Three Years Means Nothing

After another night of unsuccessful stakeout, Phil called me early this morning: "Come see what Biggles caught!" It looked like one of the enormous jumping field mice. He growled over it for a few hours.

Phil had to figure out how to seal off the front of the building. Every step requires a new sequence, a new set of steps to figure out, maybe a few extra sealants. I think the front required two types of tape (double sided and tacky), two types of foam strips, rivets and screws, and at least five different pieces of metal. It took hours.

After finishing that detail-oriented job, Phil did four more panels (sixteen left to go!).

We had one scary moment. In order to hoist the roof panels, we bring the panel over and set it against the building. Phil goes up to the roof, ties rope through a small hole he's drilled at the top, and pulls the panel up. Early on, one of the panels had jammed itself a half inch or so into the dirt, so as Phil pulled, the panel bent a bit until it pulled free of the ground. Since then, I stand at the bottom and lift when Phil pulls.

We did this, and the panel had risen no more than a few inches before it came crashing down. The base was on the downhill slope, and I looked up to see if the top of the panel had scraped the wall. It hadn't, but just barely. "I'm glad the panel didn't scape the wall!" I yelled to Phil.

"I'm glad I didn't just fall off the roof," was his response.

Apparently, as he pulled the panel up, the rope broke and he fell. When asked if his head had dangled in space, he said, "I wasn't that close to the edge." I didn't press for more details. He got a new piece of rope, and we carried on.

I made a list of what I'd like to accomplish this fall. We had a clear plan last year, and it included blueberry bushes. I'm not so sure about blueberries now. I realize that they sell well, store well, and are a quality, healthy food. However, I have doubts about our gallon-a-minute well being able to support the household use, the growing cow herd, whatever irrigation we choose for the orchard, as well as the rather finicky blueberries.

And we'd have to change the soil pH a good bit, as blueberries prefer acidity.

I dug up the blueberries I'd planted last fall. Out of eleven small plants, ten survived. But they didn't grow much, still about ten inches tall, maybe three leaves each. I'm pleased they lived through the hot summer without watering, but that's not a fabulous success.

So the question remains: what will we do with our cleared land in the finger?

I'll add it to the question of what to do with the greenhouse.

I was starting to feel behind, like we should have figured out more than we have. Three years here, and still unsure of the master plan?

It was a great relief to me to look up "three years" in the Bible. There's nothing meaningful related to three years! Jesus ministry probably took about that long, but that's based on references to the various feasts, not because any Gospel writer says, "And then came the crucifixion, just three years and two months after the start of miracles and teaching."

Seven years has meaning. Forty years, too. But I had somehow got it in my head that three was supposed to be really significant, and that because more hadn't been accomplished in three years, that we were somehow failing, falling behind.

But three years means nothing. We just are where we are. It's not a bad place to be.