Track Meet Nostalgia...Almost

A few weeks ago, I was thinking that I almost missed going to high school track meets. Almost...

I was driving home from work, past a high school track on a day that was sunny and unseasonably warm for early April. I had seen some runners out on the road – highschoolers, maybe just baseball players getting into condition, perhaps girls' soccer players, but they could have been track kids, getting ready for the season. I had a sudden longing to go to a high school track meet. It's been nine years since I've been to one. (I don't count the college track meets I've been to in the years since then. They are a whole different entity...) And for about two minutes on that drive home, I really wanted to be at a high school track meet...

My son was a distance runner in high school, running cross country in the fall, the mile and the 4 x 800 in the spring track season. Cross country was a fun sport for parents. Most courses in our area were scenic and viewer-friendly. They provided good exercise for spectators, and the season was usually warm enough to make for very pleasant viewing conditions. I remember only one cross country meet in four years where I wondered if I had brought enough warm clothes. There were probably others, but for the most part, my memories of cross country seasons are full of glorious fall days.

Track meets, however, can be grueling events for parents as well as the student athletes. My son's two events were at opposites ends of each meet. Since high school track meets last anywhere from two to five hours, this makes for a long time commitment for “good” parents. The track season begins in March and ends in late May. In our area of the country this spans the gamut from snow and freezing temperatures to the beginning of intense summer heat. Aluminum bleachers can be unbelievably cold in March, even April, and uncomfortably hot by the end of May. A single track meet, because of it's length and, in the case of afternoon/evening meets because of the time of day, can have extremes of hot and cold. I learned to think of my car as a traveling closet. For most of track season, it contained two pairs of gloves, a scarf and winter hat, a wool sweater, a raincoat, a spring jacket, a windbreaker, and a hooded winter jacket. During the course of a single meet, I would return to the car to put on (or take off) however much clothing was necessary to see me through the rest of the meet. I remember one spring meet that ran late into the night, waiting for my son's last race, standing by the side of the track (It had grown too cold to sit on the bleachers any longer.), thinking that I really hadn't brought enough clothes. And then it began to snow...Actually, it was kind of pretty, in the dark, with the track lights on, seeing these large spring snowflakes coming down, barely coating the track, while the final races continued on.

From a parent's perspective, the best meets are always the one's where your son does well in his event. From a viewer's perspective, however, choosing the right parking space can make a track meet truly great. The best meets were the ones that had parking spaces right up against the track. I would come early just to get one of those spots. My car, usually equipped with a thermos of hot tea (in March) or iced drinks (in May), assorted snacks and reading material, was my home base. Close enough to see much of the meet from the driver's seat of my car and to hear the announcements over the sound system, I would snack and read between races. Yes, of course, I would be at the track side for my son's races, and I would usually pop out of the car for the races that his friends were in as well. But great books were read in the between times of those long meets...

During one of the last meets of my son's senior year, on a hot May day, I was reminiscing about the races of the last four years with another parent who had two runners in both cross country and track. It would be ending for me this year, the dad said. (His sons were younger, and he would have another year or so of bleacher-sitting.) Would I be one of those parents that would show up at meets next year, after my son had graduated? I didn't have to think long on that. Sure, I said, I'll probably show up at a cross country meet in the fall (and I did, every year, for most of the years since then). But, I said, you will probably never see me at another track meet again. (I said this, sitting on a blazing hot aluminum bleacher seat, on the same track where we were once evacuated from during a meet because of a tornado warning.)

And I haven't been back to a high school meet since. But on these nice spring days, when I see kids running in the road, maybe training for their mile or their relay, I think that maybe I do miss that season of track meets and I think about maybe going to one...almost...

You can tell when you are on the right track. It's usually uphill. - Amish Proverb

This was previously posted at http://trinitylink.com/blog/?p=255, but since it really is a companion piece to my previous post, here it is again...)

Spiritual Composting

I'm obsessed with compost.

Whenever we have moved to a new house, one of the first questions that comes up is where to put the compost pile. I like to grow things, and, as an organic gardener hoping to grow flowers and vegetables successfully, I can't have too much compost. Good compost enriches the soil and conserves moisture. It keeps some weeds from sprouting and makes the weeds that do come up easy to pull out. I'm also fascinated by the process that causes compost to come about, the use of what is essentially garbage, to make something that causes things to grow. I take old garden debris and weeds, fruit and vegetable scraps, fall leaves, small branches pruned from bushes, all things that would just end up rotting in a landfill. I mix them together with some horse manure, a little bit of water to make a barely damp giant salad and give it some time to heat up. I toss this gross salad occasionally to give it some air, and, given time, I am eventually rewarded with an earthy brown substance that delights my tomatoes and encourages way too many zucchini.

The composting process is a good picture of what God does with the old garbage of our lives. Most of us, sometime in our adult lives, realize we have accumulated a lot of debris. We may have let the seeds of various sins sprout and grow into full blown weeds. Relationships we thought were green and growing suddenly appear to be dried and dead and ready to be raked away. Work or family situations where we have felt we have not lived up to expectations can haunt us with their smell of failure. Even the good things we see growing in our lives sometimes experience severe pruning, and we are left not knowing if we will ever see fruit in that area again as we stand amidst the once growing branches scattered at our feet.

Throughout scripture, we see God working in his people, using the debris of their lives to bring about new growth. Moses, his mother forced to abandon him or see him killed, is then raised by Pharaoh's daughter in the pagan society of Egypt. He grows up, only to murder an Egyptian, and then is scorned by Hebrew slaves. He leaves Egypt and finds himself tending sheep in the land of Midian...for years. Yet God uses the events of Moses' life along with those years to make him fertile ground, an instrument for the deliverance of His people. Joseph, David, and Peter all have events in their lives that make for rotting material for the compost heap. And yet each one, in God's perfect timing, develops into, rich fertile soil. Joseph grows into a wise leader, saving the Egyptians, and then, through his family, the whole Hebrew people, from famine; David grows into a man after God' own heart; Peter grows into a rock of the early Church.

As believers, we have a Master Gardener who gives us an alternative to being overwhelmed by the debris in our lives. He promises to work all things together for good, even those things that we have no more hope for than a pile of over-ripe bananas. We can come to Him and give Him our sprouted sin, poisonous to our spiritual lives. We can give Him our dried up relationships, deadening to our hearts, those smelly failures, draining of our hope, and the confusing pain of our cut back branches. He, by His grace and mercy, redeems and transforms them - yes, even the deadliness of the sprouted sin - and uses them to generate a rich soil for future growth. Of course, like all good compost makers, our Gardener will keep us appropriately wet with His Spirit, allow things to heat up, often more than we would like. He occasionally tosses things around in our lives, and uses that necessary, but frustrating thing called time that He always seems to have more of than we do. But we have a loving Gardener we can trust, and the finished product is always worth it.

And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. - Romans 8:28

Composting 1.0

Happy Earth Day!

The compost pile sold our second home.

Every house we've lived in has had a compost pile of some form. Our first house was in a residential suburb in upstate New York. The compost pile was hidden behind the swimming pool. I had built a simple three bin structure out of 2 x 4s and chicken wire. Each bin was enclosed on three sides with the fronts open. I loaded the first bin with garden debris, leaves and kitchen scraps. I'd mix in a few shovelfuls of garden dirt to get the decomposition process going. The first bin would sit until I had more organic matter to add, than I'd move the partially broken down brown stuff from the first bin to the second bin and fill up the first bin with new leaves, old garden plants, more kitchen scraps and dirt. I would continue this process until I had compost going in all three bins. By the time the last bin was full, it was ready to dig into the garden. The compost wasn't perfect. It had some visible leaves and chopped up plant stems, but the kitchen scraps had lost their identity. If I dug the compost into the garden in the fall or early spring, it would continue to break down in the garden before I planted seeds or seedlings.

Our next house was in the Midwest, halfway between Chicago and Milwaukee. Again, it was in a residential suburb, but this yard was deep and treed and backed up to an open area. I decided to skip the pretense of a composting structure and just have free standing piles. The half dozen oaks in the backyard provided an abundance of leaves. Each fall I would rake up the leaves, layer than with moist garden dirt, old vegetable garden plants and kitchen scraps. After letting the pile sit over winter, I would turn it over into a new pile next to the original one. I would follow the same process that I did in the last house, minus the bins and with substantially bigger piles. The finished compost was similar – not perfect, but good enough to amend the soil in the vegetable garden and in the landscaping. The piles were large and free formed, but since the yard had a lot of wild vegetation along the back property line, it was hidden from the house.

When we decided to sell this house, my husband wanted to empty out the compost piles and rake the area flat before putting it on the market. Who would want a pile of rotting leaves in their backyard? I, however, thought it would be a selling point. (Composting had always been my thing, not his.) The compost pile stayed, mainly because lack of time prevented my husband from doing anything about it.

A few days after we had put our house up for sale, a young woman came through to view it. She returned that night with her husband, put an offer on the house, and eventually it became theirs. They had been renting a farmette at the edge of town, were looking to live in the village, but hoped to continue to garden. The wife told us she liked the house, but when she went to the back of the property, it was the compost pile that made her call her husband and schedule another visit that evening. She said she knew it was the house for them.

We now live in a residential neighborhood several miles north of our last house. Our yard is treeless and open and backs to marsh land. I have three black plastic compost bins on the back property line. Our neighbor supplies us with leaves, and I add the garden debris and kitchen scraps. I also have a friend that supplies me with horse manure. I use a compost tool to aerate each compost bin several times a season. I find I have almost perfect compost for my vegetable garden.

When I construct compost piles, whether in enclosed bins, open bins or free-form piles, I think “salad”. The best salads are made from a variety of ingredients. Compost piles need a variety of ingredients as well. Brown matter (fall leaves), green matter (most garden debris – weeds, bolted lettuce, old tomato plants, most fall garden cleanup), garden dirt and well rotted manure are the basics of the compost salad. The dressing of the salad should be just enough to coat the the ingredients without making them too soggy. In the same way, water needs to be added to the compost pile to keep it just barely moist. The best description of the ideal amount of moisture to strive for is the consistency of a wrung-out sponge. Lastly, the salad needs to be tossed. Open bins and free formed bins can be turned over into an adjacent space. Enclosed bins can be stirred with a spading fork or a compost aerating tool. The more frequently the compost salad is tossed, the quicker it breaks down into rich compost. During the warm spring and summer months, tossing the piles once a week should do the job.

Whether you have a compost pile in your backyard to minimize your carbon footprint or have one to nourish your vegetables and flowers, composting is a rewarding and doable endeavor in almost any yard. And it might help you sell your house someday...

Pray for a good harvest but continue to hoe. - Amish Proverb

I was originally going to call this blog “Dame Juliana's Angle”, but it seemed a little too offbeat, even for me, since my name is not Juliana, and I'm not British. Dame, or “Sister”, Juliana Berners was a nun who lived in England in the 1400s. She is attributed by some sources as to having written the first book ever published on the subject of sport fishing, Treatyse of Fysshynge wyth an Angle. An angle, in old fishing language, was a primitive fishhook. (Think of an open safety pin.) Dame Juliana had three things going for her that I admire – she wrote, she fished, and she loved God and His creation.

The word angle can also be defined as a point of view. The title of this blog, “The Angle”, reflects the content of what you will find here in weeks to come – my point of view. At times it might inform you or entertain you. Other times it may annoy you or infuriate you. It will probably embarrass my children and baffle my husband. (“You didn't really put that in print, did you?!!!) This blog will contain a wide variety of topics. Like Dame Juliana, I fish, I write and I love God and His creation. I also have been collecting quotations for many years and will include one with each blog entry. Look to be inspired by C. S. Lewis, or perhaps, Dave Barry, depending on my mood of the day. 

 

Whatever you think you can do or believe you can do, begin it - for action has magic, grace and power in it. - Goethe