The power went out last evening as I was just beginning a Skype visit with Carol. With loss of power and Internet, we also lost the Skype connection of course, so we’ll try again Monday.
Happily, the power came back on a couple hours later, so I was able to cook a late supper. The guest house is located at the end of the faculty village across campus, with a dozen or so faculty homes clustered there. In addition to my own brown rice and beans entreé, I had okra, bell peppers, Swiss chard, and a mildly spicy peanut sauce contributed from the gardens and kitchens of various neighbors. The neighborliness is wonderful!
We had some rain during the night, but the morning dawned clear and beautiful. After an early breakfast, I headed for Mount Chiremba a bit over a mile away. After hiking around to the back side of the mountain, I climbed the rough mountain trail with its many switchbacks to the top in a little over an hour. The view from the top was magnificent, with a broad expanse of valley stretching in all directions to distant mountains as far as the eye could see. I sat on a flat rock at the top for half an hour, absorbing the view and being inspired by this vision of God’s world.
View from Mount Chiremba
When I got back to campus, I noticed what I thought were some bright red flowers in the tall grasses growing in the field beside the path. Then, to my surprise, several of the “flowers” took wing and flitted to other tall stalks of seeding grass. There were dozens of sparrow-sized birds feasting on the seeds of the tall grasses. About half of them had a bright red cap on their heads, and when they took wing, I could see that their entire backs were a gorgeous red. Their face, wings and bellies were black, and the contrast was striking. I’ll close this blog with a picture that caught a few of them feasting in the grass. The other picture is of tall blooming cactus plants that I saw on the way to the mountain this morning. Beautiful!
Seeding tall grasses with sparrows feasting
Tall blooming cactus
