MILO and Road Repair

 

Miles and Miles of Milo and Road Repair!!

I first met Milo when Tom’s Dad bought a farmstead in Eastern Colorado.  I believe this was before he drilled wells and installed pivot sprinklers.  It must be a great dry land crop as there are literally miles and miles of milo in Kansas, and not many sprinklers to be seen.  Of course the humidity in Kansas is higher than eastern Colorado.  Milo is also know as sorghum, broomcorn, great millet,  depending on where in the world you are trying to grow this grass – which is used as feed in its grain form.  According to Wikipedia,  Sorghum is the world’s  5^th most important crop AFTER  rice, wheat, maize, and barley.   Sweet sorghums are cultivars that are primarily grown for forage, syrup production, and ethanol and are taller than those grown for grain.  Miles and miles of milo here in rural Kansas!

 

Since we travel local roads rather than the high speed interstates,  we see a lot of road work being done this summer.   Road work requires diverting traffic to protect the workers and also the HEAVY EQUIPMENT putting down new asphalt, building new bridges, widening existing roads,  utility workers,  or even the crews filling potholes and resealing the cracks.   Some of the many TRAFFIC CONTROL measures we have noted to keep traffic moving while road or utility improvements are made:

               1 – Narrow the traffic to a single lane (minus the two feet where the cones are IN YOUR LANE forcing you to straddle the thump thump strips.)   Fortunately, in this one instance on the interstate,  they had paved the shoulder!

               2 – “Follow me” vehicle  - works well if you realize the long wait is allowing that vehicle to return with the long line of vehicles who were waiting at the other end of the one lane roadway.

               3  -- a portable stoplight seems to be gaining in popularity.  These seem to be either set on a timer or controlled by the traffic flow.

               4 – DETOUR – we had to have our trailer roof replaced when a “NOT HELPFUL” person removed the turn sign meant to signal the completion of the detour.  Since this was in a strange-to-us city we ended up using a residential street with low hanging trees!!  NOT enough UPS trucks delivering in that two block stretch.  We are now VERY aware of low hanging trees, especially those trees with any dead branches!

               5 – the single person standing in the hot sun with the STOP / SLOW sign depending on the radio or phone in his/her ear to the turn the sign once they get the word from their counterpart at the other end of the project.  They cannot be paying them enough to stand in the hot sun all day THIS SUMMER!!

You all be safe on our roads;  enjoy each day, and pray for all the FARMERS and LONG HAUL TRUCKERS who provide the food, meds, and household goods which we all need and enjoy.

GOD's Rewrites

 

We read and meditate on a couple of devotional tomes each morning.  This morning one was referring to Luke 12:22-34 where Jesus speaks about the crows and the crops of Daffodils, with the gist being “WHY WORRY?!”

The writer of the devotional was a puzzler and she and her husband were enjoying piecing a large puzzle UNTIL they got to the all green section!  After hours, or days, of frustration, she went on line to a puzzle group ( I would never have considered that there WAS such a thing as a “puzzle group!”) and asked for suggestions as to the best way to get past this frustration.   The advice that stuck with her was “one piece at a time!”

That thought just couldn’t have come at a better time – we were putting our floor repair PUZZLE back together that day!!  We had noticed a spongy spot in the bathroom of our HOME on WHEELS and knowing that the sewer tanks were directly below that area, we knew that it needed replaced, renovated, or strengthened.  We had cut the vinyl next to the edges of the room and the length - plus several inches - of the strip of stainless steel that we had obtained.  Prepared the steel by sanding the burrs off the edges to avoid damaging the vinyl, feathered the steel to wood space as much as possible under the conditions!   So next step was somehow FITTING THE PIECES OF THE PUZZLE back together in the confining space – a one butt area between the toilet hole and the shower, and without damaging the existing vinyl OR the pieces.  Sure enough the advice of the puzzler and the scripture – one piece at a time, or one day at a time, was the Word for our day!   

I thanked GOD for the advice we needed by asking how many ANGELS He needed to rewrite devotional messages to fit the needs of so many readers in so many places?  That particular publication is printed in 34 different languages and read by millions of people - all puzzling over THEIR situations in countries all over this globe!  Mind boggling or thought provoking?!

I am happy to tell you that the project of our day went really well;  it did require two sets of eyes, four hands, and GOD’s peace and provision even in a small space on a hot day!  One piece of vinyl at a time!