August 2021

Abby made a cake when she came home from camp. It did not last long.

Here are some of our flowers in bloom this month.

Troy continued trapping and he moved more wildlife.

Our neighbor starts working on taking out the fence and part of the fence behind the old farmhouse next door. The second and third pictures are before and after. He had already been working on the field and pushed down about 20 nice walnut trees.

French group we share our church with celebrated 5 years and Pastor Klinedinst came back for the celebration.

Troy's parents visited before Abby went back to college. We exchanged a few gifts and take some pictures. His parents headed home just before some storms came through.

A few days later we had another storm blow through. The weather radar showed an incredible amount of lightning with the storm and heavy rain. At our house we received no rain but very high winds. You can see in the picture our pecan tree was taking a beating.

We found more Luna moth larva in the blueberry patch. A preying mantis took up residence in the date palm in the front yard near the snap dragons.

Abby headed back to Andrews University for her senior year. She is going to be the head student dean this year.

Ann called Troy into the laundry room to look at something. Turns out a clutch of spider eggs had hatched and there were a couple hundred tiny spiders covering the inside of the washer lid and top of the washer. This is the last one because we didn't take a picture before we started vacuuming them up.

Troy accompanies 2 of his health specialists in Illinois coal mines. These are some of the items one of them has found in coal over the years. In one of these mines they identified over 40 roofbolts that were improperly installed.

The small paw paw crop was almost ripe enough to pick but something was eating them just before they would ripen off the tree.

We celebrated Sabbath with a church picnic in the park with West County.

We stopped to visit a family from church on the way home from Church in the Park. Then we headed home and Troy received a call from an unrecognized number, then Ann got one, and Troy got another one so we answered it. It was Barnes calling Ann about a kidney. We got out of the exit lane and diverted to the hospital and dropped Ann there for compatibility testing. The kidney was a match and Ann received a kidney. It was good news for us but that also meant that another family had suffered a terrible loss. Here is the view from hospital window where Ann is recovering. Ann had been on the transplant list for more than 5 years and at the top for more than 2 years. She is a complicated match and they had expanded the organ search nationwide. It is a miracle to be sure.