How does your garden grow?

I’ve spent much of the last week working in the garden and yard. It’s a wonderful escape after Summer School and we are in the middle of harvesting vegetables. All of our kitchen counters are covered with tomatoes in very stages of ripeness. We planted a number of heirloom varieties that don’t do well if left to ripen on the vine completely. We had some great discoveries, too. An variety that is bright orange and has great flavor, and the copia, which is striped yellow and red. I’m tired of eating green beans, but we’ve got a couple of pounds in the fridge and a bunch more still on the plants. The zucchini seem to be winding down, and we picked our first four melons, but we haven’t tried them yet. And now Corrie is planning what we’ll put in the fall garden.

I’ve also been weeding the beds: crabgrass, various kinds of clover, mimosa, and the pernicious buttonweed. Yes I know about roundup, but as I mentioned in a previous entry, we try to avoid using pesticides and herbicides, and besides, we’ve got so much in most of the beds, it would be hard to keep from spraying plants. I enjoy weeding, except for the toll it takes on my knees and back. It’s mindless and one can gauge how much one has accomplished just by looking. Sure beats teaching, or the ministry, in that regard.

Priests (and others) in the news

There’s been something of a run of negative stories about Episcopal priests of late. There was the priest in Seattle who converted to Islam but was still functioning as a priest (her bishop has since put her on a year’s leave). There are of course stories of sexual and financial misconduct. But the icing on the cake was the story in Sunday’s NY Times about the ex-porn star who wants to be ordained. The article claimed he was in the ordination process. It turns out there were a number of errors in the article. If you want to get the real story, go here. By the way, that link takes you to Episcope which does a great job of tracking Anglican and Episcopal news and also works very hard to get the facts of the stories correct.

Today, the Times redeemed itself, somewhat, with an article on an Episcopalian Chaplain at St. Luke’s Presbyterian Hospital in New York. The article is here (You may need to register to access it).

Kudzu

I was saddened to hear of Doug Marlette’s death in an auto accident. I gave up on comic strips years ago, but I always enjoyed Doug Marlette’s Kudzu. He was able to poke fun at American religion while subtly expressing a deep fondness for the struggles of living with the imperfect institutions that are our churches and with the imperfect people who are members. For many years, I had on my office door the following cartoon:

Doug Marlette caught flak for his digs at religious institutions.

 

About those cats …

Yes, they are still with us, Junia and Macrina. They are slowly acclimating to life indoors and to life among other cats. Macrina, the kitten, is more skittish around humans; but is absolutely fearless around the other cats. Her mother Junia is tamer. It’s actually quite amusing to watch mom arouse into action when she hears her baby crying, usually because she decided to wrestle an adult cat 6 times her size and is in a headlock.

Here’s Macrina:

Macrina

And here’s Junia:

Junia