Sneaky Saturdays

The last two Saturdays I've had to be some place by 9:00 for church. Fortunately, I don't have many Saturdays when I have church commitments, so this has been unusual. Daughter likes to sleep in on Saturdays. She likes to sleep until 10:00 or so. So last Saturday and again today, I told her I'd fix her breakfast if she was up and ready to leave by 8:00. It worked!

Today was clean-up day at the church. We were cleaning up the landscaping and the exterior windows were washed (by a man who is over 6', enabling him to reach the second floor windows from the ground with his long pole. We removed some river rock and replaced it with mulch. We started a compost pile for the community garden we hope to have next summer. The men had fun with a chain saw and small tractor. Daughter worked hard picking up leaves. She was mad at me when we got there. She saw the doughnuts, and I wouldn't let her stay in the building when I went outside (I'm so mean). She hooked up with one of the men, who worked with her transporting leaves. I warned several people that Daughter had noticed the food inside, so they knew she wasn't allowed into the building without an escort. At 11:00 she was picked up by the saint who takes her walking every Saturday morning. She was glad to get away from the hard work at the church.

There were some who were steering clear of me. I had warned them that whoever injured the pastor had to preach tomorrow. They had a great deal of fun with that. There weren't any serious injuries, though several toes got run over by incompetent tractor drivers. Fortunately, it was a very light trailer the tractor was pulling.

It is a beautiful day here today, and we watched birds, rabbits, and squirrels in our backyard as we ate our salads for lunch. I love my backyard. I added a hummingbird feeder this afternoon. We are getting some very colorful finches at our bird feeders. We're up to 5 feeders plus suet. I had to fill all of them his afternoon. It is so pleasant to sit in the family room or at the dining room table and watch them. In Tiny Village, I lived in an old parsonage. There were 12 steps or so to get into the house, so even the first floor rooms were too high to easily see the ground or bird feeders (at least feeders I could reach to fill). It seems strange that we are more in touch with nature here in the city, but we are, and I'm grateful.