1. I'm not sure how often I intend to post on this blog, but for now I'm pretty much trying to post a little something every day except Sunday. Sunday is a day of rest. Though I seldom get to "rest", I will rest from blogging that day. So if you checked for a new blog yesterday... sorry Charlie. =)
2. When I started mentioning forest fires in my blog last week, little did I know that a few days later there would actually be raging forest fires in the very area I was speaking of (Montgomery County) and other east Texas communities. Thankfully the digital age and bazillion TV channels in our modern age do a much better job covering these so the surprise factor is lessened, however it's still a really nerve-wracking time for folks living in those areas and my heart goes out to the residents and those fighting the fires. I also apologize if I was flippant about forest fires. Believe me, they aren't a bit funny.
Maybe this is a good time to remember there is a good side to almost every bad side. Like though I really, really, really, REALLY hate snakes I know that they serve a purpose in nature by eating rats and rodents and therefore keeping nature in balance. Even though bats seriously give me the creeps (again, too many B horror movies in childhood?) I know they serve a purpose because they eat mosquitos and therefore are part of God's master plan to keep nature in balance. Just please don't let one fly close to me or actually get stuck in my hair. I. Would. Die. As in outdance Michael Jackson followed shortly by cardiac arrest right there on the spot. Eeeek! So forest fires, though scary and difficult especially when close to inhabited areas, burn out the underbrush and help keep the forest in balance. But like snakes and bats are easier to handle in a distant and abstract way?
By the way, that thick pine forest underbrush often contains lots of dewberry vines which thrive in the sandy shady areas and reminds me of a quick funny story... During my 4th-7th grade years I attended a small private school on the outskirts of Conroe where our PE Coach believed in cross-country running. He made us regularly run a long course which looped around and ended in a clearing behind the school. Believe it or not, I was pretty athletic as a kid but never really liked jogging of any sort. Lucky for me Coach Collins didn't either. He would see us off in a big pack as we left the school and then go drink coffee or whatever for the 30-45 minutes until we all trickled back again. Ha! His mistake. We soon found a trail that led through the woods and came out in the clearing behind the school and cut out about 80% of the cross-country route. So we would cut through, goof around for a while so as not to give away our secret, and then do our best to show up sweaty and exhausted looking 45 minutes later.
Only those darn dewberry vines wound up giving us away! In the spring time the sides of that trail were absolutely THICK with loaded berry vines and we would munch away on them while killing time until one day some genius classmates of mine started collecting them in their folded up shirts. Those berries stained their shirts so bad, it looked like they had been shot in the stomach! We were so totally busted!! And by the time Coach finished killer workouts for the next two weeks which would have brought a Navy seal to tears, we wished we'd never heard of dewberries and would rather have just been shot to put us out of our misery!
Again, in God's perfect balance of nature I guess there's a hard-nosed Coach to offset every group of evil little kids trying to get around the rules?? Or there should be at least. =)
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