Lots Going On This Weekend

This three day weekend won't exactly be a holiday.

It's full. Major landscaping, wall and bed building, sand and paver ordering - all in preparation for the creation of a new patio for the emerging rustic Tuscan garden. And probably planting tons of basil for pesto and impatients as well.

This is a picture of the starter garden on Labor Day weekend last year, with a portion of the really long (70 ft?)hand-built, dry stone wall snaking erratically down one side. Imagine a really big mountain looming over it and you get the idea.

Three strong, competent men planted 4 trees in the back this week so its already beginning to feel very different. Fr. Mike, the incredible weight-lifting OP gardener, will be over shortly to haul that dirt and lift those stones.

You get occasional glimpses of enchantment to reward you for your aching back and rapidly emptying bank account. (Even done mostly by generous, unskilled, free labor and as cheaply as possible, gardening isn't cheap).

It's an act of magninimity -especially at 6,700 feet high - aspiring to do something great for God and for the community. (When your home backs onto a city park and everyone in the neighborhood gets to meditate on a daily basis upon the sun-baked desolation that passes for your backyard, gardening is a corporal work of mercy)

Also I'll be trying to finish up my section of Making Disciples on how the exercise of charisms assist spiritual seekers on the journey to discipleship. (Interesting stuff!)

And I need to race through the 390 pages of Michael Green's Evangelism in the Early Church which looks at the practice of evangelism through about the year 300 AD. Just got last night from Amazon and it looks very good!

I will be blogging - but it will be intermittant and probably full of gardening, charisms, and/or the history of evangelism - at least from me.

My partners in crime on ID, no doubt, have many varied and brilliant things to say.