There is a park across the street from us which serves many housing communities in the area. Some of the trees there are beautiful even when they are not blooming.
The area used to be part of Heritage USA a Christian theme park which fell apart some decades ago. Although we knew nothing about that park when we moved here many of the people we now know were associated with it in some way.
The blossoms on a particular kind of tree in the park symbolize the area for me. I think the tree is a kind of magnolia, but I don’t know. I just walk through the park.
I think this is the blossom of a kind of magnolia tree.
Another view of the blossom.
And this is what happens to it after it finishes blooming.
One of the nice things about limericks is that they’re short. By the time you realize that the one you’re reading was not worth reading, it’s too late.
Below are four more limericks with two interspersed photos.
I am grateful to Esther Chilton for her weekly prompts, Laughing Along With A Limerick.
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There once was a witch and a snitch. We weren’t sure though which one was the witch. Perhaps neither. Who knows? Although either one shows: got a snitch, want a witch, then just switch. Prompt Word “snitch”, May 5, 2025
Intracoastal Waterway
There’s a beep in my brain going peep. It’s annoying. I’d better count sheep. With that beep in my head there’s now sheep in my bed. It’s no wonder I can’t get to sleep. Prompt Word “beep”, April 28, 2025
There once was a knave in a cave, in a cave since it rhymes well with knave. The word ‘knave’ I must use, not the word I would choose, but like Dave in the cave I’ll be brave. Prompt Word “knave”, April 21, 2026
Intracoastal Waterway
How I grouse and I grumble! It’s grim. As the cat’s getting fatter, I’m slim. When I’m small, I’d be tall. Should I rise, then I’d fall. When it’s bright, the light’s suddenly dim. Prompt Word “grim”, April 7, 2025
We are back in South Carolina. As I was putting mulch around some bushes I noticed the fossils in a bit of mudrock we brought back from a property we once owned on Green Bay in Wisconsin. That rock (along with the mulch) are shown in the photo above.
Ten years ago when I found the stone I tried to identify the fossils1 in it using a field guide. The field guide said that they were between 300 to 400 million years old (assuming I remember what it said correctly and matched what was in the book with what was in my hand).
I was impressed, but I was also disappointed that they weren’t 600 million years old, or older. I kept looking for more of those stones.
Over the past ten years I smartened up. I realized that given erosion rates all of the stuff I had in my hand would have eroded away2 long before it reached anywhere near 300 million years.
Today, I can tell you how old that stone is to within about 10 years, but you need to understand something about fossils first.
Fossils don’t form from dead stuff falling to the ground and being slowly buried over millennia. Dead stuff falling to the ground quickly decays. They have to die rapidly with a heavy weight pressing them down so they do not decompose. That occurs when heavy sediment carried by flooding waters provides the weight to press the plants and animals to the ground.
You would apply the same process to a leaf you wanted to preserve. You would pick it fresh and place it between paper with many books piled on top of it. When it dried out, you would have a nice, flat leaf, not a curled up piece of decaying leaf mold.
So, when in the history of humanity did such a flooding occur so that you could expect to find fossils all over the world? Think. The only time such flooding occurred on a global scale was the flood recorded in Genesis 6-9 and echoed through many legends.
That allows me to date the stone that I now have in my garden.
Given the biblical chronology that Henry B. Smith, Jr from Associates for Biblical Research provided3, the flood could be dated to 3298 BC. Now there is some wiggle-room here due to when in the year births occurred in the Genesis 5 and 11 chronologies, but I suspect that wiggle-room could be reduced to plus or minus 10 years.
You might object that what we read in Genesis are just stories. They are stories, but the important question is this: Are they TRUE stories? If you do not want to believe they are true, to the extent that archeologists can align those stories with historical events to that extent you might want to seriously reconsider any disbelief. This is why Christian archeologists try to align those dates with historical evidence so that the only ignorance that remains is willful ignorance.
So, how old is that stone?
It is, given today’s year of 2025 and subtracting one year since there is no 0 year in the Gregorian calendar, 3298 + 2025 – 1 = 5322 years old plus or minus those 10 years.
That is far less than the 300,000,000 years which the field guide wanted me to believe, but a far more reasonable number given erosion rates. That stone had already suffered much erosion damage when I found it.
And it is continuing to be eroded away every year I leave it unprotected in my garden, but it is not rare. Fossils like the one I have are all over the world because sedimentation layers are all over the world as one would expect given a catastrophic, global flooding less than 5,400 years ago.
The “ungodly men” are those who “willingly are ignorant”. They are not blindly ignorant, a class I would put myself in on many issues. They are liars.
I think some of those fossils are crinoids. Wikipedia says: “In 2012, three geologists reported they had isolated complex organic molecules from 340-million-year-old (Mississippian) fossils of multiple species of crinoids.” That there are complex organic molecules at all in there should raise a red flag that the millions of years are wrong. ↩︎
I’ve heard that a uniformitarian erosion rate would push all of the continents into the ocean in 50 million years. The problem with erosion is that it doesn’t all happen uniformly. If you have a house on a cliff near the water, you are likely very aware of the effects of erosion. ↩︎
One can find videos and other information about the controversy over the Genesis 5 and 11 chronologies at the Associates for Biblical Research site. There’s a controversy because the Septuagint and the Masoretic manuscripts have different, but not randomly different, dates. They are not unintentional scribal errors, but deliberate distortions of the original. I get the 3298 BC date for the flood (and 5554 BC date for creation) from Henry B. Smith, Jr’s article at the 2018 International Conference on Creationism. The 5554 BC date puts the ministry of Jesus in the 6th millennium when the Messiah was expected to come. ↩︎
The devil tempted George to curse the idiots around him, to just lay into them with full force. However, George couldn’t see what good that would do, so – since the devil reminded him of them – he blessed them instead.
Annoyed by George’s disobedience – not that George owed the devil any obedience whatsoever – the devil then reminded him that his silly blessings amounted to a hill of beans on the commodity market of prayers, because everyone knew those idiots weren’t going to change no matter how nice he was to them.
Don’t forget, George, that it is up to them to decide if they want to change, not you which was the only observation the devil made that George could agree with.
Regardless, those blessings were a win-win-win for George.
If nothing happened, as the devil predicted, those George blessed would remain good examples to point out of bad behavior, but if something unexpected happened – something admittedly miraculous in their cases – they would become an awesome fount of blessings for everyone around them and yet no matter what they did by blessing them George at least did what he was told to do: bless, and curse not.
Forgive? Because? Because. Because! His love will be and always was and even now in all He does His love has overcome.
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Ronovan Hestor offers the inspiration “survive” for this week’s Ovi Poetry Challenge. To survive in style you have to forgive. Or, put it this way, if you should happen to survive without His love, what good is it?
Romans 8:38-39 KJV – 38 For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, 39 Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
From the lyrics: I know who I am cause I know who You are.
Poetry, Short Prose and Walking 