A Fig Tree

This morning Phil found frost on the ground for the first time this fall. The weather is turning colder.

We had a very pleasant, real meal at a friends' house after church. They made an Italian family-style dinner, and we basked in the luxury of a table that seats all six plus guests, real plates and cloth napkins. It's been quite some time since we had such a meal, though I remember that we, too, used to host dinners in our old home.

While I found home ownership a burden, if not an outright bondage (our old home went through the 40-year, everything breaks problems during our stay there), I am starting to remember the good things, too. A home of our own, in the Lord's time, will be a blessing.

But, as we contemplate digging up our peach orchard and replanting it, Phil said, "What a relief that we didn't build a house two years ago when we moved! Think how many changes we would want to make if we had!"

I did bow to the inevitable, though: I hung up a few pictures for the first time. We have few walls that are both devoid of books or far enough out of the line of boy enthusiasm (juggling attempts, climbing and jumping, door swinging) to make me feel confident of hanging frames that might survive, but the bathroom and the wall right outside offered good surfaces.

It's a sign of how starved for home we must be that I had comments from husband and three sons about the newly hung pictures.

Two bits of animal life: Phil found a box turtle when moving the cows this week. We've watched Bitsy try to reach the soft innards, and the older boys have watched and waited for it to emerge, only to go off for a half hour and come back to find it completely vanished. Turtles might not be cheetahs, but they move surprisingly fast for an animal defined by slow-movement.

The wing of the white Welsh Harlequin duck has such a beautiful band of purple. Incredible.

And yesterday we sold the last of the Babydoll ewes. A man drove up from North Carolina to pick up Maybelle, the smallest of ewes, but a good mother.

And then he gave us a family gift: a fig tree! I could hardly believe it: I have looked at fig trees online, salivated over fig trees at Whole Foods, but always turned away, waiting for another day. He said, "Well, God told me to get you a fig, and they weren't easy to find this time of year, but I finally found a place that still had one."

"But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid: for the mouth of the LORD of hosts hath spoken it" (Micah 4:4).