I almost wrote a catchy, exciting sounding title for this post since I was getting kind of used to Sunday afternoon adventure walks with yellow jackets and copperheads! Actually, there was no adventure this time, thankfully, just a pleasant, peaceful walk through the mountains.
(Actually, Lisa did get stung by a packsaddle or spider or something on her left eye, but it wasn't too much of an adventure. I was quite concerned when it first happened but I'm glad it was not too serious. Matthew galloped down the mountain to a place where he knew some touch-me-not flowers were growing. We use them to take the sting out of bites, stinging nettles, poison ivy, and any other type of stings. Lisa is doing fine now.)
Today was another incredibly beautiful Sunday that the Lord blessed us with and we were looking forward to our regular Sunday afternoon walk. The leaves are beginning to fall and the hills are aglow with the autumn colors. The blue sky was full of sunshine and the temperature was a perfect 74 degrees.
We ate lunch out at our picnic table in the side yard and then we were soon loading into the truck to hit the hills! This time we avoided the yellow jackets and drove right past the old woodpile where the copperheads might be, and we headed on up to the head of the hollow where the one good walnut tree was last year. (There are five or six closer walnut trees but they did not have many nuts this year.)
Around here in Kentucky, the walnuts are ready and have been falling for some time already. We have been disappointed, however, because none of our trees had many walnuts on them. Our last hope was a couple of walnut trees up on what we call the West Cave Trail. (We call it that because the trail loops past a nice overhang of rocks beneath the west ridge that we call the West Cave. It's not really a cave, just an overhang that you can stay dry in if there's a rainstorm.) We sadly discovered that those walnut trees up there did not do any good this year either, for some reason. Maybe all of our walnut trees are too crowded by other trees? Some of them are rather large and we know that several of them have produced in the past. The rest of the forest is growing right around them, though. Do they have to be out in the open to have a good crop?
We did pick a poke full of spice bush leaves and twigs to make spice tea and some birch limbs to make birch tea and enough paw paws for Lisa to make some paw paw bread! We have lost most of the paw paws that were growing, however. A few weeks ago there were so many paw paws hanging around that we could not have used them all had we wanted to! The animals probably got them because they are a favorite food for opossum, squirrel, raccoon, fox, and others. We have plenty of those kinds of critters around Pure Water Hollow!
After we returned back to the house the children played some card games and we all had some delicious ice cream. It was a very peaceful, enjoyable Sunday afternoon in the Lord. I'll take a calm, non-adventurous Sunday afternoon walk over slaying copperheads and attacking yellow jackets any Sunday!
Thank you, Lord.
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