"I Could Be a Butcher"

Friday night, beautiful rain clouds rolled in. Oh, we were so excited! The boys started singing with me, "Come on and rain down on us, rain down on us, Lord!" We had some light drizzle ... for about two minutes.

Oh! We were so frustrated! We've been waiting for the autumn deluges for weeks now. I seem to remember every August getting long, deep rains, one, two, three inches. But we continue dry, horribly dry.

Saturday we woke to grey skies. I know that grey skies are gloomy, but when the land is as rock solid and dusty as ours, they hold promise.

Phil headed out to mow first thing, and while he was doing so, a light drizzle began.

The light drizzle continued, and gradually strengthened. Finally!

I went to check the rain gauge today, to see how much we had. We have a square 4x4 with two rain gauges: one that's gradually lost its numbers, and the new one.

The new gauge showed 2.6", which is fabulous. The old gauge showed 4" even. That's a whole lot more; quite a difference. Hopefully Butch will be able to settle the question of accuracy very soon.

Two little life tidbits. We've been irritated this year by a new annoyance: bell hornets. These bright yellow and red two inch flying insects pack an extremely painful sting (from what we've heard). Surprisingly, they fly after dark: we had five fly in through an open window one night, and buzz angrily around our fluorescent bulbs. Phil killed them by crushing them between two books: the fly swatter is nowhere near strong or large enough.

I have been feeding my bees every day (each hive eats 12 cups of sugar a day!). I was pouring in the almost gallon of liquid. It takes a little while to pour, and as I stood there, a bell hornet flew onto the inner cover, stung one of my honey bees to death. I kept pouring, entirely devoid of a way to kill this powerful enemy, wondering how long it would take my hive to kill this ferocious killing machine, ten times the size of my little honey makers.

But the bell hornet just carried away the dead bee, and I closed up the hive, and that was that.

Nature can be vicious!

Completely unrelated, Isaiah has been wondering about possible life vocations for him. He's assembled a lengthy list, in the double digits, with a range of ideas from architect to farmer to science teacher to big game hunter guide (that was Phil's idea). And then he tried to figure out a way to do as many of those jobs as possible.

Jadon wasn't much interested in our input. He would like to be a world traveler, as the market for explorers (like Magellan or Hudson) has dried up in the last several hundred years.

Abraham had an interesting combination: missionary-wedding photographer (I think the latter would supply the funds for the former).

And then Joe, just turned four, said, "When I grow up, to be as big as Daddy, I think probably I could be a butcher."

I have a niece just a few days older than Joe. Somehow I doubt that she would ever think of "butcher" as a potential occupation.

I sure love these boys!