Morning Blues

Happiness is breathlessly chasing you. ~Terri Guillemets

I am loving my yogurt with blueberries for breakfast!

We had a rather late freeze that stunted many fruit trees and bushes, but my blueberry bushes still produced pretty well. I planted three some years ago, but the middle one, regardless of what variety I put in that particular place, the bush would last only one season, except for the last one, it lasted two seasons and then died. So, this spring I planted another one with the idea that I would plant two instead of just one so that it is not in that exact spot and since they seem to be slow growing bushes, they are not going to crowd each other very soon.

We have to place bird netting over all of them as the birds go for the berries before they are ripe and are not very considerate about leaving many for us.

Speaking of birds...I am now questioning the term "bluebird of happiness."

I have lived here for 20 years come this September and I have to say that every year is unique with its weather, pests, and animals...and just when I think that I have about seen it all, the Eastern Bluebird comes along to show me something new.

A couple of bluebirds made a nest in our now rarely used basketball hoop stand and so this is the first year that they have been nesting so close to the house. We have enjoyed their beautiful color looking outside of our windows, but then everything changed. For the last three months those seemingly sweet little bluebirds have been terrorizing us! They have been flying into every window of our house and attacking all the chrome and mirrors on our vehicles...and leaving their droppings all around such places.

When it first started, I felt so sorry for them being confused by the reflections. The window that attracted them the most was the one over the kitchen sink, so we placed ribbons on the outside hoping that that would stop trying to fly into it, which could eventually cause themselves brain damage and their own death. They stopped going to that one, but then visited all the others more. I came home from Florida to find my husband's new pickup in the driveway with towels over all the chrome and bags over the mirrors! The next day when I looked at my van, I understood why he did that. Yuk!

I must confess here that I never have been much of a bird lover although I have helped a stunned bird or two in my lifetime. I prefer the birds of prey, humming birds, and birds with lovely melodious songs, especially the mocking bird that has so many different ones. However, for the most part, I am not overly sad when I see my cats come to me with feathers or when I find a dead bird in my front garden in a favorite place where Sharii likes to leave them.

At this point, I think we are running out of easy-to-catch chipmunks living in the ivy so maybe the cats will start back on the harder-to-catch squirrels and birds...and I will not even discuss the rat they did not hunt down that actually made a way into the house and to my pantry earlier this year! I think my tuxedo twins are getting just a bit too comfortable lying around in the shade when they should be alertly on the job.

While the bluebirds are not bringing me happiness, I will be smiling soon as I pick more sweet, ripe blueberries for my yogurt breakfasts with Mishka romping around in the yard!

My Lord, help these poor bluebirds move away to a better place for them and thank you for a bountiful blueberry harvest.

Fighting Weeds to Fighting Infection

A weed is a plant that has mastered every survival skill except for learning how to grow in rows. ~Doug Larson

What happened this week was not in my plans. My plans included repairing and painting the cabinet in the master bathroom, while my husband was gone so he did not have to deal with the disorganization. I could have, should have, and would have had it all done, hopefully, before his return and most things back in place, but that did not happen.

Monday was Independence Day and I woke up to being called to my herb garden in the cool of the morning, although it was not all that cool. There is a spreading, low growing weed that I finally identified as Virginia buttonweed, and Virginia can have it back! I know it looks almost pretty in the picture I choose to post here, but it really is as invasive as mint and harder to get rid of! I have been fighting against this weed for the last few years that makes me unhappy every time I look out the window or water my plants, so I am determined to take out completely this year, but it is a very tough weed to eradicate. It is nearly impossible without tearing up the entire garden covering it for a year or two and then starting over, but even then...?

I would dig it all out and have but it has these runner roots or rhizomes that are three to six inches down, so they are growing even under my stepping stones and borders, and I have found from experience I don't get every bit of them, they come back with a vengeance. I find that the leafy parts pull out easily from the rhizomes so it just grows back. Since I have identified it, I have read that everything I have experienced with this weed is true: Virginia buttonweed can even reproduce from small pieces of the stems or roots. I have had to carefully paint an herbicide on its leaves on the ones in the pathway area were I do not plant the edibles but just pathway fill-in plants that have not completely filled in yet, thanks largely to this weed. That actually worked and they have not come back, as much as I hate using chemicals, between this weed and poison ivy, I have an appreciation of them more now.

I was digging out the beds...again! Then laying down a thick layer of newspaper to cut of their sunlight, even though that only cuts them down in the numbers I see and not their roots so does not seem to kill them off. Moving some plants to other areas just because and planting some that have been sitting in pots for weeks. Of course I only got about a third of the garden done, but it is a very good start.

While I was working in the garden, I noticed that an area on my neck that was a bit sore the day before, which I thought was from lying wrong, was becoming quite sore. Every time I bent over I could feel it and a lymph gland was swollen, but usually these things correct themselves in a day or two and I ignored it because I was gardening! (Yeah, I really like it that much even though the heat of the day approached.) Later we all ate and went to see Independence Day: Resurgence in 3-D.

The neighborhood was filled with fireworks that night. Although less than the night before, it was enough to keep us up later. On the morrow, Tuesday morning, my husband left for the airport to work out of state and I prepared for our errand day, but the Princess had not been able to get to sleep until around 3:00 AM, so she was not getting up even after I woke her twice and then she complained of not feeling well. Then I just gave in and decided that we could try move her piano lesson to another day this week, as it is easier to do now since her teacher has fewer students in the summer.

It was a good thing I did because by noon I had a fever. The soreness in my neck was probably an infected lymph gland and now my immune system was trying to fight the infection full on. The fever battled on for the next two days while I stayed in bed for the most part. The fever was not particularly high but the dizziness was quite disconcerting. I do not think I had an inner ear infection, but because this lymph gland was not draining, I believe the inner ear was also not draining fluid, which added to the dizziness and not quite nausea but certainly not hungry feeling.

Thursday I had no fever and the swelling had gone down, but I still did not feel up to doing much of anything. I still got dizzy when I was up so I canceled the piano lesson. Today I am mostly fine and annoyed that I made no progress on the master bathroom all this week, but I hope to do a few things today. I am thinking of painting a bit of herbicide on that bottonweed and looking forward to welcoming home my husband.

My Lord, thank you for the days of good health so that I can garden, and work my house as I tend to take it for granted.

Dangers Unseen

All of life is the exercise of risk. ~William Sloane Coffin

Half of my backyard is a part of a larger woods. When we first moved here, our wooded area was fairly cleared and I envisioned starting with a small shade garden with ferns, hardy cyclamen, hostas, dead nettle, purple shamrocks, lily of the valley, miniature bleeding hearts, and vinca so that is what I planted. I started with a simple island of three trees. I place stones to make a border all around it. Along one side I cleared a path with stones edging the woods on the other side. The path led to the back where I had leveled a spot for a bench. I also planted English ivy in the woods hoping it would carpet the wooded areas. I envisioned sitting on the bench barely able to see our my house let alone the rest of the neighborhood and communing with my Lord, petting a sleepy cat, and reading books with my young daughter in cool of the shade on hot summer days.

It was all going to be beautiful and serene...then came in reality. Mosquitoes made sitting back there on the bench quite a miserable experience except perhaps on the breeziest of days. Also, smack in the middle between the woods' edge that wrapped around my backyard where it had been flat began to sink. When our house was built, it is a common practice for builders to bury the wood they cleared, which in time rots away and creates a sink hole. Builders are no longer allowed to do this for obvious reasons, thankfully.

Not knowing how big the sink hole was going to become, I mostly left the woods alone. Some of my plants survived and some did not. Vinca jumped the rock border of the island and the English ivy took off towards the yard instead of filling the woods. Last spring I removed all the plants in the back shade garden and brought them to the front shade garden where they can be enjoyed and look lovely. I did this because another undesirable had taken residence in my woods: poison ivy.

I hate to use chemicals so the first time I saw some poison ivy, I pulled it out. Crazy as it may sound, you have to understand that I never had a reaction to poison ivy that was more than a very slight rash after lots of exposure. My aunt's horses used to eat it and I remember even locking my bike up on a tree that had it when I was camping thinking that no one would bother with my bike because of it. It has been that way with most of my family, including my maternal grandmother until one time and then she had a very bad reaction and nearly died. So, my aunt warned me to be careful anyway, because I could have a reaction later on in life...and I did. It was not until I moved to Georgia and was pulling out poison ivy that I had a reaction.

After that I was more careful, but for the last six summers I have suffered with poison ivy rashes—from a cat!

I get it from both the Mitten Kittens actually, but it is Little Miss Midnight that gives it to me the most. How do I know? Well, Midnight likes being held and when I pick her up, she immediately perches her head over my left shoulder. I am recovering from a poison ivy rash that covered my throat up to my jaw on the left side and a little rather itchy blister in the middle of my right palm with a smaller one on the side of one finger also on the right hand that holds her while she happily views the world as I walk with her. It would really be so nice if there was some warning that she has this invisible urushiol oil on her fur before I touch her. Of course, Midnight is innocently unaware that when she hunts in the woods that she ends up with urushiol oil on her fur. It does not a thing to her, even when she licks it off.

Sharii does not long tolerate being held, but he loves to wrap himself around legs purring so loudly that it sounds painful. I may have gotten mere touches of the volatile oil from him. My daughter thought they were bug bites but there were not many biting bugs out when I got them so I am thinking that they were not.

I have avoided poison ivy completely and burned it out when I see creeping out of the woods, but I just have not been diligent with killing it. Actually, since I alone was doing it, I kind of gave up. However, you cannot turn your back on poison ivy and wish it away. It has entrenched itself and, camouflaged by English ivy, it climbed trees unfettered. Sad really, because it is quite beautiful particularly in autumn and its hairy vines on the trees add interest in the winter.

Last year, I removed all the plants I wanted to keep from the backyard to wage a war on the poison ivy, even if it meant I would chemically burn out every plant in the woods area! I started by spraying every leaf of poison ivy I could see on the edge of the woods and when they died back I moved in deeper. The problem was another vine was draped from tree to tree so that making my way back carefully was not easy, but this spring before the poison ivy leaves were out, my husband and I cut down what we now know were native muscadine vines. My husband loves muscadine wine and preserves, but since I have not seen any grapes, I am assuming we only have a male vine.

Now I am able to get through our little woods to spray down all the ivy and let me tell you that it is far worse than I thought, but it is dying down. I go out about once a week looking for healthy leaves to spray. Yeah, I am that determined!

However, clearing my yard of the stuff will not cure my problem. Sharii has claimed our property as his territory and sticks around the house, but even so our cats do not stay in the boundaries of your yard, particularly Midnight. She is the smallest cat I have ever had, half the size and weight of Sharii, who tends to get rough. He will be wrapping himself around your legs for a few minutes before he decides it is time to grab and bite them. Although I see them sleep near each other in the afternoon and tag team a mouse hunt, Midnight generally does not like Sharii's rough ways and usually takes off for neighboring areas for most of the day, unless I am outside working so I can protect her.

That being said, Midnight often goes toward the neighbor's yard and to the corner lot they own that was never cleared. The woods there is a great place to hide and hunt...and it is drenched in poison ivy! There is no escaping the cats bringing it to me. Every time I spend a few minutes with them, I have to carefully change my clothes and wash off with Fels Naptha soap. Not fun!

After this bout with the poison ivy, I am just as determined to desensitize to it as I am to burn it out of my yard. I found a homeopathic remedy that is a very low potency, 4x, that I will be taking every day until the poison ivy dies. It is said that Indians did not get poison ivy because they ate it. Well, I am not that brave, but I have had wonderful results with homeopathics so this is worth a try. Besides, how can I resist cuddling with little Midnight!

My Lord, may this remedy work so that I can stop trying to avoid my cats.

How Does My Garden Grow - Part 3

I like gardening - it's a place where I find myself when I need to lose myself. ~Alice Sebold

I have quite a few areas left to work on. The upper front garden, as I mentioned in my last post, is not done, but this is the one I focused on next, the blueberry bush garden which is on the south side and gets the most sun of all the gardens. I took this picture late in the day. I can only work in this garden early in the morning or late in the day to avoid sunburns and the heat. You can see I have the back stuff under the mulch that helps keeps the weeds under control, but nature finds a way, if you turn your back on it! Actually, nearly all the garden areas looked similar to this until I worked them, I was just too ashamed to even take the pictures to show the transformation. I decided that I should show at a least one...but it still makes me cringe.

This garden has been edged with a variegated liriope that is the spreading rather than clumping type, which means that it spreads just like the grass that has infiltrated it. Such a messy garden! I decided to take it all out and maybe edge with a clumping liriope, separating the plants I have on hand in hopes that they will tolerate the sunlight.

Now in the next picture below, you will see, at the front of this garden, the stump of a ornamental cherry tree that we cut down because it was diseased. We used several treatments to kill the stump and roots, but as diseased as it was, the thing took years to completely die. After it finally did, fire ants decided that they would like to make a home around it. I would get rid of one batch and another would move in! So, there the fire-ant-wooing stump sat in the garden that was larger than I needed it to be and I would like to make smaller with the edge going right where the stump was and I decided enough was enough with the ants--I needed to remove the stump! I treated the ant hill and I talked about the stump with my husband the night before. He had been doing his own projects and so the gardening has been mine alone, even the Princess would not work in the heat.

Here is my garden in the embarrassing stage:

The next morning, it was cloudy and a bit cooler, and the ant hill was dead. My husband was working on the van because it was making a strange sound he could not find (which took most of the day for the mechanic to find the source but only ended up costing us a bit over $300 thankfully), so when I came outside to work in the garden and found the axe stuck in the stump, I thought he put it there for me to use...but my Prince Charming saw me pitifully hacking away and yelled, "That's not for you. Do you want to be able to go tubing tomorrow?" Okay, so why was it left there all by itself? (By the way, our friends changed the tubing trip to a swimming one at a park because of a church meeting and public school starting the next day, but we took our new tubes bought at a close-out store with us.) May I say that my husband is impressive when he is using an axe! The stump was out in less  than 30 minutes.

On my part, I first dug out about a third of liriope stuffed their bareroots in four plastic pots with a sign "Free Plants" by the road. Someone did take them. Good luck with them, I say. I still had more than I could ever want, but I am thankful for when I planted them, I only had a few and separated them a few times to fill in. They tolerated the four-year drought and poor soil when I lost so many plants, but at this point I have tired of their meandering ways and friendliness with the grass and weeds.

What is it with grass, anyway? It grows where you don't want it and doesn't grow where you do. This garden has a rock edging, but not enough to go all the way around, which is one of the reasons I wanted to make it smaller, so that meant I would have to move all the rock edging. I found grass had forged its way not just between the rocks but under them also, but then so had the liriope in the opposite direction. To avoid using chemicals, I ended up taking apart the entire garden, digging up all the roots under the old black sheeting, removing a rosemary bush that I never really liked there, laying down new black sheeting, and refitting the rocks with black sheets with an extra line of black sheeting under them also. If you have ever done a rock edge like this one, so that the rocks fit together with the smallest of gaps, you know what a job it is. It took me several mornings to do just this one patch of ground and the weather was particularly hot during this time even in the early morning.

Still ugly in the above picture, but now weed and grass free! I got all the rocks how I wanted them, but there is still a gap in the front as I knew there would be, so I had a plan. I divided and planted some of the liriope that clumps and makes a nice border as a test to see if they can take the sun, before I edge the entire garden area with them. The garden bed is a bit smaller, using less mulch, looking a bit sparse with just three blueberry bushes currently--well, the jury is still out about the middle one making it. I have also used this garden for planting watermelons and pumpkins as it does not bother me if the vines over flow but this year I knew I had to rework the entire thing so I did not plant any vines.

So I have done about all I am going to do with the gardens for now...maybe...well, there is always something to do and I want to finish planting the liriope edging behind the rocks on the garden on the left in this picture, but I had to wait until today because I treated yet another fire ant hill and I should be able to work the area now.

Then I need switch gears. I already put some clothing in our first consignment sale which I will be picking up the leftovers today and listing what is left for the next one this week. I am going to be consignment sale shopping one day this week with my friend and her daughter's former teacher, a fellow church member who has taken the year off for maternity purposes. I also need to begin planning our homeschool curriculum and I do have some other things I am excited about that I will be posting here soon.

~ My Lord, thank you for a summer of gardening, for the break I so much needed. Now that I am refreshed emotionally, my Lord, help me to bring my focus on educating my child.~

How Does My Garden Grow - Part 2

I grow plants for many reasons: to please my eye or to please my soul, to challenge the elements or to challenge my patience, for novelty or for nostalgia, but mostly for the joy in seeing them grow. ~David Hobson

As you will see, my herb garden in the back was not the only big change. My husband and I decided to kill off all the ivy in our backyard because entwined among the lovely English Ivy is Poison Ivy. I have tried to kill off the later without harming the former for a couple of years, while trying to avoid the itchy rashes. I have to confess that I never really had much of a reaction to Poison Ivy until we moved to Georgia and now the times I get it the most is from the outside cats. Poison Ivy does not bother animals, just people. I wish I had some goats or horses, as they can eat it. Anyway, it just has to go!

So, to prepare for the burnout and clearing of the wooded areas, I moved all my shade loving plants that had survived the vinca take-over in my back shade garden to the front. I also cleared out the bushes. which were more of a clumping plant than bush, that the former owners left under the deck stairs that I never warmed up to and all the weeds to plant clippings of the vinca since it is a filling vine that does not climb. While doing all this I made sure that the soil was mounded around the foundation so that the water would drain away from the house. We do not have any foundation problems but the gutter system is inadequate in certain areas which we will address when the house gets resided and we replace the gutter system adding a few more downspouts and water barrels.

I moved some hostas that were doing not really growing from the front garden, probably too shady, so that I could complete the border with the variegated type, and planted them in the back around the crepe myrtle tree. This area will all green up over a few months even in the winter.

Here are some views of the front gardens. (Normally there is not a wheelbarrow in the background.)

Coming up the walk from the driveway there is variegated vinca on the left, which is still not completely filled in; they would have liked more rain than we have been getting. I love ferns, but the few I had were hidden in the back shade garden. I began wondering why I never thought about ferns in the front. I decided that the front garden is shady enough to put the shade loving plants where I can really enjoy their beauty, so on the left between the liriope and the rocks are Lady ferns, and they are loving where they are. The edging plants above the rocks are variegated hostas that divided from a few that I had that covered about a fourth of the way previously and spread them out so that they cover the entire top edge...a least to the place where the sun would be too much for them. I still have some work to do behind the hostas in the upper tier, but that may not get done until next spring when I can see where the tulips and daffodils are and move them closer to the outer edge and allow the azaleas to grow around the trunk of the oak tree.

On the right lowest level on the right as you look up the walk is the English Ivy clippings from the back yard that I just planted. My black-eyed Susans are very hardy and often have to be clipped back, but the cats like to hide and nap in them. Between them and the house I transplanted some large orange lillies that were further down the walk and used to crowd around a half-barrel planter that I removed--well, I moved it and it fell apart so... it is now gone.

In the background, closer to the house is where I like to plant cucumber vines, just because I can keep my eye on them easier and they do not get as stressed out from the sun. In front of them, I planted tiara hostas, my favorite hosta, rescued from the back shade garden. I barely found them straggled in among the vinca. This may not be the final place for them, it is just I had nothing to put there and I needed to put them somewhere. Hopefully, they will thrive.

The middle tier on the right used to have a bush that we took out a couple of years ago so it has been basically neglected until this year. I separated some of the Liriope that edges the left side to make an edging on the right as well and then filled that area with the silvery wormwood, purple sweet potato vine, Sweet Annie at top and two highly contrasting annuals. This is how it looked when I first planted it.

This is how it looks now, just a few weeks later. I am hoping the wormwood survives the winter.

Back to the left side...
 

Are you seeing my half barrel fountain? I would like to get something a bit more decorative, but the most important part is hearing it as you can up the walk or I come out the door. It has a calming babble and cooling effect that invites me into the gardens...and then to gardening.

 This is the view from the other side.

How inviting is this? Lilies of the valley line the right of the stepping stones. I love their scent in the spring!

I also found what I think is a wild ginger with very pretty heart-shaped leaves outside of the shade garden all by itself, not the typical ginger I have seen around here. I decided I would move it also, because it was just pretty.

I dug around for the shamrock rhizomes I had planted in the shade garden. The green ones had died out and I only saw a few purple about ground, which have a delicate pink flower when they bloom, but I found plenty of the rhizomes underneath so I moved them to the front yard also. They are definitely liking the new spot among Japanese painted ferns, asparagus ferns (not really a fern but adds a delicate texture), and a bleeding heart plant that also never thrived in the back shade garden.

As I looked over my "new" garden I noticed that I had most used the colors of greens with varying textures and purples, my very favorite garden colors. Maybe that is why I smile when I walk out the front door now!

~ Thank you, my Lord, for the beauty I was able to bring into my life through my gardens and for the ability to work hard, building muscle while being productive. ~

How My Garden Grows - Part 1

Gardening is a matter of your enthusiasm holding up until your back gets used to it. ~Author Unknown

I have not posted for nearly two months nor have I read other blogs either. I have missed the blogging world, but honestly I have very little time to do it and when I may have time, I have no energy. I am practically falling asleep as I am typing now, and reading...I just cannot do much of it without nodding off within a few minutes. Several things contributed to this change in my life, which I will need to list perhaps over several posts, but if I could sum up the main reason for this abnormal exhaustion in one word, it would be gardening.

I was spiritually wrestling over my church about the whole Encounter thing and then I felt the Lord was urging me to do some serious gardening during this summer and working on the inside our house is going to follow in the cooler months and during days of bad weather. He was telling me that I am an organizer. I like to organize. I like it when things are organized. I like changing my environment to fit my lifestyle. For instance, I have enjoyed my kitchen so much more after I organized it in February and March last year. It still fits our lifestyle and is convenient.

Suddenly, I stopped seeing my gardens as weed-infested, over-whelming tasks and began to see them as things that I could organize. I just could not wait to get working on them every morning I got up so I would work the most during the cool of the day. I like gardening, but not the heat and all the bug bites I now have and the way I garden is pretty hard work: I use our bunny berry compost teaming with worms, which I worked in to the soil of my gardens. I wish I could use a tiller at times, but in most of my gardens are trees with roots, so I do much of it the old fashion way...good exercise. We have such a large compost pile at the beginning of the summer, but now it is rather small. Almost all of my yard is in the shade for a large portion of the day, different times of shade based on the location, of course, so I have been good at avoiding sunburns by working mostly in the shade although I still tanned a bit.

I have been enjoying organizing my gardens very much. As you can see by the following pictures.

I completely revamped my herb garden, however many seeds did not cooperate by spouting, sadly, so there is more mulch than greens. This time I added some decorative plants that are not herbs along the walkway too. It makes me smile to look at my herb garden.

The tuxedo cat in left corner is Sharii, with the nickname Sharii Purr (sha REE per) because he purrs so loudly it sounds painful. All our nicknames are longer than the name of the pet...it is just something we do.

 

Even though it is sparse presently, I am just happy it is not full of weeds and out of control mints anymore.
 

All the mints are contained! I gave up on ever containing mountain mint and pulled it all out. On the left in a terra cotta pot is peppermint. In the broken fountain is chocolate peppermint, which drapes nicely. On the right in a watering can with a broken bottom is spearmint. Behind the statue is fennel and rue, left to right.

Yes, I moved the cat nip also, but the cats rarely bother it. They just like hanging in the herb garden.

Although I do think Midnight (nicknamed Little Miss Midnight), is a bit unhappy that the chocolate mint is now in one of her favorite napping places.

We use rain caught in barrels to water most of our plants by hand, which is why we have had so many watering cans rusting out. I usually get plastic ones now. In the pot is parsley and behind it is dill.

I have been spending some time with God while I have been gardening. In my mind, I had been making things impossible for me to do...many things. Gardening has put things in a better perspective for me. My husband says it is an unending job. While that is true, there is a point that it is easier to maintain and look beautiful.

~ Thank you, my Lord, for spending time with me and helping me to see no task is impossible as long as I am willing to do it. Thank you, also, for the joy You have given in doing the task and blessing of the restorative sleep each night. ~

Whirlwinds

To really ask is to open the door to the whirlwind. The answer may annihilate the question and the questioner. ~Anne Rice

Over a month has past and I have so much to blog about, so very much, but most of it will not be more than a mere mention because when I am doing so many things about which I could and should write, I rarely have the time or drive to do so. Blogging is an indulgence, not a necessity, but it is still work and I just have not been up to working it in between everything else of late.

My husband applied for the manager position since his manager quit and we prayed and prayed and prayed and had others pray also, but it looks as if he will not be promoted. In part because they have needed at least five more service engineers in the field, and another just quit to for the IT job he has a degree in now, so they cannot possible spare my husband. Also, the interviewer in the UK was surprised asking with all his managerial experience why he had not put in for a manager position before and the answer was that he is doing so now and previously the information about the manager position being available was not even known to the service engineers until they hired the first one from outside the company, the woman who had just quit a few months ago. So...at least now they know my husband is far more qualified to do the jobs that he was looked over for the last two positions they opened up as well as they one open now. Maybe they will keep him in mind for better positions in the future as they have more restructuring plans to implement, even though they have not shared what they might be.

In mid April, my daughter went on the Science Expedition with about 200 other kids. She and my husband, who was chaperoning a group of boys, got up at 3:30 in the morning on Monday to be sure to get there by 5:00 as it is an hour drive in low traffic. I did not see them until Friday night at around 7:30 pm. The Princess had a blast, of course, and only called me once after her father reminded her a few times--the few times he saw her, that is. (That child never really had separation anxiety.) It was a success even though schedules for outdoor activities had to be rearranged due to rain and--believe it or not--another late hard freeze! Spring certainly was full of surprises this year.

The Princess turned thirteen at the end of April. She is now officially the teenager she has been practicing to be of the last year. Her attitude had not improved much after the science expedition, which is also much like a Christian youth camp or retreat. However, she was rather tired for a few days afterward. We were hoping she would want to emulate the attitude of being helpful, friendly, and generally happy that the upper classmen Servant Leaders are trained to be as they were there to be help with the middle school students. However, just this week, we have seen a long and strong glimpse of the child we have always known her to be, so she is still in there, peeking out past the teenage fog now and then, at least that is our continued hope.

We were all to go to a Rush Ministries Christian concert for the first weekend of May along with another family, but I again came down with a stay-in-bed kind of cold-flu type of thing--so odd for me to get them at all, let alone two in the span of a few months apart. Anyway, I was home trying to rest in between coughing while the Princess and my husband enjoyed Jesus Culture, Hillsong and others! They left on Friday evening and returned on Sunday afternoon.

So, I was kind of in a funk about...well, life in general. I decided that because we could not plant earlier in the spring, due to the hard freezes that I would either not really have enough time to work my gardens much this spring with homeschooling, or I could do something I have always wanted to do but never have: I would take off two weeks of formal homeschooling and the Princess would learn about horticulture. When I began homeschooling and planned to do so year around, it was my plan to also take breaks in the fall and spring, besides the long Christmas break we usually take, but I just never did it unless we had to go somewhere or do something away from home. I have enjoyed working outside in the sunshine after being stuck inside due to illness. We discussed the importance of breaking up and enriching Georgia's red clay naturally, how our compost pile of bunny berries with live worms not only make the red clay a dark brown, but add the nutrients for the plants, and how to use diatomaceous earth responsibly to kill off pests while trying not to harm honey bees. She was given the assignment of doing a two-page report on the Dust Bowl and the importance of top soil, which is due tomorrow.

I was feeling pretty good about how much we were accomplishing clearing, transplanting, and seeding in the gardens, until...I saw the little tube of mud going up the foundation on the south side: termites. The Princess told me later on she had seen something on the ceiling in the back corner of the craft room that had "been there for weeks." (We immediately had a little discussion about informing the homeowners, namely her father and I, when she sees something that should not be there like that. I mean really, mud-cicles, as she called them stuck to the ceiling...? And let's not tell Mama for a few weeks...?) I found out these are called drop tubes: yeah, definitely termites. I convinced myself by that time that we would be spending at least $2,500 to get rid of them and repair the damage...maybe even more. I did not sleep that night and had to take several Valerian capsules in the morning to get through our Wednesday with driving the Princess to science class and piano plus do all my shopping calmly. And, I finally got real in that it was a good thing to get rid of the wood eating pests and that the damage was on the south side of the house as that the worse of the siding damage and would be replaced first if we cannot do the entire house at once as we would like to do.

We rushed home Wednesday night because the phone company was coming to check on wires that used to be buried but were exposed due to some erosion and most likely not being buried deep enough to begin with when the house was built. The wires in the front yard were the TV cable wires which mostly were orange but spliced with black apparently so I thought they were the phone wires. The orange cables were not really buried at all, probably just had the sod laid over them because they were cut while mowing several times even once right after we moved here. There was another thicker black wire that was the phone line and that is also our internet exposed in the backyard. We decided the placement of it could be covered over and protected in a flower bed for now, but if we see another area of exposure, we would put in an order to rewire, which will cost us nothing, but every service with a line in the ground (water, electricity, gas) has to come out and mark the yard before they can bury the new phone wire.

Today, Thursday, the termite salesman did the inspection and I braced myself for the fee. It turns out that it was not going to cost us as much as I feared. Although the termites have been there "quite a while" which translates as a few years, the damage they might have done would probably not be worth tearing our basement ceiling apart to find. When we begin the process of replacing the siding, we will take a good look at the area then, but most likely the damage is not threatening to the integrity of the house. So, we will now just pay for the spot treatment and then a yearly fee for the baiting system. Whew! I will now sleep better, even without Valerian.

Why I have not been and might not be blogging much is because this year I am focusing strongly on the house, outside and inside...in between homeschooling, of course.

~ My Lord, thank you for the blessings You give us that we cannot see, that are even disappointing at one time, but open us to better ones in the future. Thank you, my Lord, for being my Lord and comforting me through the whirlwinds of this life. ~

We Went to the Homeschool Expo - Part 2

A true great Man will neither trample on a Worm, nor sneak to an Emperor. ~Benjamin Franklin

We went to the Homeschool Expo on Friday and…my daughter came home with a new instrument, my husband came home with a new hobby, and I came home broke having spent way, way, way over (yes, three times over) my homeschool budget and I had not bought the one thing I think I would like to get for this year.

My Husband's New Hobby

My husband ran across a booth where they sold a kit with books and instructions to make a worm farm with totes, as a science project for homeschooling children. I think my husband spent as much or more time at that booth as the violin one, although he did not spend any money there, thankfully. He did want to buy a book, but they did not sell single books, except through their website.

You may wonder what is the attraction about worms for us. I have known that that worm and rabbit farming go together well, just not the details as to why. My husband, however, has done more research and before Saturday's end we had started our worm farm. There were two major things I did not know about worms.

One thing is that red wigglers are eat more and reproduce faster than other varieties of earthworms, but the thicker skinned earthworms last longer as fish bait.

The second is that worm "castings" enrich soil--"castings," isn't that kind of a snobbish term for poop from such a lowly creature as a worm? Anyway, what I did not know is that you can lure the worms to one side of your farming area, pour rain water through the vacant part, let it drain and use that enriched water, also called "worm tea," as a ground fertilizer and on plants as a pest deterrent, particularly for aphids, like the ones that just finished off one of my cucumber plants.

All our banana peels and other rotten organic foods will be given to our worms and there will be no smell! When the number of red wigglers swell, we will redesign the rabbit cage area so that we are farming worms directly under the lower tier of cages so there should be no more bunny waste to clean and also no more smell there as well.

It is an interesting ecological cycle. The worms can be spread into my gardens to help aerate them and their leached castings can fertilize them also so I can grow more food for the rabbits and, in turn, the rabbits cast off food for the worms. Eventually, I am hoping that the rabbits will further offset the food we need for the cats and dog, but we need to expand a bit before we are there. It could be that our animal food budget could be greatly reduced this time next year, but it does require more work, especially in the way of gardening. Still, bales of hay are cheaper than dog and cat food.

The other problem is that our dog had to be switched to a raw food diet to rid her of a Candida problem. German Shepherds just do better with a raw food diet, but it is an expensive diet if one is buying all the meat, as we have mostly been. Increasing the rabbit production could be very helpful in keeping her in the healthiest state and reducing feed costs.

~ My Lord, may this be a solution for us toward being more independent homesteading within the confines of our subdivision and make better use of our property. ~

I Should...Maybe I Should Not

Taking 'naps' sounds so childish...I prefer to call them 'horizontal life pauses.' ~Unknown

My aunt often tells me about how she used to nap when she was a young child. My grandmother would tell her it was time to nap, but my aunt would just keep doing whatever it was she was doing until she was so tired she could barely stand up. Then she would run to the couch and as soon as her head hit the pillow, she was sound asleep.

As an adult, my aunt would nap on Sunday afternoons now and then, but for the most part she has always been the kind of woman who could out work most anyone and keep going until she practically falls flat in complete exhaustion. Of course, now she may seem to be making up time and would prefer to nap most days, but then she is approaching 80 years of age.

Oddly, I seem to be changing to become more like her in the last few years. I did not really notice it. The change was kind of subtle as the Princess and I started working with the horses, but in the last few days as I have been gardening, I realize that I am doing more physical labor now than I have for years and I just keep pushing, perhaps because I have not yet fallen flat. Yet, just a little break can make me keenly aware of how close I might be to that point though.

Yesterday evening it began to rain. This meant all my gardening plans for today would be postponed. It rained throughout the night and this morning too, so I awoke with resolve to switch gears, doing more work inside, even a full day of lessons. I knew I was overly tired the last few days, but I just kept on going until the rain began. Then I began to really realize how tired I have been and also how little patience I have for a child who is only putting a half effort into her chores and lessons today.

I should get more done today, but my fatigued body in response to the damp, cool air is pleading for me to wrap up in a warm comforter and lie down for a just a half an hour or so, with emphasis on the "or so."

I usually fight such rare urges as I am not one to nap much, but I think I will just give in to this one today. Ah, yes, I need to just run to the couch and catch a few winks....zzzz. (Did I make it?)

~ My Lord, thank you for times of rest. There is nothing so satisfying as getting some rest when I need it most. ~

Gardening to Restore Sense...er, Senses

The greatest gift of the garden is the restoration of the five senses. ~Hanna Rion

Let me describe for you my five restored senses.

Smell: I love the smell of my rosemary bush as I brushed against it in preparing the southern most garden bed we now call the blueberry garden. The soil was very dry as I worked it, so instead of that freshly turned soil smell, I just got dust up my nose. Then bunny manure was added, not exactly a pleasant smell. Strange how something that smells bad makes things grow and smell good. Thankfully, my jasmine is just beginning to bloom so I can smell it on the north side of the house as I go through the gate to the backyard, but I am too busy on the other side to venture there much.

Sight: I have seen too much wrong with my gardens from several years of neglect, between droughts and lack of funds...and perhaps lack of desire to work them too. Now I am trying to make them more lovely to my eyes...when I get the dust back out of them, that is. So far, I have cleared and placed mulch around the Floribunda pink rose bushes and the azaleas in upper front garden. I finished the blueberry garden today, splitting apart variegated liriope to make a border all the way around and planting water melon seeds in the wide spaces between the young blueberry bushes. It looks so much better, so the neighbors tell me as they stop by while walking dogs. Sigh, I keep seeing those baby oak trees everywhere, though!

Hearing: I hear the occasional calls of red shouldered hawks, geese, an numerous birds of which are nameless to me. So many warnings noises from the birds and squirrels; they seem to have much to say when the mitten kittens are in the gardens with me. I hear my cats purring as they try to distract me from my tasks. I hear my newspapers I planned to use as a mat to keep down weeds persuaded by the wind to run off with him instead, but I expected as much for newspapers are fickled.

Taste: I taste salty sweat and dust mostly as I work, washed down with an occasional cooling iced tea. I crave chocolate as I usually do when doing so much physical labor...something I have been doing nearly every day in the last week--more than a week actually!

Feeling: Oh, I definitely have restored my feeling! I feel the grit of earth in my shoes and on my arms. I feel tired down to my bones, with aches and pains that thankfully diminish as I rest at night, which is a surprise to me! I awake a bit stiff with reluctant muscles but as soon as I am back in the garden, I think only on completing the job. I feel tired every night by 8:00 PM, and I feel that 5:30 AM comes too soon and I am so sleepy that spending ten minutes sitting is all my body needs as permission to fall asleep. I feel mosquito bites and itchy rashes from unknown sources, perhaps poison ivy from the kittens playing in the wooded areas. I feel time goes faster in the gardens and I feel it will never be done.

Still, if I had not else to do all the day, I should enjoy gardening more.

~ My Lord, I would have loved to live in Your garden of Eden! Oh, yes, indeed! ~

Blueberries, Baby Oaks, and Beets

Gardening requires lots of water - most of it in the form of perspiration. ~Lou Erickson

I never should bring my husband with me to a nursery. I planned to get a few organic herbs and tomato plants on Saturday, but he eyed the blueberry bushes. The greenhouse employee assured us that blueberries need at least three bushes with at least one being a different variety. If we had not read some on blueberries previously, it could have sounded like a lame sales pitch. After spending over twice what I had planned, we now have a three blueberries bushes all of differing variety. Today my husband had to take out two large woody bushes and move a scotch broom to place the blueberry bushes in the best setting for them...so he has paid for them in labor. With a daughter who loves blueberries in her morning smoothie and the price of organic blueberries being so high, I suppose those bushes could pay for themselves within the year, but that depends on how many the birds leave us.

Which brings up the subject of the baby oaks. Not only are our outdoor cats, the mitten kittens, doing a wonderful job catching mice, but they also are doing a very good job of keeping the squirrels at bay--too very good a job and when I write they, I mean mostly Sharii, the tom. I have watched, with fascination, Sharii wind his way up a tree mirroring a squirrel, who worked hard at staying on the opposite side of the trunk, wondering just how high the cat would go after his prize. Because of his prowess, acorns from autumn and winter were not cleaned up by the squirrels, so we have baby oak trees all over our yard and in the gardens. Most of the garden soil is loose, so they come up pretty easily, but the yard is more work. I have been plucking out baby oaks all week, particularly the last three days as we are preparing our front gardens. The good news is that I am fairly confident that my feline tuxedo twins will also keep squirrels from the peach tree, so we may actually get peaches this year. I am hoping they will do the same for the blueberry bushes with the birds.

As to the beets, I had some vegetables actually mature during the winter because it was so mild. We had a few hard freezes but they did not last long and I did not pull out all the root vegetables last fall, because some did not do well in the warmer autumn. After my daughter, pestered me about pulling some of the beets, my husband cooked them up for dinner. She was not as enthusiastic about the taste, but they were actually quite good.

You may remember that my husband was in the UK last week. He came home Friday and was given Monday and Tuesday off this week. We went to a sunrise Resurrection Day service with two other small churches, one Lutheran and the other Seventh Day Baptist, and also had breakfast at the Lutheran church. Later we went on to our own church to have our service and a dedication of the three crosses that are now permanently erected in front of our church in hopes that people passing will now recognize the house as a church.

We did not color eggs, hunt eggs, or do anything "Easter," except have some candy. (Chocolate is a necessity that does not require a holiday to be enjoyed though.) The Princess did not even ask if we would do those things this year. The boy next door thought it was awful, but she is growing up, becoming more aware of spiritual matters, and I think she is ready to completely shun the pagan-based traditions. Next year I am hoping we will try to have the Passover Seder.

Tomorrow we have the horse barn and a 4-H meeting in the evening. My husband was going with us, but he decided that he needs to burn all oak leaves and acorns we cleared from the gardens. He also needs to get more mulch...lots more mulch.

~ My Lord, as tired as I am, I am so very thankful that we did so much today. There was a time I thought I would not be able to do such laborious work as gardening with my back and yet I have had no back pain at all these last few days. Thank you so much, my Lord ~

Taking a Day Off

Start every day off with a smile and get it over with.
~W. C. Fields

I soooooooooooooo needed this time off!

Tuesday mornings in the summer are our free movie times at the nearest theater, but this week the Princess and I agreed that Diary of a Wimpy Kid did not sound that appealing to us...maybe because she is homeschooled and it much of it seemed to be schoolyard situations. So, we had planned to go to another theater just a bit further to see a movie for just $1. I had the name of the movie, The Tale of Despereaux, and the place marked on my calendar, but I did not look at it as I should have, because if I had I would not have went to the nearest one. Then I could not remember how to get the one to which we needed to go and took the long way there. I amazed that we made it just at 10:00 AM but I was certain the theater would be too full to find a decent seat. However, I was more than pleasantly surprised this was not the case. We had no problem finding a seat and the movie started a few minutes late so we did not miss anything!

Now this is the part I found the most interesting of that entire morning, since feeding the rabbits in the morning and running behind time, I had been singing and humming parts of "It Is Well with My Soul" by Horatio G. Spafford. Now I have a personal expectation of myself to be not only prepared and organized but to arrive where I need to go on time or, in this case, well ahead of time. When I fail myself on this and start watching the clock, I get rather frazzled and bad tempered, but there was that song and somehow I realized it will just be what it will be, but I can just decide to enjoy it as it is or make myself and my daughter miserable trying to get there. I must have apologized to her five times thinking the theater would be too full to get in by the time we would arrive...but I held tightly to the peace in my heart.

After the movie, we went to a Goodwill store across the road. Sarah found a little book about letters from pets to God that her piano teacher had shown her months ago, I found a children's devotional we can use, and practically brand new, white, short heel shoes...very good shoes with supportive padding inside to make them quite comfortable! Not only that but they were half the normal price, so we left paying just over $5.

Then we went to eat out at Chik-fil-A, which I very rarely do...eat out at all, I mean. We split a sandwich, fries, and milkshake, as it is just enough for the two of us. Afterward we went to K-mart because I would like to get some denim capris having only one pair, not so decent, left. Instead I left with two pairs of plain jeans on clearance for $10 each and three gourmet lollipops: strawberry cheesecake, pina colada, and candy apple.

We stopped at the farmer's market on the way home, but the beekeepers were not there and honey was the only thing I really wanted to get. Most of the people there this time had items that we are getting from our own garden.

Speaking of my garden...our cucumbers love the climate and the place I have them very much, apparently. I was concerned they would not get enough sun, but the leaves are huge and dark green. I planted two pickle-sized and one regular, which are grabbing the wire supports as they grow. We have begun harvesting the small ones and had one in our salads for dinner. I do not particularly like cucumbers, but either these are tastier than the ones I have had or there is just something mentally different about growing our own. We also have grape tomatoes and cucumbers and lettuce ready for our salad tomorrow night too. Some things did not take off as well as we hoped, so I need to experiment a bit, and I did not plant as much as I wanted, but we have a good start and are learning as we go.

This morning I did some heavy work cleaning the rabbitry. We needed to dump the manure out of the trash can we had been keeping it and start a compost pile, but my husband is again away. So, I do not have it where I would prefer to be, but I was not ready to clear that edge of the woods today. We can always take from the one and add to the other once we get the area prepared.

I am planning to rest today. Yes, I am! I decided to take two weeks off of homeschooling and planned to do so major cleaning, one room at a time from top to bottom. I did get the master bath done on Monday. I was hoping to do more but people actually called me, which is so rare that I think it might have been a sign from God, and when I called my aunt earlier she actually was not busy so she could talk awhile, again very rare! On that day I thought about my purpose; the whole reason I took two weeks off was to switch gears, change my routine, and do some things I cannot really do when we are homeschooling, which would include relaxing. Yes, I am giving myself permission to relax today. So, I am not pushing myself on this, but I do want to get every room in the house done. I have to say that washing down the woodwork and doors did make the bathroom look so much better, but what it really needs is painting. (Have you ever notice that the room you just cleaned is the one in which you want to spend the most time?) I may get to the guest bath later today or just the hallway although it would be really nice to get both done. I would like to get the bedroom done before my husband returns on Saturday night.

Tonight the church has a game night with finger food, but I have so much extra stuff to do in the evenings when my husband is away that I often can barely get the Princess to bed before 10:00 on a regular night, let alone a night of games and food, and tomorrow is our errand day. Sometimes it seems to take so much more effort to do something fun, I just may pass on this one.

~ My Lord, thank you for the peace you gave me when I normally would not have it. Thank you for helping to see that I need to allow myself to relax now and then. ~

My Master Gardener

I always think of my sins when I weed. They grow apace in the same way and are harder still to get rid of. ~Helena Rutherfurd Ely, A Woman's Hardy Garden, 1903

I know that most of my problems are ones that I allowed to be problems. For instance, the poison ivy growing absolutely wild entwined with my lovely patch of English ivy, my back yard of moss and weeds instead of grass, my one garden bed of filled with dandelions, and all those sprouts of a diseased tree determined to resurrect itself on roots that should have died months ago after we cut it down and treated the stump.

In our backyard we have a kind of sink hole. The kind that is caused when the builder clears the land and buries all the wood debris. Eventually, it rots away and the ground sinks. Plus, we have exposed wires that were meant to be buried, because they just buried them by placing sod over them and now, because of the drought killing off the grass and soil erosion when it does rain, some wires can be seen on top of the ground. We have such huge areas that need our attention and lots of hard, hard work.

I have worked hard in small areas taking one garden bed or more often a portion of a garden bed at a time. Although the ones I have done look nice, to keep them nice takes work and then there is another one to tackle. The poison ivy entwined with my lovely patch of English ivy...well, we might just have to give up on cutting and treating it a bit at a time, because the stuff is so resilient with such a strong defense against human intervention, and just kill off everything in the area, saving some English ivy to start over.

I have been hand watering the food and herb gardens with rain water caught in our barrels, but it really needs to rain again. The grass is thinning and browning among growing bare dirt patches in the front yard. Yesterday the wind kicked up and we hoped, but no rain fell.

A few days ago, I found myself sitting down on the shaded landing of our back stairway to rest and cool off in the quiet of nature. My husband did such a lovely job on the deck and I really do like that landing he added, but that deck will need to be varnished again soon too. Everything we have requires work to maintain, get into shape, or just to keep from falling apart. And, even when you do all those things, something will break, or a weed will grow where you do not want it, or things will rot. It is neverending!

There I was crying softly all alone, feeling sorry for myself, and thinking everything was dust in the wind. What will it matter if we clean up all the yards and gardens, my Lord? Weeds will encroach again. Bugs will eat the plants. It may take years to clear the wooded area of the poison ivy, if we ever can. It is all futile. It has no lasting value at all.

I feel God has been telling me to do with what we have and I have been trying to do just that and be content with the work I must do, but I allowed myself to explore the depths of my heart to reveal what has value to me right now. Not much of anything...well, there are some things. Maybe I was just...tired. I looked over to my herb garden, now looking so well cared for, and thought about how the things that make me happiest are things I work to produce. While they are not everlasting, they are pleasing for a time. I can now, at least for this time, enjoy the appearance of my herb garden. God must feel the same about us at times...perhaps those times are too short-lived for Him as well.

He works on us, has His angels help us, and for a time we might meet His expectations of us. He may even sit back and enjoy watching us as we grow for a time, but just like my garden, He must attend to us repeatedly because some are not as resistant to the pests that steal away from our spiritual vitality, weeds crowd in, and we wilt without His Light and Water of Life. He does not give up, but must continually be the Master Gardener.

So, I continue watering, weeding, and working my gardens....

~ My Lord, thank you for never giving up on me and thank you for this encouraging thought gift that I will keep close to my heart while I work in my gardens. ~

Gardening at the Speed of Bunny Berries!

Gardening requires lots of water - most of it in the form of perspiration. ~Lou Erickson

Okay, it probably will not take off as one of those catchy phrases (unless you have a rabbitry) but "gardening at the speed of bunny berries" has true meaning for me. Averaging ten kits per kindle rotating with two does is a lot of poop! Mixed in with that is some hay that falls down while they are eating it and we have the most excellent mixture for enriching Georgia clay. I mean, it turns compacted red clay to a rich brown workable soil with a bit of tilling and plants thrive like I never have had plants thrive before. It almost looks as if I have the green thumb. Some gardeners keep a few rabbits just for their berries that can be used right away, no aging required!

Now the problem with our property is that we had four years of drought and towards the end of that, the entire Atlanta area was in serious trouble with the amount of available drinking water. We were advised to not just conserve but to not use any water for outdoor use. People conserved water so well in my county that we almost did not have enough water used to properly treat the sewage. Apparently, it takes a certain amount of water to treat used water.

You knew who was conserving the most because their lawns looked terrible and ours was in that category. My gardens just died away. Some of the drought resistant and hardier plants made it through, but my gardens looked like something you would expect to see in the dessert. When the drought broke in the fall of 2009, it really broke and we had the worst flooding in the area. Since then rain levels have been normal. I supposed I should have tried to do something last year with the lawn and gardens because, unfortunately, grass and garden plants do not recuperate without some help as fast as weeds, poison ivy, and opportunistic herbs that jumped their confinement can seed and grow. The other factors were funds, time, and energy. It takes far more of my energy to deal with weeds because I try not to use chemicals.

This year I decided that I may not have pretty flowers where I would prefer, but I do have garden beds that were worked up well over the years right next to the house, so why not use them for food gardens instead of trying to start food gardens somewhere in the back yard and still have these beds looking pitiful. Hmmm! I keep hearing from the Lord that I should make do with what we have. And instead of trying to look at all the garden beds at once or even a whole garden bed, both which overwhelm me, why not work with one small patch at a time and even do something like square foot gardening since we have this unlimited supply of natural ready-to-go fertilizer.

And I have been spending most of my weekends and the cool mornings and evenings outside taming nature's wild greens. This is now how the front right side looks.

We just tilled and mixed in our secret soil enrichment formula so this bed is ready to plant, which I will be doing part of today and probably tomorrow mostly likely.

This is lettuce off the ground.

Here is one area that looks luscious now but looked horrible last year. I was about to give up on it because it was the one garden bed where the grass was growing more than the lovely variegated vinca. The purple clematis was not doing that well either. Is it not odd that the grass will not grow where it should, but becomes an aggressive weed where you do not want it! I gives me a sense of pride that all that weeding I did last year helped the vinca win out this year. I suppose I should think about painting that mailbox, eh? You can see in the background that my daughter has created her own little garden box and to the right (outside of the picture) is her "playhouse" which made up of a few branches and lots of imagination under a tree she climbs.

We have four rain barrels catching the rain from our roof via the gutters but two need some repair as the overflow hosing has slipped and they are only holding half of what they should. Thursday there is a possibility of rain and I am so hoping it does because lugging water cans is getting to be much with my expanding gardens and I also want to catch this precious resource that falls freely from the heavens (I have told my daughter rain is angel's tears of joy, which is why it makes things grow so well) so I plan to fix those barrels by then, hopefully.

~ My Lord, please bless our little gardens.~

Change of Life

For everything you have missed, you have gained something else, and for everything you gain, you lose something else. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Fasting always gives me a different perspective about things and this last one helped me to see that the things I really want to do at this time of my life, even those things for my Lord, I was not putting much real effort into making them happen. It was like I have been waiting for something—perhaps for things to be handed to me?—but really I just needed to do give up some things and start doing the others.

While many people make resolutions at the beginning of each year, I usually do not. Instead, I tend decide what I would like to change at certain stages of my life. For instance, at forty years old, I was pregnant with our one and only child. I obviously had no particular goals other than enjoying her babyhood and my motherhood. That was a very welcomed, big change!

Yesterday I turned fifty. After having so many birthdays, the fanfare is not necessary for me. It is just another day, marking another year. I suppose it is an accomplishment I have lived this long, but it seems that many others do so what it so significant in that? You know, we have so many other things of greater interest to me that I had forgotten until my daughter asked me the date so she could put it on her math paper. It was not a special day, really. We all did the normal things. I prepared outgrown clothes for a consignment sale and my husband worked at the office until it was bedtime for the Princess. Although my husband did present me with brownies on his arrival—I do have a thing for brownies and I am pretty easy to please that way!

My husband and I both have felt a leading to become self-sufficient. This feels so much like when we sold our lovely conversion van and bought the mini-van. We did not know it then, but within a month he lost his job and that worked out perfectly to help us financially get through that time. So, I am a little anxious about what this might mean about our future, but I also know that God's leading on that made it all work out, so this will work out as well.

You see, when my husband and I moved here all we wanted was a house we could afford having come from a mobile home and we prayed for the house and area for two years, then on our tenth year anniversary, he was told either he was fired tomorrow or he would agree to moved to an undermanned city within a month. You can imagine that our anniversary dinner was not exactly as romantic and carefree as we hoped it would be, but we finally recognized it as the answer to our prayers.

Life is not easy all the time, but I believe that God does grant us the things we really want. (Or is it that He places the desire in us the things He wishes to give? Always boggles my mind that.) My husband and I have wanted some land, not a lot of land, but about ten acres to have a sufficient lifestyle and the money is just not here. We would like to have a large garden, meat and milking goats, chickens or ducks for eggs mostly, and at least one horse for the Princess.

We have been desiring those things, but for the last few years we have wondering if we getting to the age that it would not be feasible. Still, I have been praying about this, the Lord has been telling me to do with what we have. Not just be happy where we are, but more of work with what we have as far as we are able. It has been very strong all this summer. To be honest, why would He provide us with more when we have not been making use of what He has given us so far?

Now that the Princess is a pretty responsible nine-year-old and able to help with so many things and the Lord seems to be guiding us, my husband and I have felt that it is time to make a few changes. We will be using our yard more for food gardens, but we do also need a couple of barn cats to keep the squirrels from stealing so much. We did not even get one ripe peach off our tree this year and they are just as bad with tomatoes! I am praying that the Lord will provide the right cats, good hunters who will bond with us well and that our dog will stop chasing cats, or at least will not chase these cats. Starting with kittens might be the best way to go, but we are waiting for the Lord to provide them. Shelters here have $100 or more adoption fees per cat!

Since we cannot raise our own livestock, my husband decided that it was time he did something he has always wanted to do. He will be hunting for deer. He hardly ever had weekends off before and the hunters he knew never had the same weekends off he did. All that has changed and this year land to lease for hunting became available quite late before the season, so he got a few friends together to form a club and won the bid on a piece of land that has good deer activity. Actually, they raised the hunting limits this year because the deer population is quite high. There are no guarantees with hunting, but I believe the Lord has blessed this as well.

We have our work cut out for us in the months ahead and for me it just all seems to fall into place. Since the fast—I just have to say again what a blessing that was to us personally—my husband and I have a dream and a united purpose, we have stronger, hardier bodies to do the extra labor (Such a huge difference there, I cannot tell you!), and many other resources that just seem to be making it happen within our means, even though we are stretched pretty thin financially right now. My Lord is so good!

~ My Lord, thank you for providing what we desire and reminding us that we must work with what we have and giving us the blessing of health to be able to do it all. ~

Mosquito Magnet

Undoubtedly, mosquitoes have preferences. People do differ, and in any group of ten, one person will be fed on more than others. ~Jerry Butler

Mosquitoes! You can place me in a room with a hundred other people and release just one mosquito. It will most likely make a bee-line for me and bite me ten times, before it even notices there are a hundred other people in the room!

I have several reminders of this all over my legs since we began doing some serious gardening, particularly last weekend. I took no notice of the mosquitoes with my preoccupation of wrestling with some impressively invasive roots and vines that have been creeping out of the woods and claiming more of our lawn along the fence. I have no idea what the name of one of these towering weeds is but it can grow taller than I am and spread roots in all directions fifteen feet and more away but close to the surface so that they can grow more from those roots and this plant is not a vine! Fortunately, it breaks up the soil and pulls up easily, even in Georgia's clay, and that is about the only thing I can say good about it. So intend was I on removing these plants that mosquito bites happened without me noticing, until I was showering off the day's work and then the itchy bumps could not be ignored.

It is a very familiar sensation. When I was a child we lived very close to a lake. Had it not been for the blessing of winter, I don't think I would ever have enjoyed even one minute without itching. Throughout the summer my legs and arms were dotted so that no two-inch circle was without a scab. Now, yet again, it is the season for the little pests to breed and feed!

I keep hoping to see mosquitoes on the endangered species list. Would anyone mourn their possible loss? I rarely question why God made many of the creatures He did—I mean, as much as I hate to admit it even cockroaches seem to have a benefit to the ecology that I can understand, although I am sure I would not miss them either—but I just don't get the benefit of mosquitoes. Certainly fish, dragonflies, birds, and bats can find plenty of other pests to eat, I would think.

Oh, just in case you are also a mosquito magnet, as I am, the best treatment for the bites I have found is simply hydrogen peroxide. It neutralizes the itch and I have seen it do the same for allergic reactions in others. We keep ours handy in a spray bottle and rub it onto the skin. I have yet to find a repellent (that I would actually consider putting on my skin) that really works for me. Suggestions are appreciated.

~ My Lord, of all the things in Your creation, I do not understand why these little bloodsuckers were necessary, but I trust that, even if I don't understand the reason, You made them for some good purpose. All I ask is, if there are mosquitoes in heaven, that they will not be as irritating as they are here. ~

What?

If there is anything we wish to change in the child, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could better be changed in ourselves.
~Carl Gustav Jung

Today was just one of those days! First, I just have to say that my daughter was easy during the "why" stage. You know that time a young child asks why about everything? My daughter was inquisitive but also would accept "I will tell about that when your older" when it was appropriate. Now we are into the "what" stage.

If you are a parent, you know what the "what" stage is...or you most certainly will! It is the questioning reply to every question you ask. What? It is the word that is shot back at you when you call your child's name. What? When you are just looking at your child. What? It is the automatic, meaningless, mindless word that children say in any situation at any time and more often every situation all the time. What? Sometimes it is said drawn out: wha-at? Sometimes it is short and strong like an accented staccato note (for those who know a bit about music): WHAT! Sometimes it is a whine: what? Sometimes it is a dare with a glare: what! One little word expressed so many different ways! Obviously, by the time a child reaches that age of nine, she is highly accomplished in all the ways of saying "what", even so she will continue to practice it daily with diligence.

I also need to remind my dear readers that I have been busy for the last three weekends and the reason I have not been posting is because I am just emotionally and mentality spent. This weekend I was determined to spend some time in my herb garden in the morning before the afternoon sun hit it so today's gardening added the remaining physical aspect to my exhaustion.

This is when my child seems to get the best of me. At first, she was helpful and sweet. She, cheerfully and eagerly, cut back some plants as I asked her to do. (I so love my Princess when she is being a princess.) Then, as the sun approached bringing heat to add to my discomfort, as gardening is enjoyable but never comfortable, she began complaining and making little arguments. (She is so much like me!) Finally, I told her to put away her things, including her bike, and just go inside. She went for the bike first, touched it, and whined about it burning her.

This is the place where my patience wears thin, where my idealistic imaginings of a mother serenely playing with dirt and greenery while her daughter happily explores nature nearby is shattered by crashing reality that the child does not have that same imagery in her mind, not at all. I told her, at that point, as I wiped away droplets of hot sweat and stretching out that familiar ache in my legs and back, to just go in the house. I worked a bit longer, probably fifteen minutes, just long enough to shake off the disruptive happenings and go back into my own little happy place before I heard a light tapping on the dining room window from above. I looked up to see my daughter making some kind of motions, but because of the glare on the window I could not see what message she was signing to me, so I motioned for her to come out.

Thinking we both had cooled down, although the heat was bearing down as the shadow I treasured to protect me from the brunt of the sun dwindled noticeably with each moment, and that I could still restore some remnant of my sweet illusion, we talked a bit. With my regained patience, I calmly talked to her as a mother does with a child, who needs just a reminder of how to behave better in such situations. I listened to her verbalize her thoughts and explained how she could have done things differently, better. It started well, but about ten minutes later we were right back to that place she wanted to take me and I did not want to go. Again, complaining about her burning hot bike and, again, not putting it away as I had told her to do, I, again, told her to go back into the house.

Now I am drenched with the heat as the sunlight invades my working area. My muscles are warning me that the more I wanted to do is too much. I am disgusted with myself for how little I had done, but I realize that part of my child's problem might be that it is past lunch time. Back down I go to finish up at least this one last area. The aroma of jasmine blooming on my fence is soothing. I hear the familiar persuasions of a red shouldered hawk to his mate perched on more distant tree. Most of the weeds come up easily as this soil has been well worked over the years. This patch of my garden is looking rather tidy. Oh, that sweet scent of jasmine I love so much...tap, tap, tap.

I look up again at the dining room window wondering why the child does not just come out the door onto the deck and talk to me. I already had explained earlier that I could not see what she was signing because of the glare, yet there she is, again, making hand motions. Realizing the irony of this situation, I stand up and with that "what" shrug and mouth the word clearly. Being that she is well acquainted with the many ways to communicate "what," she could not claim misunderstanding. Still, she stays put in the dining room with a window between us while I, like a boiling tea kettle, scream "WHAT!" followed by "Come out here!" loud enough that the neighbors three houses down are then coming out. Still behind the window in the cool of the house, she makes more hand motions, as if she cannot hear me. Perhaps she could not, which would support my thoughts that it be far more logical for her to come out the door. I then quite exaggeratedly motion for her to come outside, which she finally does and what do you think the first word out of her mouth is...?

What?

My Lord, I thank you for this memory, for I know there will be a time when my daughter with have her fill of "what" in her own life and I will be giggling as I recall this day.