Oct. 2016 got solar to run deep wells and AC if power grid were to be gone, need water/cooling.

Well well. Years since my last entry. Retired, severe pneumonia with months of rehab, more mini-strokes, surgeries , stents, and no insurance. Through it all God has been good to me. I had posted on a website I have followed for several years and they commented back it was a long time since I blogged. Started me to thinking, I am on my own no family, so when I die things will go to friends and most probably all the gardens will go back to woods or be torn up, nothing but perhaps some of the fruit and chestnut trees will remain. I feel that there are likely millions of blogs that do much more good then anything I would so why clutter up the ozone. But then I thought, I never look back at photos or changes or recall things that have passed by. Thus I guess I will give a go at doing a notebook of whets happening for myself and if someone else sees it ok, if not, ok.

The figs this year are exceptional. The "brown turkey" which usually has small fruit  is filled with half dollar size sweet figs. The "celeste" figs went crazy, doubled in size and the main tree is absolutely coverd in huge figs from top to bottom. Picked a couple of gallons first picking for a neighbor who candies them. I filled my 9 tray dehydrater with split figs, I will send them to my brother in Wiscosin for winter snacks.

 On June 26th, my oldest brother died after years of first fighting a degenerative blood cancer and then two years of terrible infections and sepsis and multiple multiple surgeries.  We had talked about Christ and the individual sinners need for redemption, I knew he knew the word but did he put his faith in it? The day he died I walked in my garden and found this spider lilly which some also refer to as a Resurrection lilly, although it is not the correct name for it. This group always blooms in that spot in september and there are several dozen of them. It is June and the high 90s not the right time and only one. Some say I might be deluding myself, but I believe that Christ sent a message of assurance my brother was welcomed home.

Tomatoes

I have been gardening in the same area for 18 years. Have used all the various fertilizers commercial, organic, liquid , solid, animal based and synthetic. Have tried and retried various heirloom and new hybrid seed and plant varieties. Have had many years that the neighbors thought was impressive production to the point I could not give the produce away as fast as it grew.

The past two years I entered a new course of gardening. Trying to learn how to manually prepare beds, produce my own mulch and compost. I determined to not use any commercial fertilizer or insecticidal products. I read several books by Steve Solomon and began to follow his direction on breaking new ground, deep digging to break up hard pan and using my own produced organic compost to fertilize the soil. I also followed his recipe to make COF, "complete organic fertilizer". This year I planted several varieties of vegetables resistant to root knot nematodes( which saturate my fields) to see which ones did well and to recover seed to be seed self sufficient in the event some catastrophe prevented obtaining commercial seed. To that end I had 3 to 4 tomato plants of different varieties. With the deep digging together with the COF they have grown to virtual small trees with massive productive branches. The weight of the produce is so great that every single one of the commercial tomato cages collapsed before the fruit even began to ripen. My peas and beans also did better than ever before.

I do not know if it was the breaking up of the deep soil or the use of just the COF as the fertilizing agent, but the results have been truly astounding. I very highly recommend one read Mr Solomon's books and see what improvements you can make to your garden routine.

Swamp lilly last week on the Yellow River flood plain. The most impressive spring wild flower here next to the trumpet vines. Once planted some in a friends Koi pond and they bloomed year after year untill replanted to the wild and Koi pond dug up. My friend got tired of water moccasins trying to get the fish and her.

Failings

What does one do when you let a besetting sin that you cannot seem to kill come between you and the Lord. You are going blissfully along sharing wonderfull fellowship, things could hardly seem to get better, then BAM, IT shows up in your heart and mind and body. You know better but you chase after your sin, you revel in it, all the time knowing it is wrong. You push your RIGHTS as if you were equal to God or as if He were just another man. Then comes shame and you look for the fig leaf and promise with the help of The Spirit never to do it again, knowing full well you will as you have time and time again. One begins to wonder will or has the patience of the Lord past a point of forgiveness and caring because you have sinned knowingly. As has been said," that which I would not do I do, and that which I would do I do not do." I often wonder how will the Lord change me at death that I will be able to enter into His house and rest and still have any vestage of the being I was in this life, for I am assuming perhaps wrongly so that we will not all be automatons with white robes and harps, hardly worth the Son Of God dieing for.

Mighty Oaks

Today I salvaged some old plastic potting pots from the gully out in the woods behind the barn and filled them with dirt given to me as a Christmas present from my nurse. I then took the acorns given to me by Ms Daffron the housekeeper at Davidson Middle School, where the body of Convergence met for a year before setting up in the Coffee Shop, and gave them to my 83 year old mother to plant. Ms Daffron had used acorns from the trees in front of Davidson to make an acorn gelatin, mud-brown and the smell of musty wood soil. She had gotten the recipe from her 83 year old mother who during the Korean War used that gelatin process to help save the lives of her family from starvation. Now as those mighty oaks grow from those seeds planted today I plan to plant them along the road leading to the garden the Lord has prompted me to plant for the community for use in the years ahead. And if the Lord sees fit to keep me around for a few more years I will tell the story of the trees and the dirt and the church and the gelatin and the people and friends God brought together for a season and a time. And in the telling I will bless My Lord the lover of my soul.