Ruth

Tomorrow is the home inspection.
The radon testing machine sits in Ray's bedroom.
We haven't been able to open the windows today due to the system, and it was such a gorgeous day outside. So I napped this afternoon, then hauled mulch for the beds around the house. An older woman was walking her shih-tzu up the sidewalk and told me as I unloaded a black garbage bag full of the stuff from the back of my car, "It's going to take a lot of mulch for your house.".."Mm-hmm"..I answered, carrying the huge bag like a child and dumping the thing on the ground, the mulch spilling out.
There were seven bags per trip and four trips were made to and from the city mulch site. The first trip I found a spot and started sorting through the nasty detritus to find just the right mulch. Trucks pulled up across the way and people unloaded their old limbs and yard waste. There was a man talking on a phone next to a truck, leaning on his truck bed and looking into the distance, I glanced at him briefly while doing my work and for some reason, the thought of the biblical Ruth passed through my head, you know, gleaning in the fields. The first bags were finished and sitting in the car and there, at the place where the man in the truck had been, was the most beautiful, dry mulch. Ground finely, just like in the professional beds. So I walked over to it and picked it up, letting it run through my fingers. Then returned to my car and drove home to dump the gathered mulch. Driving back to the city mulch site, there sat the new mulch, untouched! I backed up to the beautiful pile and packed fully the first seven bags. There was another man who pulled up to dump his yard waste, "wow, look at that, and out here in the open. Must have some sort of hazardous chemical in it or something."..."Well if it does, its going in the beds around my house."..."It doesn't look like the city stuff."..."Nope. Smells like cedar, looks like it came from a building site. There were some pieces of slate and a few cigarette butts in it."..and we chatted for awhile, leaning on shovels and rakes. "You're lucky! enjoy!" He said as he drove off and I felt a bit greedy packing the bags as full as possible, yet also thinking that maybe just maybe this was in some way a provision, and anyway there was no one else around packing, just people dumping. And again, I thought about the biblical Ruth, and her work in the fields of Boaz, and how he watched out for her and protected her and provided for her. And there was a peace in that. On the fourth return trip, a young man had just finished dumping a large assortment of leaves on what was left of the beautiful mulch pile. "Beautiful day isn't it?".."Yes it is." I replied as he drove off and I scattered the leaves he had dumped to rake up the small remainder of the mulch.

"..May you be richly rewarded by the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge." Ruth 2:12