Summertime things...........

This is the new non-fiction book I asked our local library to order recently, so I got to be first on the list to read it! Ta-da! Isn't there just something great about knowing you're the first one to open and smell and feel and read a BRAND NEW book?!!! It has 431 pages, and lots of photos, and is fascinating reading. It's heart-rending also, though; reading about the brainwashed beautiful, intelligent children being kept in another "world" totally. This teenager (Elissa Wall) escaped after a forced marriage at the age of 14, and the terrible abuse and miscarriages she suffered at the hands of her husband who she couldn't stand; not to mention the older men in charge who were mentally ill and kept the people under their thumbs with threats of their surely going to hell and being forever separated from their family and relatives at "the second coming of Christ". The ones still in the "camps" and "cities" surely have my prayers. I'll need to read something a little more "upbeat" next; my summer reading list is very long!!!.......and this is another of our favorite summer treats.......to watch the man who comes to cut and bale the hay (such as it is!) from our pastures! He wheels around fast to cut it one day; lets it dry a couple of days and then rolls it into pretty rows. Then we all pray for NO rain until it cures another day or so and he comes with this huge baler which sucks up the rows into a neat, round bale! When it's ready, he flips a lever to tie it around and around with twine, and then the huge 1,000 lb. bale of hay rolls out all finished! That's a LOT of hay, people!!! And what a wonderful fragrance of fresh-cut and then drying hay in the air everywhere for several days.........
now we look forward to his cutting another time at the end of summer. And while we're waiting, we pray for enough rains to "make hay while the sun shines"!