I posted this on the La. forum and with urging I post it here.
Days come and go and so do the weeks until finally all of the months are also gone. Then we start again. You would think that after a while it would get boring to start all over again and again. I was out working in the yard and garden today, thinking about the fact that tomorrow is Easter. Now Easter is a very special renewal, for us Christians it's a renewal of our core beliefs.
Right now crappie are going through their renewal. They have either spawned, as they have here, or are getting ready to spawn. We, like years previous, follow right behind them. Bored, not at all. The one thing we all have in common is that we are all a year older and some of us not so much more wiser. As we start this spring season which we all look forward to, not all of our buddies are here with us this year. Lets hope and pray that they are all in the happy crappie fishing grounds in the sky. I've lost an aunt, a first cousin, a sister in law, and a brother in law. We had a very poor spring season as seasons go. I know there were a few around here that had a good spring but for the average person that doesn't fish hard and looks forward to the hot spring bite, it wasn't a great season. Mother nature was hard on us last year lets pray that this year will be much better.
I guess one of the things that got me to thinking renewal also was my garden. It seems like only yesterday I was in pain from picking beans of which it seem like I planted way to many. But today when I went into the pantry to get some beans that we had canned, I felt no pain. I noticed that we are quite low on the number of jars left. We will be very thankful at Easter dinner tomorrow that we put up just about enough.
In the garden my beans are making there own renewal. They are in blossom and I will soon be going through the routine of picking, snapping and canning so as we can enjoy them the rest of the year as we have this one.
Also my okra are coming up, a little later than the beans because they need a little more warmth to get their renewal going. But soon enough I'll picking and cutting and smothering and finally putting them up in the freezer so as to provide us with great gumbo for the year.
My mulberry tree has made it renewal. The strong spring winds have cleared the branches of berries but not before I got to fill my belly quite a few times. I also was able to pick enough to put some up to make dumplings with at some time in the future.
I'm down to my last jar of figs also. I didn't get to put many up last year, so here I sit with the trees putting on new figs in their renewal as I plan to eat the last of last years stash in the morning for breakfast.
I guess where this leads is that natures renews itself every year just like it has done for the ages. The only thing that changes is the fact that we were not always here to witness it nor will we continue be here as nature goes on.
So in that light, I wish each and every one of you a Happy Easter and my prayer is that you can witness many more before we are called to that great big crappie fishing hole in the sky.
"gene"