Nothing extra special here … just that I have not posted anything in a week and am feeling bad about that. I’ve got a bunch of stuff in the other blogs – EnfiladingLines.com especially – as there are a lot of 150^th anniversary happenings right now. And I’ve continued to have more than a few Orioles opinions these days, as they are looking a bit more like themselves – having lost 6 of the last 8 games.

Not that these next three items tie together in any way other than I took pictures of each, here are some activities from today. <There are 3 events and 3 pictures>

We had an absolutely amazing storm on Sunday night – which cancelled our outdoor church movie event (and likely made the cranky neighbor across the cornfields happy). A wall of clouds moved in that was as equally impressive as anything I ever saw happen in Texas. I wish I had taken pictures, but I was too busy worrying about my trees blowing down. The wind effect (65 mph) upon even my largest trees looked much like the hurricane pictures you see of trees bent almost 90 degrees. I thought we got away with none coming down, but today I saw that a 60-70 foot tree on my south property line blew over into the neighbor’s yard. (Possession is 90% of the law they say, right?)  This was a grand old tree – so large that in our neighborhood covenant it is stipulated that the trees on the property lines cannot be cut down. This was one of them. Here is a picture:

I thought that for sure I would be called to do a tour group at Antietam today, but that never happened. I did go over there however to walk along on a Ranger-led talk through the cemetery – which was very good. Even though at Tri-State this summer we are not highlighting the summer fellowship activities as in the past, since my Antietam events have been very popular, I’ll plan to do one of them toward the end of the summer. And I’m thinking of doing something like I saw today.

Since last summer, we have had a flock of chickens – we have 20 hens and 2 roosters. Caleb and I bought what is called a still air incubator and have had a batch of eggs in it for the past three weeks. The time has come for them to start hatching, and in fact, as I write this, the first one is out of the shell. It is quite an impressive thing – even this birth of a simple chicken is amazing. We’ve been hearing them chirping in the eggs for the past 36 hours. Unless you’ve experienced a clutch of eggs hatching, you will not likely be able to relate to how incredibly noisy this process is. They chirp and chirp – very loud!  And, as they’re trying to extricate themselves from their prison, the eggs go rolling loudly around the incubator on a metal mesh platform. The last time we did this was over 20 years ago when the older three boys were little, and I had the device in my bedroom – wanting to control curious little hands from doing the wrong thing. This time, remembering the past, I have the setup in a remote corner of the downstairs. And, all this noise is driving the dog crazy. Joules does not know what to make of this, and her curiosity is on high alert. Anyhow, let me know if you need some chickens.