I know it’s been a while since our last Hon-E-Mail. Let’s just say it’s been a long hot summer and leave it at that.                

We did want to invite you to our annual Christmas at Honey Rock, Saturday, Dec. 3^rd. 10 am to 3 pm. We’ll have refreshments, gift and decorating ideas, and us. For information call 984-0954. Try to come if you can and bring friends!                

Hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving. We’re fixing a local meal with veggies fresh and preserved from our garden and bread and eggs from last week’s Maryville Farmers Market. We’re also blessed to have Thanksgiving trout from our fisherman friend Tom S.        

In closing we’d like to share this sweet Thanksgiving poem I found tucked away in my files. We hope to see you the 3^rd. Until then enjoy! 

Garden Meditation

                   Let us give thanks for a bounty of people. 

                   For children who are our second planting, and through they grow like weeds and the wind too soon blows them away,

                   may they forgive us our cultivation and fondly remember where their roots are. 

                   Let us give thanks: 

                   For generous friends…with hearts…and smiles as bright as their blossoms; 

                   For feisty friends, as tart as apples; 

                   For continuous friends, who, like scallions and cucumbers, keep reminding us that we’ve had them; 

                   For crotchety friends, sour as rhubarb and as indestructible; 

                   For handsome friends, who are as gorgeous as eggplants and as elegant as a row of corn, and the
                   others, as plain as potatoes and so good for you; 

                   For funny friends, who are as silly as Brussels sprouts and as amusing as Jerusalem artichokes; 

                   And serious friends as unpretentious as cabbages, as subtle as summer squash, as persistent as parsley,

                   as delightful as dill, as endless as zucchini and who, like parsnips, can be counted on to see you through the winter; 

                   For old friends, nodding like sunflowers in the eveningtime and young friends coming on as fast as radishes; 

                   For loving friends, who wind around us like tendrils and hold us, despite our blights, wilts and witherings; 

                   And finally, for those friends now gone, like gardens past that have been harvested, but who fed us in their times that we might have life thereafter.
                  
For all these we give thanks.                                                                                                                                             Rev. Max Coots