonnie-Jean, with our sister-in-law Erin and her daughters, prepped the soil for both the beans and the okra earlier in the week. They pulled weeds, removed rocks, and added compost. As of this week, about a third of our garden is prepped for the year, which is better than the last couple years. Bonnie-Jean also repotted our tomato seedings.

As the growing season has set in, Grace spent hours almost every morning running our weed trimmer. She mowed an impressive swath of the bunkhouse site. When our brother Levi got home from work most days, he took a turn with the trimmer as well. On Saturday, Levi tackled our spring area. While he ran the trimmer and brush cutter, my sisters and nieces pulled watercress out of the creek. We already had one watercress cleaning earlier this year, but it came back quickly. The wild roses along the bank have been blooming abundantly, but it was hard to appreciate them fully with all the weeds.

We also started cleaning out around a patch of wild phlox near the bunkhouse. We enjoy the phlox every year, though it is usually surrounded by bramble. This year, we plan to make the area into a flower bed, enclosing the phlox and adding additional flowers.

While Bonnie-Jean and Grace worked in the garden and yard, my dad and I finished some bunkhouse projects. On Tuesday, we installed the final flood light on the southwest corner of the bunkhouse, completing the circuit and making the other flood light finally functional. We had been waiting to get all the siding up to install the light. It was such a treat to be able to flip a switch and see nearly to the tree line at night.

We were just finishing the light installation when our phones started sounding alarms for a severe thunderstorm warning and destructive hail. I’d never seen a warning like that before, but the details were as bleak as the title — softball-size hail had been reported from this storm. We all ran around stashing our tools and putting our plants under the deck. We made it inside just before the storm hit — but we only got some little pea sized hail and rain, for which we were thankful. The record setting storm wreaked havoc in the surrounding area, with many homes and vehicles damaged. It was one of a series of strong storms that hit over the first days of the week, some of which brought high winds and tornado warnings. It was the first time we used our tornado shelter in nearly two years. When the weather cleared up on Wednesday, I was ready.

On Wednesday, we started the day with some feast day baking — lady fingers, in honor of St. Catherine of Sienna. After all, St. Catherine is famous for pointing out errors in high places — including those of a Pope. None of us had ever made lady fingers before, and the process of whipping both the egg whites and yokes separately was unique. The cookies came together quickly, and they baked up with a nice texture — crisp on the outside, soft on the inside. They were good, though a bit eggy for my taste. Next time, we plan to use them for a trifle or serve them with pudding.

We made a lot of progress on our outdoor shower this week. I helped my dad finish installing our outdoor shower fixture. We cut and mitered boards to hide the plumbing, then installed the fixture itself. On Saturday, our brother Jeremiah joined us as we started on the enclosure for the shower. We opted to use leftover and reclaimed materials from our various projects. We broke down old portions of the exterior tent frame, and we used leftover house siding boards. We didn’t quite finish — we need to add metal to the roof, make a gate, and create a floor of some sort (gravel or decking). Still, we got to a place that the outdoor shower is useable for the time being. With eleven people in the bunkhouse, a second shower will immediately improve our quality of life.

It was a well-rounded and productive week. The weather was idyllic, and the woods more green each day. We all made time for lots of walks to the spring to soak in the beauty. As I’ve mentioned before, now that we are living in the bunkhouse, we have to be intentional about taking small moments to savor the springtime. Tent-living forced us outdoors all day, and we spent hours sitting in the woods, doing bookwork on laptops surrounded by birdsong and green trees. We have much less built-in exercise than we used to as well — finishing work simply isn’t as active as framing was most days. Hence, we’ve been intentional about walking more, taking small breaks for the quarter-mile loop to the spring and back. The small moments are good checks in the routine, moments to be nourished by God’s glory in creation. I’m thankful for those moments, the way I’m thankful for the time I spent in our garden this week. There’s just nothing like green growing things, be they okra sprouts or wild pecan trees.

The earth brought forth vegetation: plants yielding seed of every kind, and trees of every kind bearing fruit with the seed in it. And God saw that it was good.

Genesis 1:12, NRSV-CE