Treeless - Day 3 - Part 2

We'll need a new sidewalk, but the house is now safe.  No more "sword of Damocles" hanging over it. 

These are some of the HUGE chunks of wood that they dropped safely in a small area.

Snowing sawdust in the backyard.

Our new bird feeding station.

Thanks for visiting with me.

Kathi

Treeless- Day 3, Part 1

Here's this morning's work.

Seeing a tree with no branches reminds me of emptying everything out of a house where you've lived for x number of years and the house gets all echo-y and vacant.  It's kind of sad.

I'll post more at the end of the day.



Treeless - Day 2

12-29-11

I'll just post some pictures here. 

The crown was too tall to reach from the bucket.  One of the men climbed another 15 feet in the tree to cut the top branches.  Please notice that the tree itself isn't ten feet away from the front of the house and the street isn't much more than that on the other side.  Add power lines to the mix and you have a real treat for tree removal people.  These guys dropped everything in that tight little space.  Amazing!

Treeless

Our mighty more-than-a-century-old tulip poplar is starting to come down today.  The thing is over 90 feet tall and more than 14 feet around the base.  I can't begin to imagine how many storms it weathered in the last hundred years.  It has survived some pretty good ones in the six years we've been here.  But a few years back, Hurricane Ike blew through southern Indiana with 80 mile an hour winds for over five hours, and the old tree didn't fair so well.  The trunk has a huge split in it wide enough to see daylight through.

We had a tree guy chain the two parts together, but we knew it was only a temporary fix.  This year has been very stormy.  When the leaves fell this season, I was driving up from the west (not my usual route) and was horrified to see how bad the split had become even with the chain.  Thankfully, it didn't come down on us or our neighbors before we could take care of it in a safer manner.

Here are a couple of photos from today.  I'll update as the work progresses.

This morning 9 am

This afternoon around 3 from the back of the house.

No way was I going to get under their feet.

2012

I went on Facebook on Christmas in order to post a happy birthday message to Jesus.  I very nearly finished the post with "Next year in New Jerusalem". 

When I look at the news, I see new leadership in certain east Asian countries and many of the Middle Eastern countries.  Should the Muslim radicals have their way, there will be another attack on Israel.  And then what?  Joel 3 says that the Lord will defend His people.  Amos 9 finishes with "'I will plant Israel in their own land, never again to be uprooted from the land I have given them,' says the Lord your God."

I get goosebumps matching up Biblical prophecy and the daily news. 

When the fig tree is used in the Bible, it mostly stands for the nation of Israel.  Jesus said (Luke 21) that this generation, the one that sees the sign of the fig tree, shall not pass away until all these things take place.  The generation that saw the replanting of Israel began in 1948. 

So I do what it says to do in Luke 21:31, as I see these things happening, I look up, for my Redemption draws near. 

I can't wait!!

Thanks for visiting with me.

Kathi

Winter?

There's no snow predicted for Christmas here.  None in the immediate forecast either.  However, the robins have once again disappeared and I saw a flock of sandhill crane flying south.  I'm guessing they know something that the weathermen don't.

At least there won't be any weather slowing down the people going to visit family and friends.  That's the good part.  Otherwise, it mostly looks a lot like November - gray and wet.

Merry Christmas, and thanks for visiting with me.

Kathi

Just in Case

Just in case someone hasn't seen my Christmas letter yet, I'm going to post it here.  The original Christmas letter had a different picture of Angela, but I posted that one earlier and thought a new one might be more interesting.  I wish everyone a wonderful Christmas with happy memories of both God's gift and family times together.

Christmas, 2011

Love to all of my families and friends.

It’s been quite a year here in Seymour.  My brother John visited twice – once in March and once in September.  We were able to visit Lori and her family in Kentucky, and John also wandered through Oktoberfest with us.  We carried a Flat Stanley with us (for a friend in Tennessee) and had a great time.

Angela also visited twice – once in August and once for Thanksgiving.  We are more than proud of her.  I had no idea that accountants spent so much time flying from city to city.  Here she is resting from her hectic schedule guarded by her watchdogs.  Abby turned two in July, and Buddy is now 8 years old. 

Les is four years at his current job, and I have been at the library for over six years.  This town has welcomed us in. I get a real sense of belonging when people say, “You remember when that building used to be …” or “She must have gone to school with you.”  Our church is filled with wonderful people who are bent on sharing what they have with the local community and outreach to the Dominican Republic.  Every year we gather shoes for the Dominican kids so they can go to school, new shoes for local children who need them, shawls for hospice (my special project), blankets and hats for Riley’s Children’s Hospital, and a food gathering project for Community Provisions.  This summer we raised 12 ½ tons of food.  I also teach Sunday School and Les has been asked on occasion to lead the adult and teen classes.

This summer I arrived at that certain venerable age where Ivy Tech allows me to take classes tuition-free.  I took a library course which gave me enough points to recertify for my library position.  It was both challenging and fun.  I decided to continue with online classes.  I started one almost as soon as the virtual ink was dried on the final exam of the library class.  Another class will begin in February. 

I intend to pursue my writing more intensely than I have for the last several years.  Also I sadly seeded most of my large garden to grass.  I’m keeping what Mother would call a “postage-stamp garden” and will hike to the farmers’ market for most of my fresh veggies.  My garden has yielded sparse results for three years, so I’m going to let those who do it better be my suppliers.

If you are interested in viewing my current doings, I’m keeping a blog at http://mydailyadventure-kathi.blogspot.com/. 

Love to you all and best wishes for a Merry Christmas and a very blessed New Year.

Thanks for visiting with me,

Kathi

In My Time

Shortly before I was born, my grandfather sold the plow horses to buy a small tractor for his quarter section family farm.  Everything in that sentence has gone out of date in my lifetime!  In my mother's time, she went from outhouses ( in South Dakota in winter, brrr!) and heating the house with a wood burning kitchen stove (had to have at least one window cracked open even in winter for an oxygen supply) to our well insulated, state of the art heating systems which turn on and off automatically.  She rode in a Model T.  Propeller planes began to take passenger flights here and there in the country. 

By the time I was in fifth grade, man had circled the earth in a space ship and, before I went to college, people had placed footprints on the surface of the moon.  As a college student, only the very dedicated learned about computers.  The mainframes took up spacious rooms and had to be programmed with a special language on punch cards.  Now we have hand-held computers of all sorts from iphones to e-readers that access the world in under a second.

In Daniel, there is a verse that I have been pondering lately.  Daniel 12:4 But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased. KJV

I can't even reasonably ask how much more knowledge can be increased.  At the rate it's going, no one will be able to learn generalities.  We will all have to specialize in something so that we will be able to know anything at all.  As for running to and fro, among other examples of travel in general, there are real estate agents that keep a file of people to whom they have sold houses.  At the end of five years, they call those people back and tell them that it's time for them to move again.  Very few people live anywhere near their relatives anymore. 

The most telling sign of all is the re-establishment of Israel as a nation in 1948. No other nation in history has ever come back to its land and re-established a language long since gone out of use, let alone after 2,000 years. See Ezekiel 37, Jeremiah 31:21, and Amos 9:11-15 for examples of verses about the restoration of Israel.

I believe this is what Jesus was talking about when He said, "This generation shall not pass away until all these things have happened." Matthew 24:34  That generational count began in 1948.  Those people are 63 now.

And in the end, all I can ask myself is, "How much longer do we have to wait until the "end" arrives?"  I can hardly wait!

Thanks for visiting with me.

Kathi

The Robins Are Back

Yes, it isn't even Christmas yet and the robins are back.  I'm thinking it will be a much milder winter than last year.  The robins know.

According to the fogs in August, we should have 8 or 9 snows.

According to the date of the moon on the first snowfall, we should have 5 snowfalls.

According to the robins - not much of a winter at all.

I vote for a little winter, but mostly I side with the robins.

Thanks for visiting with me.

Kathi

Finished!!! - Well, Almost

Today I took the final exam for the library class that I've been working on since August.  The teacher allowed three hours for this test.  I've always been good at tests and I planned to knock off this one in an hour or so.  It ended up that I was only a few minutes short of the three hour limit and terrified that I might not finish in time.  I may not have gotten an A, but I'm sure that I passed which, for this class, is all that matters.  I need to pass.

Tomorrow is a trip to the dentist and, on Wednesday, I start another online class.  This one will be easier and more fun.  God willing, it will also be profitable.

Final Exam Coming Up

I've been lax about my blog while I was taking the online class.  Wow!  Was there a lot of homework!  Plus my brother visited for a week and Angela came during Thanksgiving week. But life is about to slow down a tad.

Christmas shopping is finished.  I have laid in a little extra food in case of bad weather. I have only my Christmas letter to write and send out.

I got my mother's Christmas letter a couple of days ago.  I know our family is widely scattered and we tend to keep track of each other once or twice a year - but mostly with the annual Christmas letter.  I did think, however, that when some family member or other died, the news would get around.  I was amazed to hear that I lost another cousin in August.

One might expect aunts and uncles to pass away, especially when they are well into their eighties.  Of those on my mother's side, I have lost only two married-in uncles. I'm the third oldest cousin on my father's side and the oldest one on my mother's side.  This is the third cousin I've lost, and they were all younger than I am.  Two of them were the only sons in their family.

I wonder sometimes - is our family so large that the statistics allow for some younger ones to die, or .... what? 

I had a Bible verse in mind about the death of young people.  When I looked it up, I found that I had the words wrong.  Whether this applies to my cousins or not, I can't say, but here is the verse that comes to me when I don't understand why someone suddenly disappears from my life when they haven't fulfilled a good number of years:

Isaiah 57

 ¹ The righteous perish,
   and no one takes it to heart;
the devout are taken away,
   and no one understands
that the righteous are taken away
   to be spared from evil.
² Those who walk uprightly
   enter into peace;
   they find rest as they lie in death. (NIV)

Our nation especially is rushing towards amoral/immoral "lifestyles" as fast as it can.  Anyone who stands up for right and wrong is called bigotted, prejudiced, etc.  We aren't supposed to make someone "feel bad".  I wonder how those people will "feel" when they are dead and no longer able to change their minds about where they end up. 

God does not need anyone's permission to exist. 

(How do I get from Christmas letters to the state of the nation to hell in one blog?  I don't know.)

Thanks for visiting with me,

Kathi

Going for Ten

These shawls are numbers five and six.  I have two more finished, one in the works, and one undecided as to pattern.  Maybe the last one will be a laprobe or something more masculine again.  And maybe it won't be the last one either. lol

Thanks for visiting with me.

Kathi