The Garden is such a great place to learn:

This years garden is being realized after being hit and miss, and neglected.  It’s a funny thing to have the time to garden.  I love it.  A garden takes time and most of it would do better under a precise time, but in that silly Molly fashion (time and I are not friends) I have decided to plant when the whim takes me, watch and see it grow.  To tell you the truth planting inspires more planting.  Yay.  I do give a little regard to the frost dates, but it may not be the end all for me.

It may not get realized to its full potential, but I want to plant the seed. In all reality that is what I am good for anyway, to plant and water and weed.  I can’t make it grow, I can’t control the wind, rain, or scorching heat so I will do what I can to see if what I can will get it to the point it can show off for the One who makes it grow.

And the garden is beautiful in spite of me..

I always get the bug in Jan to make some things happen, then Spring rolls around and there are so many things to do.  Shear the sheep, midwife the babies, and just in general get things going.  This year I was trying to get the green house usable for those cooler months, and not everything marches on as we want it to.  Of course, this year I have been watching the “you tubes” for all the fun gardens that have been kept I am inspired.

Even more inspiring to my harried pallet is the succession planting.  It gives me some hope to just keep planting it doesn’t have to be in the traditional manner of rows and at certain times.  I am learning that popping things in here and there are the key to keeping a full garden.  So here I find myself at the end of July and the beginning of August planting some fun things.  I am not here to help instruct you in planting other than to inspire you to just plant it.  It is a wonder to watch things grow from the dirt.  From a dead seed, to a green plant.

Here is my criteria for what I want to plant.  Do I love it?  Is it purple? (ok not everything has to be purple, but it sure helps) Can the animals use it for fodder? Can I use it to dye wool?  How much potential does it hold? Is it edible?

Here is what I am learning.

Give the garden opportunity

• Let something beautiful grow, because green things will grow anyways. Plant it and make it big.  I have in my head that there are gardens with rows and empty space, but the more weeds I have, the more I see I need to just plant more beautiful things.  This resonates with my life too.  The more I neglect an area or try to leave it bare the easier it is for something to creep in that I just don’t want.  There is just no way to think of nothing… so it is so important to fill my head with those things that will change the way I think for the better and the beautiful.

Just do it

• Stop frittering about all the specification!  I am not doing this as my business, I do have other resources if it doesn’t work out.  I don’t have to research this to the-enth degree for it to be pretty and fun.

Make the garden easy

•  My sweet Husband has the technology to do a watering system, and it is sooo sweet.  It is not an elaborate inground system, and it did cost some to make it happen, but it has made my life so much simpler.  If there is a way to make the day to day easier, do it.

• Guilt free fruit. I have been reveling in this idea that God’s gifts are lavish.  As a hopeless mind that wants to use everything to its best possible potential, I can have a heavy guilty heart over what is not being used for the best possible purpose.  Yet there is soooo much in the garden.  My friend flippantly expressed when we were pick plums off of her tree, this is “guilt free fruit”.  Now my new favorite thought is that God doesn’t want me to feel guilty over a gift that He has lavished on me so freely.
• Thank you, LORD for the guilt free fruit, flowers, animals, friends, family… every good and perfect gift is from above…  the LORD gives and the LORD takes away blessed be His Name.