I Find Arcturus

The long awaited rain came, a little, Saturday night. It fell gently, a tenth of an inch, and we woke Sunday morn to grey skies, which soon gave way to another gentle sprinkle. While a bit more than a tenth isn't nearly the inch a week that healthy plants appreciate, any moisture from the sky was enough to make us rejoice. Even the bees today were actually flying around their hives, rather than sitting, listlessly, by their entries.

Phil has been moving the sheep. They grazed the apple orchard twice this year so far, and now he's moved them into their winter dry lot and the garden area that had onions (now harvested). The weeds have grown up significantly, and the sheep are going to clear it for us. They are round and happy, and I am pleased to see that they are eating down the grasses and weeds.

Saturday morning, our friend Tyson brought us a new trailer we purchased from him. The plan is to put the 300 gallon water tank into it. We need the tank to water the cows each day, but since it's in the back of the truck right now, the truck isn't useful for much else. Three hundred gallons weighs over a ton, so we don't move that tank very often. It will be nice to have the back of the truck freed up for other uses.

Phil and I had a long and productive conversation this afternoon. I had reached a point where I wanted to know what the vision is for the year. Where are we going? What do we want to accomplish. And Phil had a good answer: finish the greenhouse (with about 20 steps, including several I need to do, and what the order ought to be); deal with the metal building, probably starting in about a month; weed and tend the garden, perhaps planting perennials; continue fencing.

It feels good to know, at least a bit, where we're headed.

And with that, the boys and I took advantage of the clear, warm night, only a day or so since the new moon, and we found constellations. I remember trying to do this once before, but it was winter, and cold, and no one had very good success, and we had to run back to the house a good many times. It was difficult enough, I haven't tried it since, even though we have the best possible book on the subject: H.A. Rey's The Stars.

Tonight, though, the older two boys and I had a great time. We found the Big Dipper, and from there, Polaris (the North Star), much higher in the sky than I expected. We found the Dragon, Cassiopeia, Cepheus, and, so happily, Arcturus, one of only 21 stars of the first magnitude (greatest brightness) in the sky.

We had an enthusiastic, spirited time for a couple of hours, and my decades-long wish to be able to spot and name the constellations has started to come to fruition.

It slipped my mind last week, but as we drove to church, the cars ahead of us stopped. We saw smoke billowing, and the rumor came back to us: a truck is on fire. The road to church is quite curvy, but we could spot flames occasionally. As we sat, suddenly there came a fire truck. Within two minutes, there was a cloud of grey smoke from the chemical spray, the fire was out, the traffic resumed, and we passed an old beater truck, burnt to a crisp.

It isn't often that you get to witness a complete episode: trauma-rescue-resolution. I wanted to get teary, but Phil pointed out an interesting fact. In the ten or so vehicles ahead of us, two were RVs. There aren't usually any RVs on that road, so this was a bizarre coincidence. "I bet both those RVs had fire extinguishers," he said. "But no one thought to use them. If they had caught that fire quickly enough, it wouldn't have flared so that the fire department had to come."

It gave us a passing thought to get a little fire extinguisher for the car.

As a funny postscript, at church right after we sang a song with the line, "Your love is like fire that burns for all to see." At the time, I thought, "And I am just that burned out truck," and faster than words came a vision of fire with pure gold coming out. Let me be that gold.