Turkey Vultures, EFM and fresh blueberries

Not a really good image, but if you click on it you can see that it is a Turkey Vulture. First ones that I have seen in Pitt Meadows. It and it's mate were feeding on some critter that had expired in this field for two days and making sport of chasing a couple of Eagles away while doing so. Always some thing new on a farm.

Speaking of something new, we have had record breaking heat for all six days this week. It does get a tad oppressive at times. Then there is the futility of trying to sleep when third floor bedrooms have been building a heat load all day. Oh well, these will be pleasant memories in January and February when the rain is cold and the wind is helping it find every crevice in the wet weather gear.

EfM and my debut as a mentor in September has been much on my mind over this past week. I signed up with a web-site that connects mentors and was quite blown away by the incredibly generous welcome that came my way from folks who have been mentoring in the program for many years. Over my lifetime it seems that Christians, in all of our varied guises, have worked quite hard to give ourselves a less than positive name. Perhaps I'm being too hard on us as a collective group. That being said, I am regularly refreshed by the expression of welcome, of acceptance as you are and of sister and brotherhood that flows out from so many of those who have taken the EfM journey.

I've done a few bits and pieces for one of our neighbours who farms blueberries as well as cranberries and they gave me a twenty pound crate of the little blue beauties yesterday. About nineteen pounds more than Alley and I could go through so I passed them on to my favorite baker. She was quite pleased and my reward will be that in the depths of winter a blueberry loaf will appear to remind me of the summer. Not a bad exchange at all.

Everything good goes around.

to Janet Land, whenever this may find you

Forty years since Eagle landed on the moon. Forty years. There is a part of me that wants to rage at how fast those years have gone. At how carelessly many of them were spent.

Oh well, raging does little good.

When that first pair of humans touched down on the moon in 1969, I was in the back seat of a car with Janet Land, travelling down a dirt road near the Sooke potholes outside of Victoria. I think we were in Dan Mercer's car, but am not sure about that. The radio signal was poor, but we pulled over and heard the landing account and then listened when the station segued into, Good Morning Starshine.

What a wonderful thing, to have been born in the fifties and to have come to adulthood in the sixties and seventies.

Janet Land. Hmm, five foot nothing, blond hair, fair skin, the most beautiful eyes imaginable and a lovely voice. My first love. Well, I'm not certain that the infatuation I felt was really love; but sure as hell it was the closest thing to love that I'd experienced in my eighteen years.

I was about as naive as could be as high school came to an end and, for me, being with sweet Janet was nothing short of being struck by lightening. I clearly remember the blend of grownup desire leavened with the fears instilled by parents who equated anything sexual with sin and hell and all over-laid by my sense of being a six foot two, hundred and thirty pound dork.

It is a strange thing, how certain memories fix in our minds.

When I heard the news report of the anniversary of the first Apollo landing that moment in '69 rushed into my mind and the anchor was my memory of Janet.

We didn't date for long and late that year I moved to Alberta for work and that was that until one day in the early '90's when I was at Victoria General Hospital to visit my dad who was going in for emergency surgery and, who walked off the elevator that I was waiting for but Janet.

We talked for a couple of minutes, me preoccupied with the urgency of dad's condition, and said our goodbyes, and headed off in opposite directions. Maybe five minutes.

Five minutes when all of that stuff from '69 came flooding back.

So, I had this memory when I heard this news item a couple of days ago and I felt an overwhelming urge to call Janet and say, hi. To say, do you remember. To say, I do. To say, I hope that life has been good to you. To say, thank you.

I actually looked the number up in the Victoria book. Only one Janet Land, if that is still her name. Could be her. Could be... But I didn't call. I am blessed with that memory of that moment and that in itself is enough of a gift.

Whenever you might come across this, Janet, from forty years on, I thank you for the presence you left in my life.

Summer is truly here at Sandhill Cranberry Farm. The weeds have run amok over the past four weeks. Our biggest pest is Yellow Weed, sometimes called Yellow Loosestrife. Close behind are Sheep Sorrel, Bog St. John's Wort, Creeping Buttercup and that ubiquitous survivor of the age of the dinosaurs, Horsetail. The bloom is almost done and fruit set has begun, so spraying is out of the equation.

Now I wipe. And wipe. And wipe. A hollow hockey stick with about two litres of roundup/water mix in the handle and a six inch by four inch bit of carpet on the end that one lovingly brushes over the tops of the offending species, all the while taking care not to touch the vines below. It is a fine job for those with no imagination and a good tolerance of thirty-five degree weather.

Today the thermometer in the pump house topped out at thirty-three. Usually the bog thermo is two to three degrees higher. Oh well, this is the season when peeling off five pounds of water weight is the norm.

I am a third of the way through, The History of Christian Theology, which is my current acquisition from, The Teaching Company, and which is proving to be as well structured as the Professor's course entitled, Augustine, Philosopher and Saint.

I have to say that these course offerings are a great way to learn without going to school. I am certain that the level of teaching is above that given by many colleges, though the absence of extensive reading lists and testing does inhibit the process.

Phillip Cary is the instructor on the two above mentioned courses and his presentation is terrific.

Being able to access such material for about fifty bucks a course is a wonderful democratization of the learning system.

Well, enough of this...