After such a beautiful weekend the heat and the humidity is slowly returning to the area. That's too bad because I really enjoyed having a few days of nice comfortable mornings and evenings. But, it is summer and we don't want fall weather to come on yet. The seasons have been mixed up enough this year so far.

We took advantage of some of the cooler weather and got some yard work done on Saturday. First though, we went for our "schrooms and beer" with Brenda and Bob at St. Joe Tavern. It is always a good time with them. Then they surprised us by showing up for church service yesterday at Zoar. We had talked to them about that on Saturday but they had made no commitment. Their church is still doing their summer schedule so Brenda didn't have to play the organ yesterday.

I spent a good hour just doing weed eating on Saturday and Ms. Kate went out and did some hoeing and spraying with Round-up. I need to get out there and finish the hoeing in that garden. There is a weed that grows out there that is just hard to get rid of and it spreads like crazy. It isn't hard to hoe it up but it returns fairly quickly. I can't spray too much where it is or I'll end up spraying my beets or my okra, or my tomatoes. I certainly wouldn't want that. All of those crops and my flowers are growing very well. I have a lot of tomatoes on and have picked the first three of them, but, they were split on the bottom and starting to rot because of all of the rain we have had.

The critters and birds have cleaned out most of the sunflower feeders once again. I'll have to refill those yet today. The hummingbirds are paying much more attention to the phlox blooms than they are to the actual hummingbird feeders. Ms. Kate went out and refilled that feeder yesterday because the last was old and it turns bad in the hot sun. I bought a new woodpecker feeder. This one has a place to put in a suet roll log type of thing. So far they haven't really investigated it or paid much attention to it. But they will. It seems I'm always looking for something new to attract my backyard buffet guests. I have a lot more feeders than I have places to hang them.

We had ninety-two for church yesterday. That is truly exciting. A year ago we had just over half that many. I'm not sure what we are doing right but I hope we keep doing it. I have seen our church at its best and I have seen our church at its worst. What old timers like me call "the good old days" are days when we had 200-300 in church every Sunday. The church had several different social organization and sponsored missionaries and several mission programs. But those days are long gone for most of the churches across America. It s a new day and a new society. Then our church went through a phase where they were only getting around 30-45 on a Sunday and those are truly sad days in any church. But, we are slowly coming back and trying to rebuild the Faith Family. Pastor Art and I are only interim pastors for the church and the search committee is reviewing profiles for a new permanent pastor. I hope that whomever they get in here will be willing to continue to reach out and do the visitations and the evangelism work that he and I are doing. I really want to see this church succeed because it is the church I grew up in.

That is it for today. I need to get to the office and get some work done. Have a most blessed week.