Shep Update {guest post from my 6-year-old}

{For those of you wondering about the status of the stray dog we rescued in the spring, here is a guest post from my son's journal today.  Unedited, used by permission :) }

My Dog Shep

Yesterday I met my dog called Shep and it was really fun.  We went to my dad’s orchard and we saw my dog Shep, and I played with her a lot and there was a puppy there too.  Sometimes they like to wrestle around with each other.  Shep always growls in her throat under her breath when they do that, just like Jack in The Little House on the Prairie. Shep doesn’t live at our house anymore because she was too wild.  I miss her, too, just like my brother misses her.  

of awareness and stray dogs {May Lessons in Listening}

{For 2014, I'm focusing on the one word "listen" - read more of my monthly musings here!} 

The heart of good listening is being aware.

In a conversation, a good listener is aware not only of the words the other person is saying but of their tone, their silences, their body language, and as much of their history and context as the listener knows.  All these elements together give the listener a more complete snapshot of the emotional, psychological and mental state of the person to whom he or she is listening.

Taking all this into consideration, the good listener is able, for a moment or two, to step into the other person’s reality and see through their eyes.  From that insider’s perspective, the love, care and empathy they offer is truly genuine, and any advice or counsel truly useful.

But in my journey towards deepening as a  Listener, I’m discovering that this awareness nurtured by a habit of intentional listening is gradually enabling me to become aware of much more than words and conversations.

I’m growing a kind of sixth sense, noticing and absorbing things which I would have previously overlooked.  Situations I might have thought “chance happenings” before are taking on new and deeper meaning.  (Can you tell where I’m going with this?)  

As my regular readers are aware, we recently rescued a stray dog, and he is quickly becoming “our” dog.  

(The “our” is in quotes because he’s only been with us a week, and I’m still holding my breath: will he sicken with a mysterious doggy illness and die?  Will a former owner turn up at our gates and demand his polite, gentle, well-mannered pup back?  I could never have predicted the storyline so far; I don’t dare try to predict the future…)

While I’m not sure I’m ready to say God sent him to us, I’ve definitely had moments this week where my as-of-January-2014-newly-pricked-up “listening antennae” have zinged slightly, and I’ve caught glimpses of what God might be doing?

Taking me out of my comfort zone.  I love my comfort zone.  Some of you probably think I must be outside my comfort zone all the time: living as we do in post-Soviet Central Asia, taking holidays in exotic-sounding countries, and spending half our “home” leave in a country I’ve lovingly adopted but which isn’t my passport country.  

All of that might sound pretty un-comfortable, but the truth is I actually thrive on it.  I really was made to live the life I’m living; it fits me like a glove. And the human penchant for familiarity and routine flows strongly through my veins, so I’ve actually become comfortable here, in this language I’ve been speaking for 10 years, in our third year in this house we’ve wrapped around us, in this neighborhood, in the role of wife and mother.  And - I like being comfortable.  

I do not like having my comfortable routine invaded unexpectedly and uninvitedly.  Which is exactly what has happened.

I think God might doing other things, too, with the arrival of this little dog, such as…

Thrusting upon our family a chance for our eldest son in particular to learn compassion and responsibility…

Opening a door for all three of our kids to learn how to care for something smaller and more helpless than themselves…

Providing a living parable for our neighborhood - in particular one little neighbor boy who spends part of every day at our house - to see Christian charity (in the best and oldest sense of that word) in action…

And also, I suppose, granting that little dog a chance to become the best version of himself instead of the worst, to learn how to develop mutually satisfying relationships with human beings…

(Not that I really care that much at the moment, to be perfectly honest, with everything else on my plate, about the development of the potential worth within a stray dog, but maybe - probably? - he’ll surprise me…) 

Learning to listen is like pricking up the ears of your soul (see? I’m using doggy analogies now) or swiveling your spiritual antennae to catch new sound waves of meaning in the ordinary things that happen every day….

Like hearing a redemptive analogy in the rescue of a scrawny stray.  

P.S.  For those of you wondering if we've named him, the kids have christened him “Wags”, after Wags-the-Dog from the Wiggles (ugh).  But I've found my own name for him, a word from my second language, a word I want to use every time I tell his story to a visitor…

I’m calling him “Shepket”.  Mercy.  

(Yeah, I know, it’s melodramatic - I can’t help it.  But hey, look - it shortens to “Shep”, the classic American dog name… and now you can laugh.)

ok, you can all breathe a sigh of relief {Part 2 of our stray dog dilemma}

So, all 100 of you (!) who read yesterday’s post and gasped in horror can breathe a big collective sigh of relief:

I climbed down into the manhole this morning, at 6:30am, to rescue that poor shivering pup.

Yes, I did.  I got soaking wet, since there was a pump down there spraying water, but wet jeans were nothing compared to how miserable the dog looked.  My main fear was that he (she? I haven’t gotten a good look yet) would snap at my feet as I came down the ladder, but nary a whimper.  Not a single peep.  He just laid back his ears and looked up at me.  

I may or may not have said, in a rather loud voice, while gingerly climbing backwards down the ladder of a manhole in Post-Soviet Central Asia, “Jesus, I cannot believe you did this for us.  And now I’m doing it for a dog!”

Wearing cloth gloves, I picked up the dog and carried him awkwardly back up the ladder with me, talking to him all the time, and we reached ground level in safety.  I wrapped him in an old towel I’d brought with me, carried him the 10 meters back to our gate, and deposited him gently in the big old doghouse just inside our yard.  

(The owners of this house used to keep a huge, ferocious, terrifying Rottweiler to discourage break-ins.  The entire street, especially the kids, used to be terrified to even walk past this house.  It’s a good thing we’re the last house on the street.)

Yes, we have lived in this house with a ready-made dog kennel for three years and don’t yet own a dog… But here I need to say a brief word about me and animals: The largest pet I’ve ever owned is a hamster, and while I was sad when I found poor Clyde stiff and cold in his cage, and shed a few tears as I buried in the backyard with a popsicle-stick cross, I have to say that losing Clyde did not break my heart. 

I did not grow up on a farm like my husband, who laughed at me on one of our early dates for meticulously avoiding piles of animal poop as we walked down a rural dirt road.  “It’s poop!” I exclaimed.  “I don’t want to step in it!”

“Yeah, but it’s just animal poop - all they eat is grass,” he reasoned.  “Now human poop, or dog poop - that’s a lot worse.”

And now, I have a real, live dog temporarily living in my yard.  (I say temporarily because I really have no idea what’s going to happen next.) 

I have zero practice feeding dogs, interpreting their body language (ok, most of it’s pretty common sense), dealing with things like fleas and worms and vaccinations, and especially no practice dealing with any of that in a barely-one-step-up-from-a-third-world country.  

So you could say I’m pretty overwhelmed by the whole situation.  Granted, so far the first day has gone relatively peacefully - no snapping or growling when we’ve fed him/her, and even some feeble attempts to show it wants to please.

By far the best moment so far, however, was my conversation with the scrawny little neighbor boy who spends half the day at our house almost every day (who’s actually here with me right now on the front steps as I type this, telling me a story lickety-split about a dog they had once who they fed and fed until it got really big, and then someone stole it, or it went into someone else’s yard and they never saw it again…)  

This little boy turned up at our gate around 8am this morning, and when we showed him the dog in the kennel he asked if it had snuck back into our yard.  (He’d helped fill in the hole with rocks yesterday but missed the drama with the manhole in the afternoon.)  

“No,” I said, “the dog got thrown down the manhole (didn’t know that word, had to pantomime) over there.  I couldn’t stand the thought of it being in there, so I climbed down this morning and…” I hesitated, trying to think of the right word.  Suddenly it popped into my head: 

“Man uni kutkuzivaldim.”  

(Literally: I managed to cause it to be saved.)  

It’s exactly same word we use when describing what Jesus did for us. 

(Okay, go ahead and get all teary now.  It is just a dog, remember, not a person; I have a whole other post brewing about that topic… watch this space!)

P.S. The kids have done really well with the whole thing.  William looked relieved this morning at breakfast when I announced I'd retrieved the dog out of the manhole.  "It just wasn't right," I said, and he nodded.  "I TOLD those boys not to throw it down there, but they didn't listen to me," he said.  All three kids helped me bring it food and water, and have checked back in periodically all day to see how it's doing.  So... object lesson in progress!

a stray dog and a moral dilemma

{I was going to post about something completely different today, but this is what's been happening at our house the last couple days... A disclaimer: It's been brought to my attention that some of the content in this post may be disturbing to those of you living in more developed countries than the one we're in... YES I am still grappling with this, and YES I hate that this happened, and NO I do not want to see it happen again.  There is no humane way to deal with stray or unwanted animals in this culture, nor are there any organizations in our town to deal with this kind of problem - if I suggested that, or told people what we have in America, I'd be laughed at incredulously.  So keep that in mind as you read... and yes, I do want your honest opinions.}

(Will's dog he used to sleep with at night, hung up to dry...)

Two nights ago, a stray dog snuck into our yard.  It spent the night curled snugly in the mesh seat of Ruby’s umbrella stroller, where James found it in the morning when he went outside to check on his cherry seedlings.  

It’s a scrawny scrap of a thing, gray and mangy, hardly more than a puppy, and it had a pointed little face and two of the saddest eyes you’ve ever seen.  

I tried not to look at those eyes while we resolutely shooed it out of the yard three times that first day.  Then it snuck back in overnight.  

James didn't have time to deal with the dog in the yard before work, and sitting at the breakfast table this morning, after James had left and the kids had been excused, I had a fight with my conscience thinking about that mangy dog.  I was afraid of worms and fleas and a mysterious dog diseases… I didn’t see any signs of rabies, but then, you never know - can rabies be dormant?  

Despite all that, my conscience is still niggling, because after watching yesterday’s drama with getting the dog out of the yard, Ruby said this morning at breakfast, very clearly, “Do-k.  B-ed (bread) -kiss, kiss- “ because that was the noise we were making to call it out from under its hiding place.  Was she wanting to cuddle the dog?  Get rid of it?  Was she scared of it?  Maybe all of the above, but she sure wasn’t missing any of what was happening.

And then, this morning, as we stood on the steps and watched James trying in vain to lure the dog out from under the petrol tank before leaving for work, Will said, “Mom, it’s just like Giovanni, right?”  

(Giovanni being a pathetic orphan character in a Five In A Row book we read this year who begs his bread and sleeps in doorways.)  

Great.  My six-year-old is comparing this mangy mutt to a human orphan, implying we should give it bread and a bed to sleep in - and isn’t that what the Bible says to do, too?  Good grief!

My conscience was more conflicted about this than I felt it ought to be.  I begrudged the mental energy spent worrying about what I should do, and resented the “mangy mutt" for taking up valuable brain time.  And then, at other, more grace-filled moments, I contemplated feeding it, de-worming it, giving it a bath for fleas, and saw grand visions of gospel grace being enacted in front of my kids - a story they’d remember for the rest of their lives.  

“Remember how mom didn’t just throw that awful puppy out on the street, but spent hours looking after it, and it became our favorite pet??”

I have a friend who wouldn’t have thought twice about adopting this dog.  She sees it as part of her mission in life to redeem stray animals.  They’d only been living in this country a few months and had already added two dogs and two cats to their household, at least one of which had been picked up off the street, spur of the moment.  

For her, there would have been no agony of indecision, just, “This is what God wants me to do, show compassion,” and the dog would’ve been in her arms.  Aaahh!  Compared to her, I feel like a grace-less, compassion-less person.  (She would disagree - she would probably say we just show grace in different ways.)

Ok, so then why is this way of showing grace so hard for me?  Is it because of the cost?  The personal cost to myself?  I would have to give up hours of precious time, and money, trekking all around town in a taxi looking for the right medicine, and then administering it in ways I can’t begin to imagine.  (I grew up in a family with no pets larger than a hamster, so you can see why I'm squeamish…)

Maybe it’s just selfishness.  Maybe it’s that showing grace to this mutt would require too much breaking of my routine, too much upheaval, too much time and sacrifice, and I'm just selfish and I don’t want to give up control of my life, especially for a measly dog.  Now, if it were a real baby left on my doorstep, that would be different… 

I call James in an agony of indecision, but he doesn’t have the brain-space at the moment to even contemplate the problem.  His response is pragmatic: “Well, keep it if you want to, but I grew up on a farm having to dispose of litters of puppies which we couldn’t feed and couldn’t sell… I’m afraid I can be pretty matter-of-fact about these sorts of things…”  

Reason intrudes, and I realize the dog could possibly bite one of the kids, or worse, and I truly don’t know what kinds of diseases it has.  I’m pretty sure they don’t sell worm medicine or flea powder in our puny town, and I don’t have the means or the time or enough Russian to go hunting around the bigger town 15 minutes down the road for medicine for a stray… 

So now I flop to the other extreme and decide it’s the most disgusting creature I’ve ever laid eyes on, and we have to get rid of it as soon as humanly possible.  

The dog is somehow getting into our yard, so when my helper arrives I enlist her in hunting for the hole, and we find it outside our fence and stop it up with huge rocks.  She dons a pair of old gardening gloves and a scrap of bread, and I grab a big stick, and we shoo the dog out from under the huge petrol tank in our yard which the boys use as a pirate ship.  It had quickly become his favorite hiding place since the tank’s belly hangs very low to the ground; he must’ve felt safe underneath.  

He yips and whines pathetically (Ruby and the boys watching the whole time - can’t get them to go inside!) as my helper and a neighbor boy carry him several hundred yards down the canal and turn him loose (notice how I wriggled out of actually getting my hands dirty).  

My heart cringes at his whines, but I harden it successfully and we all high-tail it back to our yard and shut the gate.  

He comes back, of course, and skulks around outside our fence for a few hours, but I figure as long as he can’t get through the hole he’ll eventually look elsewhere for food.

Then, a few hours later, after a bike ride, the boys accidentally leave the gate open.  Like a flash, the dog takes his chance and darts back into the yard and under his favorite hiding place.  

Now I was just plain mad.  

I had to leave him there, reluctantly, while I made lunch and fed the kids, but after lunch I immediately enlisted a gang of neighbor boys who appeared at our gate wanting to play.  

We re-enacted this morning’s scene: me pushing the dog out from under the tank with a stick, and a bigger boy donning the gloves and grabbing him, yelping, on the other side.  You would have thought we were tearing his legs off, the noise he made.  

Ruby, watching, was very distressed, and kept whimpering, “Do-k!  Do-k! B-ed!”  

As in, “That’s a real live animal making that sound and all it wants is some food!”  

I swing her up to my hip and tell the neighbor kids to take it far, far away.  Well, they’re back in two seconds, and when I asked them where they threw it, they point at an empty manhole 20 yards away which - I thought - leads to the main water pipe for our town!  

I freak out, envisioning a rotting dog contaminating the whole town’s water supply, and race towards the manhole with Ruby bouncing on my hip.  The cover is off and a long tree branch has been stuck in it; the bottom is full of rubbish already.  

I see all this while the boys eagerly inform me this manhole was for the old system of water pipes which had recently been turned off.  I find this information dizzying, since I’d seen a crew with my own eyes installing that manhole just last summer (so how could it be old?) and I was pretty sure I’d heard water flowing under through it on one of my recent morning runs...

But there's the tree branch and rubbish to prove their story, and I’m in such a rush to get rid of that awful dog, I nod and say, “All right then,” and we all troop back to our gate.

And now it’s the afternoon, and I’m sitting here writing this, thinking about horrible empty cisterns and a helpless puppy who’s never really done anything to me, except whine and look pathetic… and the fact that even throughout this whole post I’ve picked words like “mangy mutt” and “skulk” to describe him.  I’m trying to imagine if I’d feel any different about him if I’d used words like “poor little thing” and “thin, starving, helpless”.  

I’m thinking about grace, and how hard it is to give and receive.  

I'm thinking about the fact that Ruby woke up from her nap sobbing her eyes out, and when I went into her room she was sitting in a corner of her crib, crying, “Do-k!  Do-k!” over and over.  I was sure she’d had a nightmare about that ridiculous dog, and I don't know if it was because she was afraid of the dog, or just sad and traumatized by the awful yelps it made as it was dragged out? 

Have I scarred my child for life?  I think miserably, as I lay down on our bed with her and make soothing noises while I stroke her arms.  She’s soon fast asleep again, limbs splayed out, flushed cheeks, sweaty hair plastered to her forehead.  I look at her sweetness, and… 

I still don’t know if I did the right thing.  Ok, I probably didn't.  Feeling worse about it all the time...

Now, at 9:30pm, after hearing her say “Do-k?  Do-k?” twice at dinner (to Daddy), twice more during her bath, again during teeth-brushing, again during story reading (every story we picked seemed to have a dog in it somewhere!) - each time accompanied with a squinched-up face and arms clutched to her chest, whether in sympathetic pain or a mother-cuddle-instinct, I couldn’t tell - 

I finally decide she is definitely getting a complex, and pray accordingly:

“Dear Jesus, please give Ruby peace about the dog.  Please help her know You’re looking after it (in the cruel cistern!).  Please don’t let her have any bad dreams tonight (about her mother’s abuse of stray animals!), and please help her not to think about the dog anymore!”  

She quieted down and laid calmly in her bed, but I'm wondering how many more days of “Do-k?  Do-k?” I will have to endure before she forgets about it?  

Maybe never?  

If you were me, how would you teach your children that God values all life in a context where life is so undervalued?

P.S. Tomorrow I plan to have a heart-to-heart with my boys, and discuss the fact that it's a terrible thing to be mean to anything God has made, and that God of course doesn't like it... and that maybe we can keep some supplies on hand at our house in case this kind of situation happens again.... any other suggestions?

P.P.S. I've found myself wishing whole-heartedly that we lived near a really good vet, so I could have just scooped that dog into the car and gotten it de-wormed and vaccinated, and we probably would've kept it.  There's just no such thing in these parts, which is what makes this whole thing so difficult.

P.P.P.S.  In case you're wondering, I did NOT sanction those boys to throw that dog down into that cistern, and after they did it, I felt even sicker - but I just had no idea what to do.  I still don't.

He is risen!

He is risen indeed!

a spring story in photos: hope

Last fall we planted tulip bulbs, in celebration of receiving our one-year visa, and the gift of a little bit of continuity.  Six-year-old William was our photographer for planting, and this spring, after all the snow had melted, he went out to the front garden to check on the progress.  Here is his photo essay - all except the last shot, which Mommy took. :)

Hope.  

For me last fall, after an incredibly stressful year of traveling, waiting and visa dramas,

planting these tulips symbolized hope: 

my desire and commitment to contribute beauty to this place 

(in every way - outside, inside, and on a soul-level) 

no matter how long our sojourn here might be...

Tree {at Lisa-Jo's Five-Minute-Friday}

{Joining up with the linkies over at Lisa-Jo’s today… her Five-Minute-Friday prompt this week is: tree.  Come join!}

GO.

Across from our first house in Central Asia there was a tree.  It was a beautiful poplar, and what I love about poplars is that they stretch their branches straight up to heaven.  Every time I passed that tree with first my 18-month-old and my bulging belly, then later my two-and-a-half-year-old and my infant in a stroller, I would follow the shape of the branches up into the blue sky, and inevitably my thoughts would turn to God.  I would take in a deep breath, exhale it, walk a little more slowly.  Return to being all there, right where I was.  I would usually smile at my little boys, point at the tree, remind them how beautiful it was.

And then, one day, they cut it down.

And I realized that here, in Central Asia, things like economizing and firewood and making room for telephone and power lines are just more important.  These people I live amongst just do not have the time and energy to appreciate art.  Art as we traditionally think of it is not necessary to their breathing, like it is to mine.  They do listen to music - at weddings and from car stereos, and they do frame photos - of grandparents and honored relatives.  But God’s art being all around us?  A tree pointing the way to heaven?  Those are things that rarely, if ever, cross their minds.  

So I cried.  I cried, as I snapped photo after photo of the demise of my friend.  I blogged about it, cried some more, snapped more photos.  I grieved, unreasonably some might say.  But the thing is, there is so little real beauty around me and I scrape to find what there is, because I need it for the health of my soul… so when a huge piece is destroyed, just to feed someone’s fire for the winter or because it’s getting in the way… I can’t help it.  Something aches and oozes inside of me.

I went outside one day, across the street.  I couldn’t take it any more.  I knew I was the weird foreigner risking ridicule, but I had to ask someone.  Why?  No one had a good answer to give me - the worker men were just doing their job.  So I never got the real answer, but I don’t think it would’ve mattered anyway.

What mattered was the tree was gone.  And I miss it.  Still do.  

Amazing how a tree can be a signpost to God’s heart.

STOP.  

(links and photos added after my 5 minutes finished)

It's a good thing I enjoy bringing order out of chaos...

...because I sure do a lot of it!

Messy kitchen counters, sinks full of crusty dishes, laundry baskets full of topsy-turvy clothes waiting to be sorted, folded and put away…  Living room floor covered with Thomas-the-Tank-Engine and all his friends, veranda littered with bats and balls, hall corridor strewn with every board book we own… 

Evidence that three happy, busy preschoolers live here.

It’s a good thing I get a thrill from clean, wiped-off countertops, freshly folded laundry piles, baskets full of the right toys in the right places, boxes of tidy sports equipment… because I seem to spend large quantities of time Tidying (or Supervising Tidying).

Creating order out of chaos.  

This is my life.  I’m glad I like it.  

Come to think of it, God must like it too.  Just think of all He’s done:

Out of the chaos of nothing, He created an orderly, law-abiding, wonder-filled universe to run faithfully and predictably under His command...

Out of a lump of mud, He created the marvel we call “a human being”…

He took the horrible mess-up we call “sin” and redeemed it with the most wonderful, surprising, beautifully crafted Rescue Plan ever invented… 

And he daily takes my fallen, sinful, imperfect striving and turns it into works of grace… 

(lately I've been listening to Keith and Kristyn Getty’s song “Holy Spirit”...)

*****

What chaos is in your life right now?  Do you need to believe He can make something beautiful out of it?

six thousand cups of promise

{A amazing glimpse into one of my husband's current endeavors...}

Nestled in dark dirt, surrounded by a white plastic sheath, a cherry seed waits.

Lovingly planted by careful hands in the dead of winter, it slept long months in its cup of earth in cellar dark, biding its time. 

Yesterday, its cup was placed in a wooden crate with forty-nine other cups containing its brothers and sisters.  The crate was lifted and carried up and out, into the moist, spring air.  Other crates are carefully placed beside the first, until the ground is covered with six thousand cups of promise.

Now the seed stirs.  Stretches slightly in its earthen bed.  Thinks its first, faint, cherry thoughts.  The spring sun gently warms its bedclothes.  Warmth seeps down into the dirt in the cup.   The seed feels moisture all around, senses warmth above. 

Then, one day - pop!  The seed-case cracks.  A tiny, green, living tendril noses its way up between particles of earth.  Its green point blindly breaks the surface skyward.  

A cherry tree is born.

{Isn't this like our faith?  In the dark of a winter season, we can't feel ourselves growing.  We lose heart, despair of ever changing.  But then one day - pop!  The hard case of doubt cracks open, and suddenly we can feel again the warmth and love of God's presence.  We stretch up towards His light, and watch as His promises bear fruit in our lives, even through dark times - and sometimes because of them.}

growing green goodness

{This post from early March, just now finding its way to the light...}

My garden is calling to me.  

The moist, clean-smelling earth underneath the dead leaves and old, dried-up twigs of last year’s herbs and flowers.  I scrabble and scrooge (I think that‘s from The Wind in the Willows) with my hands under the dead stuff, and I find… green.  Living green leaves.  Mint.  Oregano.  Little chive spikes finding their way up to the light through holes in the detritus, reaching up bravely into the new year.  

I’m almost breathlessly eager as I unearth them.  Say hello.  Tenderly clear away around the base of each chive-clump, each curling tendril of mint.  Snip dead ends with kitchen scissors which I race madly into the house to retrieve from their drawer, and madly out again, not wanting to miss a moment of the green.  

Why is spring so exciting?

All this newness, all this freshness, compels me to be in it, out in it, breathing it in.  

I want it inside me.  

I want new, fresh spring life inside me, with the same vibrant array of possibilities for growth.  

Spring dirt is teeming with life.  It’s like the sleep of winter has held it captive for so many months, and the minute winter’s icy fingers loosen their grip, spring earth breathes a sigh of relief and releases the fragrances it’s been saving up all winter long.  

Aaaaahhhhhh.  You can almost hear the earth sighing.  Spring has come.  I’m alive.  Awake.  Growing.  Ready for seeds, for rain, for warm spring sun.

The sun gently caresses my back with warm hands as I bend over my herb bed, delighted with each new discovery.  I expected everything to be dead when we came back after seven months away.  I even brought back packets of all the same seeds, expecting to replant.  But no, out of five types of herbs, three are living!  And the long thin space for flowers at the front, empty now, I have lavendar goodness to fill it.  A long row of lavendar hedges… 

I ruminate on the front steps, sitting happy in the sun, inhaling the dusty fragrance of my pile of herb fronds.

Imagining growing green goodness.