Summer Fruits

For me, this home quarantine experience has given me a new perspective and appreciation of God’s beauty around our house. Being the introverted-extrovert that I am, I haven ‘t minded being at home with my family and enjoying the nature that surrounds us. I want to share our fruit-bearing season of the beautiful yet humid Southeast Tennessee, especially here at our home.

We began walking up and down our 800 ft. driveway as a family late in March for family exercise. Until April, the majority of the trees were bare. The Bradford pear trees had bloomed and had some leaves, but that was about it. As the days went by, that “first green”, vibrant, light green donned our mountain. In a week, the whole mountain was “first green”. By my birthday on May 7, it was all “spring-summer” green with that rich, green, chlorophyll shroud. All the different grasses (Bermuda, fescue, crab grass, weeds, clover… LOL) blended together by June to make our summer carpet to match the green drapery of our trees that surrounded us. I also have to mention that our black walnut trees budded and unfurled their leaves the latest we had seen since our first spring here in 2005. The spring of 2020 our two black walnut trees had not budded by May 1, yet they had small leaves adorning their branches by my birthday six days later.

God isn’t finished with me yet when it comes to carpentry, gardening, or being a mechanic. He may bless me with the opportunities to learn those things quite soon. Who knows? Maybe never. However, I love watching vegetables and fruits grow. Last week, I was doing my weekly mowing on the tractor ( Oh, once again, our Brother in Christ, Lloyd Thieman, has been our tractor savior this year!!! ) , and I drove under some of the infamous privet hedges that are 10 feet tall. Dangling from the hedges were muscadine vines with muscadines!  Some were even turning purple! While dodging privet branches I yelled only to God , “Muscadines already?” , and I could hear God (Not God’s literal voice , of course… I’m not Pentecostal yet) saying, “Yes, Haven. ALREADY.” This thought gave me the theme of this entry. After I parked the tractor in the barn that evening, I took my phone and snapped photos of our muscadines, pears, and black walnuts.

red pears

muscadines

green pears

black walnuts

As long as the earth will stand, God will give us our seasons. He shared that promise with Noah thousands of years ago. This isn’t an entry about the spiritual seasons of us Christians, but, of course it’s a parallel. Friends and family, stop and enjoy God’s seasonal surroundings. You won’t regret it.