Never Bee Without a Cucumber

Strolling through downtown Appleton’s Farmer’s Market on Saturday, my mother and I picked up an interesting piece of advice. It started when we were gazing at some beautiful flowers that were creatively arranged in pots with slices of cucumber in them. As we were mulling over whether they were real cucumbers (and real flowers!), the vendor caught the inquisitive look on my mother’s face. “Is that a real cucumber?” my mom asked. “Why do you have it in there?”

The lady said, “Oh, yes! That is real alright. It’s to keep the bees away. They don’t like the smell of the cucumber. Pickles work the same way.”

Then we watched as a bee came drifting through, lingering slightly by the plant as though sniffing it and then suddenly flying up and away without ever landing. It worked.

We learned from the vendor that the cucumber also works to cover up perfume. If you’re wearing perfume and seem bothered by bees, just rub a little raw cucumber on your wrists to cover the perfume scent and bees will stay away. For natural insect repellent and sunscreen, she said Shea Butter works great - and there are no nasty, cancer-causing side effects as there are from DEET and most commercial sunscreens.

Just as she finished up telling us this, a man walked by with his wife and said, “You were probably just explaining, but why is there a cucumber in your plants?” Haha.

This is what I love about walking…you never know what tips and discoveries you’ll make along the way if you are curious enough to ask "Why?"

Have you learned anything helpful recently?

Brushstroke of the Comforter

“Oh Comforter, To Thee We Cry…”

In the aftermath of recent heartache, loss and an impending move to a new city, this is a scary time of not knowing what lies before me. When hopes and expectations are suddenly dashed, when friends move away, when hard things happen to us, and we don’t have a clue where we’re going or why we’re going there…then every act of kindness received becomes a life raft.

Surely, you've been there before. We've all been. You’re choking for breath. You’re vision is blurry with tears. You can’t walk without feeling like a great burden is pinning your feet down to one place. And you're scared of being alone. It goes on like this until you feel you want to give up; you can’t handle this. You don’t know what to do, or where to go, and you don’t even want to. You want to curl up and sleep for an indefinite amount of time.

And then IT happens. 

You taste it as you bite into a slice of ripe, juicy golden muskmelon. You taste it in the fresh sweetness of a blueberry popping in your mouth.

You feel it in the wind blowing through your window and stirring your hair.

But you fight it, 'cause you don't wanna let go.

You encounter it again in the surprise reunion with an old friend who you haven't talked to in years.

You sense it in a friend's invitation to go out for lunch.

You find it in the form of a chocolate treat left purposefully for you by someone who cares.

You know it in the consoling conversation about how God is at work in your life.

It brushes you softly like a feather on your cheek. It whispers quietly to your soul. It penetrates to your bones.

Eventually, you give in. You give in entirely and embrace the hope of a future. You begin to feel the rush of life again. The mad colors on the canvas begin to take shape under a hand bigger than your own - that of the Mighty Comforter. 

"It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work,
and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.
The mind that is not baffled is not employed.
The impeded stream is the one that sings."
~"The Real Work" by Wendell Berry