6/30/2007
Hunting Entrepreneurs
NUMBER 186
Hunting Entrepreneurs In The Wilds of Kentucky
Last weed my Childe Bride and I spent an interesting day in pursuit of the Blue Grass Hosta Farm. The directions seemed pretty simple and straightforward but things are never as they seem when you get out of town. After numerous roads without names, or with numbers that were not on our map, we finally arrived. We weren’t lost—just never quite knew where we, or the Blue Grass Hosta Farm was. The owner was very helpful and we had a good visit, learned a lot, and bought some very nice plants.
Today we set out in the opposite direction to find the Fox Haven DayLily Farm. I did a Mapquest that looked pretty simple but of course on the ground it not simple at all. Grows Mill Road was just a little way outside of Wilmore and only went one way. How could we miss it?
Scale varies on Mapquest maps so it came sooner than we thought and when we were about 4 miles too far, we realized it. Driving back we watched carefully and missed it again. The sign was small and in deep shade high on a big tree and the road looked like a driveway. Of course there was no Fox Haven Daylily Farm sign to be seen.
We had seen a sign earlier advertising a sale at the farm and giving the address, but it was nowhere near Grows Mill Road.
Back in Wilmore we looked closely at our map and counted 4 streets to Grows Mill. We finally found it and turned down a one-lane blacktop road that narrowed progressively to the point where we prayed we would not meet another car, or even a wide pedestrian. Coming to a dead end we had the choice of turning right into what looked like a set for Deliverance, or left toward a quietly babbling brook. There was no indication of which way, if either, was Grows Mill. We opted for the babbling brook.
We eventually came to a stone pillar with 970 on it. By that time my wife was on the phone to a friend who had been there. She said, “It just looks like you are driving uphill into a field.” She was right—and the road looked like it had not been improved since at least civil war days.
As we started slowly up the time-blasted blacktop driveway we were greeted by a gaggle of Guinea Hens. They were friendly, noisy, and all over the place. They were so friendly we wondered if we might not be the first people they have seen so far this year. At the top of the meadow we finally found a sign, “Fox Haven Daylily Farm.” We eased around to the right and came to a small paved area—room to park two cars if no one wanted to turn around and leave.
I concluded these folks were not too serious about their sale since it was hard to see where more than one customer at a time could park. There was some open space 200 yards or so away but it did not look like it had seen any use by vehicles with wheels for a long time.
A large dark building crouched at the left and there were extensive beds of flowers laid out on the right-- but no people around. The Guinea Hens invited us to take a look. We spent about 20 minutes walking through an amazing display of carefully labeled Daylilies. Since we weren’t planning on buying we didn’t go looking for a person. We had the feeling we could have dug up a trunk full of prize Daylilies and no one would have noticed. We thanked the birds and managed to get turned around and out.
We really love Kentucky, but are continually amazed at how people who want to sell things manage to live in places that are almost impossible to find. We have concluded that they love their country solitude more than they love the success of their businesses. In the case of this Lily farm, we suspect the owners are big on breeding and showing and bragging, and only stoop to sell when it suits them or they have to pay some bills.
Hunting Entrepreneurs In The Wilds of Kentucky
Last weed my Childe Bride and I spent an interesting day in pursuit of the Blue Grass Hosta Farm. The directions seemed pretty simple and straightforward but things are never as they seem when you get out of town. After numerous roads without names, or with numbers that were not on our map, we finally arrived. We weren’t lost—just never quite knew where we, or the Blue Grass Hosta Farm was. The owner was very helpful and we had a good visit, learned a lot, and bought some very nice plants.
Today we set out in the opposite direction to find the Fox Haven DayLily Farm. I did a Mapquest that looked pretty simple but of course on the ground it not simple at all. Grows Mill Road was just a little way outside of Wilmore and only went one way. How could we miss it?
Scale varies on Mapquest maps so it came sooner than we thought and when we were about 4 miles too far, we realized it. Driving back we watched carefully and missed it again. The sign was small and in deep shade high on a big tree and the road looked like a driveway. Of course there was no Fox Haven Daylily Farm sign to be seen.
We had seen a sign earlier advertising a sale at the farm and giving the address, but it was nowhere near Grows Mill Road.
Back in Wilmore we looked closely at our map and counted 4 streets to Grows Mill. We finally found it and turned down a one-lane blacktop road that narrowed progressively to the point where we prayed we would not meet another car, or even a wide pedestrian. Coming to a dead end we had the choice of turning right into what looked like a set for Deliverance, or left toward a quietly babbling brook. There was no indication of which way, if either, was Grows Mill. We opted for the babbling brook.
We eventually came to a stone pillar with 970 on it. By that time my wife was on the phone to a friend who had been there. She said, “It just looks like you are driving uphill into a field.” She was right—and the road looked like it had not been improved since at least civil war days.
As we started slowly up the time-blasted blacktop driveway we were greeted by a gaggle of Guinea Hens. They were friendly, noisy, and all over the place. They were so friendly we wondered if we might not be the first people they have seen so far this year. At the top of the meadow we finally found a sign, “Fox Haven Daylily Farm.” We eased around to the right and came to a small paved area—room to park two cars if no one wanted to turn around and leave.
I concluded these folks were not too serious about their sale since it was hard to see where more than one customer at a time could park. There was some open space 200 yards or so away but it did not look like it had seen any use by vehicles with wheels for a long time.
A large dark building crouched at the left and there were extensive beds of flowers laid out on the right-- but no people around. The Guinea Hens invited us to take a look. We spent about 20 minutes walking through an amazing display of carefully labeled Daylilies. Since we weren’t planning on buying we didn’t go looking for a person. We had the feeling we could have dug up a trunk full of prize Daylilies and no one would have noticed. We thanked the birds and managed to get turned around and out.
We really love Kentucky, but are continually amazed at how people who want to sell things manage to live in places that are almost impossible to find. We have concluded that they love their country solitude more than they love the success of their businesses. In the case of this Lily farm, we suspect the owners are big on breeding and showing and bragging, and only stoop to sell when it suits them or they have to pay some bills.
6/21/2007
PARABLES OF THE CHRIST-LIFE
NUMBER 185
Parables of the Christ Life
On my shelf of most favorite books I have a small volume written by I. Lilias Trotter, a missionary to Africa, titled Parables Of The Christ-life. It was published by Marshall Brothers, Ltd. London/Edinburgh. There is no date. In the flyleaf in a fine hand is written, To dear Elise, from Aunt Beta. Shanghai 1941.
Elise Claus was the youngest sister of my wife’s mother. She was afflicted with sleeping sickness and was in three different institutions after two years of college. Beta Scheirich was my wife’s maiden aunt. She was a missionary in China and not long after she sent this book to Elise was interned in a Japanese concentration camp for the remainder of the war. She and many others in this camp were sustained through their captivity by vitamins smuggled into the camp from Watchman Nee.
A Poppy is what brought this book to mind. We don’t know the name of this plant—seeds were given to us by someone who also did not know. Not long ago the poppy looked like this:
Here is a blossom to wring a smile from the most hard-hearted true love. It is straight and tall and bursting with life. Today a change is well along. The petals have begun to fade and a robust seedpod has appeared at its heart.
Here is what Lilias Trotter has to say about what has been going on with this flower.
Speaking of an African hillside in the fall, he says, “Stoop down and look into that withered grass, and a whole new world of God’s handiwork will come into view in the burnt up tangle. For of all the growing things out here, the seed vessels are the most wonderful. Even little insignificant plants that would barely catch your eye when in flower develop forms of quaint beauty as the capsules ripen. And now, that all is finished, they lie stored with vitality in the midst of seeming loss all around.”
He takes the reader back to early spring; “The annuals that clothed the field had each but one life then; a perishing life though it looked so strong in its young vigor. Left to itself, it stood ‘condemned already.’ But the critical moment came, changing its whole destiny, when a new birth took place: the vitalizing pollen was received by the pistil, and set up the reign of a fresh undying creation. All that had come before in the plant’s history was a preparation for this moment: all that followed was a working out to its fruition.”
“’Verily, verily I say unto thee, except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.’ Every soul carries like the flower a possible life, other than that of its first birth; more than that, to every soul within reach of the gospel there comes probably a moment when the life of God draws near and could be received if it were willing. There is a crisis like that which the flower reaches, when all things are ready. If that crisis is not seized, nothing lies before the plant but useless, irrevocable decay; the power to receive withers and vanishes; and nothing can renew it.”
“The hour at which this new birth can take place in the flower is the hour at which the stigma is able to grasp the pollen that comes to it, blown by the wind or carried by the bees and butterflies. Up till then the grains fall off unheeded; but now it develops a surface, glutinous in some cases, velvety in others, that can clasp and keep them fast. The pollen grains lay hold at the same moment by their sculpture points and ridges. They ‘apprehend’ each other, and the pollen, with its mysterious quickening power, does the rest. As soon as it is received is sinks down into the innermost depths of the flower’s heart, and starts there the beginning of the new creation.”
“The most wonderful secrets of the plant world hang around the process of fertilization, and the ways in which these springs of the second birth are guarded and set going, but the flower’s simple work is to open and receive…From the very outset of its new birth we see a double process going on in the plant. Within a few hours the throb of new life has spread through the flower, with the first result, that the petals begin to wither… Fertilisation marks the striking of the death blow to all that went before…and simultaneously…in the little flower heart…the seed vessel with its hidden treasure—the ultimate object of this miracle of quickening—begins immediately to form.”
The story goes on from here—too long for this brief discussion. The morale is this: The footprints of God are all through His creation. A picture of the Gospel is embedded in the history of every growing thing, “Because that which is known about God is evident within them (Men who suppress the truth), for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.” Romans 1.19-20
Parables of the Christ Life
On my shelf of most favorite books I have a small volume written by I. Lilias Trotter, a missionary to Africa, titled Parables Of The Christ-life. It was published by Marshall Brothers, Ltd. London/Edinburgh. There is no date. In the flyleaf in a fine hand is written, To dear Elise, from Aunt Beta. Shanghai 1941.
Elise Claus was the youngest sister of my wife’s mother. She was afflicted with sleeping sickness and was in three different institutions after two years of college. Beta Scheirich was my wife’s maiden aunt. She was a missionary in China and not long after she sent this book to Elise was interned in a Japanese concentration camp for the remainder of the war. She and many others in this camp were sustained through their captivity by vitamins smuggled into the camp from Watchman Nee.
A Poppy is what brought this book to mind. We don’t know the name of this plant—seeds were given to us by someone who also did not know. Not long ago the poppy looked like this:
Here is a blossom to wring a smile from the most hard-hearted true love. It is straight and tall and bursting with life. Today a change is well along. The petals have begun to fade and a robust seedpod has appeared at its heart.
Here is what Lilias Trotter has to say about what has been going on with this flower.
Speaking of an African hillside in the fall, he says, “Stoop down and look into that withered grass, and a whole new world of God’s handiwork will come into view in the burnt up tangle. For of all the growing things out here, the seed vessels are the most wonderful. Even little insignificant plants that would barely catch your eye when in flower develop forms of quaint beauty as the capsules ripen. And now, that all is finished, they lie stored with vitality in the midst of seeming loss all around.”
He takes the reader back to early spring; “The annuals that clothed the field had each but one life then; a perishing life though it looked so strong in its young vigor. Left to itself, it stood ‘condemned already.’ But the critical moment came, changing its whole destiny, when a new birth took place: the vitalizing pollen was received by the pistil, and set up the reign of a fresh undying creation. All that had come before in the plant’s history was a preparation for this moment: all that followed was a working out to its fruition.”
“’Verily, verily I say unto thee, except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.’ Every soul carries like the flower a possible life, other than that of its first birth; more than that, to every soul within reach of the gospel there comes probably a moment when the life of God draws near and could be received if it were willing. There is a crisis like that which the flower reaches, when all things are ready. If that crisis is not seized, nothing lies before the plant but useless, irrevocable decay; the power to receive withers and vanishes; and nothing can renew it.”
“The hour at which this new birth can take place in the flower is the hour at which the stigma is able to grasp the pollen that comes to it, blown by the wind or carried by the bees and butterflies. Up till then the grains fall off unheeded; but now it develops a surface, glutinous in some cases, velvety in others, that can clasp and keep them fast. The pollen grains lay hold at the same moment by their sculpture points and ridges. They ‘apprehend’ each other, and the pollen, with its mysterious quickening power, does the rest. As soon as it is received is sinks down into the innermost depths of the flower’s heart, and starts there the beginning of the new creation.”
“The most wonderful secrets of the plant world hang around the process of fertilization, and the ways in which these springs of the second birth are guarded and set going, but the flower’s simple work is to open and receive…From the very outset of its new birth we see a double process going on in the plant. Within a few hours the throb of new life has spread through the flower, with the first result, that the petals begin to wither… Fertilisation marks the striking of the death blow to all that went before…and simultaneously…in the little flower heart…the seed vessel with its hidden treasure—the ultimate object of this miracle of quickening—begins immediately to form.”
The story goes on from here—too long for this brief discussion. The morale is this: The footprints of God are all through His creation. A picture of the Gospel is embedded in the history of every growing thing, “Because that which is known about God is evident within them (Men who suppress the truth), for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.” Romans 1.19-20
