Car Wreck Trip

So my dear sweet Mama rolled her truck. Thankfully she came out of it with only a broken arm, and a bunch of bumps, and bruises! So I found myself leaving on a jet plane to California!

So Mom, who is in her late 70's, is slowly recovering! She is still weak, and rattled, but her pain level is dropping! So thankful she is ok! We lost Daddy in 2015, and I need my Mom for a little longer!

So here I am in sunny California, at the family ranch, contemplating the tenuous nature of life, and being very thankful to my Creator for giving me this one!

And life is abuzz around here, with this swarm of bees looking for a new home to take advantage of the beginning of the opening of heavy sweet smelling Orange blossoms.

Oranges, and other citrus, often hold their fruit, and blossoms at the same time. This is a wonderful trait that means that one can enjoy two sweetnesses at once, both the sweetness of fragrance, and the delectable sweetness of the fruit! To top it off, these amazing trees are a feast for the eyes as well with their dark evergreen leaves, colorful fruit, and flowers!

This beautiful ranch belonged to my grandparents at one time, my Daddy's parents. Grandpa came to California as a member of the CCC's. He met Grandma at church, and she wasn't exactly looking to date one of those CCC boys! But eventually he won her over.

Then he went back to Illinois, and he and Grandma communicated for a couple years by mail! The love letters flew! Eventually, Grandpa went to work for Grandma's dad, and married the bosses daughter! The family business, olives! Great Grandpa owned a small cannery!

Grandpa, worked his way up in the company, and being a canny businessman, did very well. In fact, he became one of the foremost authorities on olives in the US. In the process, he, along with Grandma, raised my Dad, and his three siblings. Grandma delivered all four kids in five years. She was amazing!

Over the years Grandpa began buying olive, and later, citrus ranches as a productive retirement plan. Of course, for Grandpa, retirement did not really happen until he was well into his eighties, about the time he lost his sight, at 85. Yet even blind, he formed a family business, which he ran with a friendly, but iron hand, till he no longer could! Grandpa died at 99 years old in 2013.

Along the way, he bought the ranch of olives that the home place sits on. The olive trees here were full grown trees, when Grandpa bought them in 1950. If you scroll down my feed, you can read the poem I wrote about them, Olives On A Summer Morning.

Anyway, these trees are old! We have no idea which enterprising person in the past, planted them! We do know that they were old, when Grandpa bought the place.

In the culture of olives new branches come out, fruit for a length of time, and then are cut off, and new branches cultivated to take their place. This is why in an olive, the trunks can become so huge. The bigger the trunk, the older the tree. Some trees live for hundreds of years. So our trees are very old!

This brings me to the great sadness of this year! Upon the deaths of Grandpa at 99, and Grandma at 102, the company passed to their children, my aunt's, uncles, and my mother, as Daddy died right before Grandma. This year, the decision was made to replace the olive orchard around the house with something more profitable.

I have strong feelings about this! They left a couple rows of the ones closest to the house, but I feel like someone murdered my heritage! Those trees are irreplaceable. There are some things that are more important than money.

However, instead of resentment, I just feel lingering sadness for the loss of the dreams of generations. There is nothing more true on this earth than the fact everything here is temporary! There is no such thing as forever here. This is why I do not store up treasures on this earth, that moth, and rust, and chainsaws can destroy!

No my hope must be in the eternal, rather than in the fleeting. This life is filled with things we become comfortable with believing are permanent. Yet not a one of those things ARE permanent, at least here.

We waste so much time worrying over things that will disappear in time. Great coliseums are rotting into the dust. Entire forests that once existed, no longer do. The memory of millions of people have been lost to history, and we focus on the maintenance of things that we will never carry into eternity.

However, eternity awaits, and the fact that it does can either inspire relief, or fear. For me, because of my faith in Jesus Christ, eternity inspires relief! It inspires the knowledge that at some point the things that bring me joy, will not fade into insignificance! It comforts me that those I love are waiting never to be lost again, and that never again will I feel the loss of neither them, nor treasured childhood trees! It also comforts me that my inheritance is being held in store by the Perfect Creator, who always keeps His word! No worries!