Faith

I watched a movie awhile ago called "Faith like Potatoes" and I have been thinking of that movie this morning. Well and faith in a garden. We all need faith in something God, our co-workers, our kids, our parents, our family, ourselves, a small seed to grow into a fruit bearing tree that can feed both a family and our friends and we need to believe in our parenting skills because otherwise we would go nuts. We look and we search for reasons to believe in something. I have friends who believe that there is no God, and even that is a belief in something. It is a choice an individual choice, a personal decision to believe in anything. So if we are all searching, why do we as humans judge others for being different from ourselves? Here is the thing you can be an Atheist, a Baptist, a Catholic, Orthodox, Muslim, Islam, Jehovah Witness, Jewish, Non-denominational Christan, Buddhist, or any of the other religions that I can not think of in this moment when it comes down to it we all have to believe in something that can not be known for sure until the very end of our lives. We can not base our beliefs on the crazy extremist out there because they do not represent the mass of people who believe in that religion, but we can not condemn them either. We are all part of the human species, regardless of your personal outlook we must try to reach an understanding and promote peace. We can only start with ourselves. Peace and change starts at home. Don't judge your friends and neighbors ability to parent, earn money, or just live. We all struggle with something bigger then ourselves, every one of us. More then likely you will not know what anyone else struggles with. So don't push your style of life on to others, don't put another person down, don't try and discourage the people around you. Because if you do you will be left alone. It is hard to be alone. I want to be honest with you. I struggle. I struggle everyday about being good enough, strong enough, smart enough, and my list goes on. I am doing the best that I can, but I think I am not. I want to be a better person. I want people to leave me feeling better about themselves. I do not want anything back. That means you too my friend. I want you to know that as long as you are trying to be the best you can be that you are doing great.

Believe it or not this post was meant to lead into the garden. So today my faith is like planting a garden it is a small seed that I hope will grow to feed my family, and one day maybe your family too. A seed is planted, my seed is HOPE.

This is my friend Big Red. He is very territorial to the point he attacks his reflection in the windows of the house and the car mirrors on a daily bases.

I love his bright color. This live oak is all his. I have never seen another bird in it.

This is one of our Olive trees. This little two foot tall tree will grow into a ten foot tall tree that will bare up to 45 pounds of olives in one season. Yeah I think faith is like and olive tree.

Last year we planted garlic. They did not grow very big so we replanted them and here they are trying again. I am hoping that I will be able to use them in spaghetti sauce next year.

This fig tree started out as a branch that Rob cut off of our original fig tree. This branch took root and wants to be a tree. Faith is like this Fig Tree. If you work hard you can grow and change.

My friends I hope that you can see the beauty all around you. Maybe it is a bird that hangs out around the house or maybe it is the frost you find on your windows in the early morning, maybe it is as simple as seeing your children smile. We all are capable of becoming the people we want to be. You are worth it, you are good enough, you are strong enough. Just believe in yourself and you can.

I hope you week is filled with Love, and Laughter. Be well my friends.

Garden news. . . October 6

So for our weekly garden update I have lots of pictures. Some of them good, some of them okay, and maybe a few that are not. Believe it or not I am not posting all of the pictures that I took of the garden this week. I went a little crazy with all of the baby squash that we have growing. It is exciting to see something growing that we will be able to really eat and maybe we will have enough to freeze some for later meals. I hope you don't mind my excitement. We may not, will not retire here so it is encouraging to grow something in the mist of the worst drought in history, and in clay soil with nothing living in it except for ants. I have also noticed bees flying around and landing on flowers in the garden. I did not take pictures of that yet. It is nice to see the yard slowly transform from the barren landscape we bought to a garden. We still have a lot of work ahead of use in the three years we are for sure going to be here. So I hope you can join us on this journey, and that you might be encouraged to plant a vegetable garden of your own. If we can do it here, so can you where ever you are.Now for the pictures of the garden.

First up is the boys' garden bed.

 Peppers

 I spy a carrot top.

 Radishes popping up

 Jelly bean Tomato

 More radishes they are happy little plants

 Green beens I think.

 Here is a picture of their whole bed. A lot has grown since this picture.

 Now to the squash. I just love this picture.

 This is all from one plant!

 Even with so many squash growing I still love little baby squash

 Almost as much as these big squash. I might start picking them next week or so.

 Zucchini. You are lucky that I didn't post more then this picture of these lovely plants!

 Our melon patch has flowers, I hope that they will fruit for us too.

 They are creeping out into the path

 This is a female flower. The only flower that has the potential to fruit. I hope that is a baby melon.

 We had a storm roll through here and we lost one melon plant.

 We have two grapes growing on this arbor. This grape is happy, the other one is growing slower.

 This crack is in the middle of our yard. We have a lot of them hidden by the grass. It is from the drought, the deeper clay dries out and causes the ground to open up. All we can do is water, water, water. We found on next to the house. So our water bill will be going up. So we will be praying that it works. Praying for this drought to end. Praying for rain. I guess the frogs that live in these cracks are happy where they are. I would find them new homes.

 Remember the stick in the ground I claimed was a fig. Well this year it has grown branches and a few inches taller. When our grass isn't mowed for a couple of weeks it is taller then this poor tree.

 Bleeding heart amaranth and pie pumpkin plants

 Another sad looking tree, The Persimmon. Around we are growing onions. We did get on persimmon off of the tree this year. The boys shared it and loved it. You can see the vegetable garden behind the little fence. That squash looks nice from here too.

 This is a Pomegranate tree. It has grown but with the drought everything is slowly growing.

 We put this orange tree on a drip system and it just started to grow. It is still small but it is happy. After we got the snow last winter we thought it might not make it.

 This is some kind of winter squash. I let you know more when I know more. They are pretty.

 Pumpkin plant.

 Rob planted two new baby fig trees.

Now all we can do is fawn over them and water and hope.

We also planted the Gogi berry outside and it seems to be doing okay. I didn't feature our pear trees. This winter Rob is going to take out our Bartlett Pear because the fire blight is in the lower branches. It can't be saved. Really the only reason it is still there is because I wanted to give it a chance and I thought it had survived the attack. I am a hopeful soul and I always try to think of the best of everything. Also I can be a little looney and I didn't want to kill the tree. I wanted it to grow. We ordered a mulberry tree which will becoming in December, we are planning to plant another persimmon, a couple of lemon trees, and pomegranate in a hedge row along our fence line. We also want to add a nice deck where our patio is now, and more importantly a sprinkler/water system. We have big dreams and plans. We are going to try to do as much as we can before we have to sell the house. Like I said before we are guaranteed to be here another three years and we could end up here longer then that. It all depends on what the Air Force decides for us. For now this is home.

I hope that your week is filled with lovely fall colors or bright yellow squash flowers, and as always Love, and Laughter. Be well my friends