Hedge

The windbreak trees here in North Dakota fascinate me.

  Instead of a single row of cedars or desert pine like we see around houses in the tabletop plains of North Texas, there are more rows of trees around farmsteads than I can count.  When we drive close to one, I try to count as we drive by, but it's too fast and there are too many.

 "Onetwothreefourfivesixseveneightnine....and they are out of sight." 

The trees aren't just cedars - they may be cedar, and spruce, and cottonwood, and oak, and maple, and apple, and lilac, and choke cherry.  So what I see that I can't stop on the road for a picture is a several acre farmstead (houses, barns, and silos) with a forest on two, three, or four sides . 

The NDSU agriculture website (click here)

has this to say about farmstead windbreaks:

"Trees are important around homes in our communities to provide

wind protection, shade, fruit, beauty and collect snow.

  In the same way, windbreaks provide these benefits to the farmstead."

And there's a plan for creating a windbreak:

But then, to add to my fascination, I heard these windbreaks referred to as hedge trees and hedge rows.  And where did my brain go?  Straight to Job:

“Does Job fear God for nothing?” Satan replied.  “Have you not put a hedge around him and his household and everything he has? You have blessed the work of his hands, so that his flocks and herds are spread throughout the land." 
(Job 1:9-10)

 I've thought of all the hedges I've prayed around my family. 
They were nicely trimmed short hedges. 
 Chinese Holly bushes or something.
  Well a lot of good that does.

(borrowed photo)

Beginning today I pray for you my family and friends,

a North Dakota Windrow Hedge of Protection,

so that the destructive wind and weather from the enemy of your soul

can't get over, under, or through to you. 

I pray that the angels encamped around your tent

form a hedge and

are of all sizes, linked arm in arm

tall, short, solid, and strong.

"The angel of the LORD encamps around those who fear him,

and he delivers them."

(Psalm 34:7)

¹¹ For he will command his angels concerning you

to guard you in all your ways."

(Psalm 91:11)