Summering and 1000 gifts

 We have been so busy, which means that this blog has not been :)

I have been picking at the little garden space of mine, picking and buying from others, and keeping my hands busy with the work of preserving and filling my shelves to feed us through the winter. Laughing at the fact that the main thing I have been preserving so far is pickles, but my little family of 5 can go through pickles like nobody's business, and even the large amount we end up with probably won't even last us all through winter.

I am half-way through a month-long process of juice fasting and detoxing, and I am finding that I have been drawing inward, quiet except when necessary, detoxing my mind along with my body. I have been considering for some time Ann Voskamp's dare to live joyfully, and with the beginning of August I am going to jump in. In choosing to live thankfully, I am choosing joy over everything else. I will choose thankfulness over downheartedness, joy over worry, love over fear. Some I will share in this space, all I will keep in my own list, and will encourage my littles and my family to do the same.

I am thankful today that finally, finally, we have had some answers regarding my children's individual medical issues. Finally, after so much waiting, there has been a "yes" to our questions, rather than no after no after no. They have not been easy answers, but at least they are answers that move us forward.
I am thankful that Jesus continues to mold and shape me, to use me in spite of myself, even in ways that I may never know.
I am thankful that God never leaves us alone on this path we are traveling, my husband and I, and that His plans are always greater than our own.

Thank YOU for joining me here, sitting down for a visit, enjoying some time together :)

The marriage garden

I was hunched down, the sun hot on my back, picking at the little garden weeds to get them out of there before they became a big problem. I glanced over my little garden, ripe with possibility in new growth. I thought about what it will look like in another several weeks compared to now, and then at the end of the summer in all it's fullness, spent of all it's offerings. How will my tending to it compare then to now?

The answer came quick, knowledge gleaned from seasons past. In a few weeks, in the hot middle of summer, and in the coolness of Fall, my tending to this garden will be much the same. I will pull the weeds before they become too big to handle. I will surround my tender vegetables with plants that will attract bugs that are beneficial to the veggies. I will quickly get rid of bugs that will destroy my veggies. I will water it. I will prune it. I will fill it with nourishment from grass cuttings and kitchen scraps.

The fact that the plants and flowers get older and more mature doesn't mean that they become immune to disease and death. In fact, the very thing that will bring disease and death is neglect from me. So I will water even when I don't feel like watering. I will not despair after a particularly hot day leaves things wilty, I will just add a little more watering. I will pull the weeds even though it is hard, hot work, and I will do it before they become big with deep roots. I will destroy any thing that poses a threat to the growth of my precious garden. And if for some reason the weeds do get big and deep, or a particular plant seems to be struggling, I will do what is necessary to fix it.

 And when I say, as I often do, that marriage is like a garden, this is exactly what I am talking about. No marriage, whether new or old, is immune to disease. No marriage can go without daily watering, nourishing, weeding, and pruning for long before it becomes overgrown and diseased. Every marriage, whether new or old, experiences really hot days where they are left feeling wilted. Every marriage benefits from having other couples around who are for their marriage and seek to encourage in that area. Every marriage, when properly tended to, yields fruit and blessing to everyone around them. Because just like a garden, the very thing that will bring disease and death to a marriage is neglect. And just like a garden, there will be weeds that pop up and threaten your marriage.

So I will daily seek to water and tend to the fertile ground of my marriage. And I will trust that the fruit that is produced will be a blessing to everyone around us.

And  I encourage you to do the same :) You, your marriage, your spouse, your children, and the people around you will notice, and will be blessed.
 

Veggies

There are a lot of things growing in my veggie garden, as well. There are quite a few little peppers. I don't know how long it will be until they are fire engine red.





Then there are the cucumbers. This one here has had a few bites taken out already, it appears. I have already picked one and sliced it up and soaked it in vinegar. I had the whole thing eaten by the next morning. Yum-O.
















And then there is my sole surviving pumpkin. It looks to about be ready for picking. The plant is yellowing and dying back. It turned into a good sized sucker. I look forward to seeing how it tastes!

Flower garden

Here are some pictures of my flowers in full bloom. I have my sunflowers from Libby's spring birthday party. I had set the sunflower seeds in a bowl and each participant got to plant some to take home. When the party was over, Scott was helping me clean up outside and he just tossed the rest of the seeds in the flower bed beside the picnic table. He picked up the bowl of leftover dirt and asked me what to do with it, and I said, "I guess you should put it over top of the sunflowers that you just planted." For whatever reason, he didn't realize that those were real sunflowers.





Then we have the yellow Mum that grew back by itself from last Fall. I had set the three dead Mums behind the house last winter and never got around to doing anything with them. Then I noticed this spring that the one started to get green again. So here it is, July, and I have a fully blooming Mum. (I actually have a big pot of Pansies that did the very same thing. I guess I benefit from being too lazy to clean out pots of old dead flowers.)









Next we have the Galartia that is just ginormous. I transplanted a small bit of it last summer from my mom's house, and it got huge. Beautiful fallish oranges and yellows.









And finally is my cone flower (Echinacea). I love the color of these, as they throw their arms back and reach their nose to Heaven.










What do you have blooming in your yard?

Let's ID some bugs, shall we?

Here are some of the bugs that I got during my last pest pick-up. I just bit the bullet, donned a glove, and knocked these guys to their death. Now I need a little help figuring out what they are. I know the "pretty bug" in the middle is a Japanese Beetle, and boy are they fast. Fortunately the ones that ran.. er.. flew.. away have not come back yet. The smaller guys with the spots on them are the one that like the squashes, right? They were on my pumpkin plant (which, by the way, only has that one big pumpkin on it, because any smaller ones that start to grow get eaten by something...bummer). The one I need help with is the one that looks like a ladybug but is bigger and orange. You may have to click on the picture to see them better. They are orange, with orange legs and head, and have black spots on them, not red with black spots, legs, and head like ladybugs. Are they some sort of lady bug that I haven't seen before? They looked like they were eating the leaves and flowers that they were on. I only got the two that I saw right away in case I actually want them there. I know the squash type bugs have the same coloring, but they are more long and narrow, as opposed to these being short and round. Alright, any thoughts?

More garden thoughts

Here are a few things that I discovered in my garden today. The picture on the top is of my poor cucumbers. This is after I dug up the potatos that were hogging their space, so hopefully with a little room to breathe they will survive. The second picture is of my biggest suprise. I still have carrots! I thought that all but the two that are hiding in my marigolds (right and down)got eaten, but there they were, trying their best to do what they were put in the ground to do. The carrots that somehow got in between the marigolds are doing great. I just hope they don't taste like marigold. Between the marigold carrots and the mysterious potato plant that is growing right in the middle of my garden, I swear I'm not going to plant at sunset again.


More to come, including garden bugs and...wait for it...

I have pumpkins!!

Garden updates

Libby and I went out and did some much needed renovating in the garden this morning. Since we have been sick the last several days (and plus I was out of commission a few days before that because my back started acting up), I haven't been out there in a while. The potatos have just gone everywhere, because I didn't know that I needed to continue to hill them as they got bigger. The cucumber is barely making it because the potatos are suffocating it. Some of the potato plants just look awful because of some kind of disease or something. So, work needed done.


The top picture is the garden before any work was done. The second picture is of the aweful state of some of the potato plants. What I did was dug up a lot of the potatos and actually pulled several of the plants themselves out of the garden to make more room.




This, my friends, is what happens when you don't continue to hill your potato plants as they grow. They just fall all over the place, with not a care in the world about what they cover up. They're just tired of trying to hold their own weight against all of the wind and rain.

Libby had a great time helping me pull weeds and pull potatos out of the ground.

Edited to add: That isn't just a random trash can in the middle of our yard. It's where I keep my compost.

Pumpkin pumpkin everywhere

Remember when I said before that a good thing to remember about gardening is to not compost your Halloween (or any) pumpkin? Well, here's why. I have been composting since we moved into our house a little over a year ago in preparation for this year's garden. After Halloween last year, we threw our pumpkin in the compost bin mostly just to get it out of the way. So, about a week after I planted my garden, I noticed little plants starting to pop up everywhere, even in places where I didn't plant anything. Long story short, I had pumpkins growing EVERYWHERE!! Those seeds overwintered in the bin, and took root after I tilled the compost into the soil. I have pulled up at least 40 pumpkin plants, and I left one in. See how it is taking up so much space, and it's starting to go down over the little hill. I almost left a total of three plants in, but I'm glad I changed my mind! Boy, and you thought cucumbers take over. This second picture is the pumpkin plant flowering. I don't know exactly how it works (maybe someone can fill me in) but I know it flowers so it can be 'fertilized' to bear the fruit, but does each flower turn into a pumpkin? If so, I will have enough pumpkins for the whole street, plus some for canning! Pumpkin pie here I come. Yum.

About me

Well, I guess I should say a little bit about myself in case someone who doesn't know me comes across my blog. My name is Megan, and I am married to my high school sweetheart and the love of my life, Scott. We have two beautiful children, Libby who just turned 2 in April, and Hudson who just turned 5 months. I am a stay-at-home mommy and I take pride in my job of managing our home and raising our babies. I run most of the full gammut of natural parenting, including homebirthing, extended nursing, bed sharing, cloth diapering, and babywearing. Throughout the life of this blog, those will probably be a lot of what is talked about. I also am trying my hand at gardening for the first time this year, and I am totally loving it. Speaking of which, here it is..



There's lots to talk about there, as well, in due time (for example, why you shouldn't put your Halloween pumpkin, or any pumpkin for that matter, in your compost).
So, that's me, and there will be more to come. For now, though, I need to get to bed, because my two beautiful children just happen to be very early risers.