Bounty

I don't think there has ever been a time when I've enjoyed watching our garden than I have this year. Of course each year has been like that though. This year is particularly true because we have tomatoes! Yes, we have quite a few other things in there too which makes things so much more enjoyable, but at last, we have our tomatoes.


This is our fourth summer growing things here in this house. With each passing year it has proven to be quite a challenge to our gardening skills. Each year we've started seeds early, with the exception of this year. This year the only thing we've done differently is purchase plants from an Amish farmer not far from our home. We planted 44 tomato plants on purpose. I say that with tongue in cheek because our last year's compost pile has yielded so many more tomato plants than we ever thought were possible! At my hubby's last count, there were 72 plants! Yes! I said 72 plants! He lost track of where he was at that point and decided to stop there. What a blessing!

Another thing we were going to just ask around for is zucchini. I've never had to grow it because it is such a voratious grower that people always have plenty. This year we have zucchinis growing in the old compost pile! I asked once for zucchini, received 2 and now we've found it growing in the garden! Now we can harvest it, peel and shred it for zucchini breads and zucchini lasagna! Yum-O!



We've also thought we had watermellons growing in there as well, but found that these huge oval things were not watermellons, but pumpkins! Wow! We have these HUGE things growing and they look absolutely fabulous!
Of course our 4 rows of sweet corn is doing wonderfully as well and I believe is very close to needing harvested. I don't know if we'll be able to blanche and freeze any, but it sure will be nice to have some of our own home grown corn to grace our table with.


Potatoes! Yes! We have potatoes coming out our ears! The funny thing is that with every 4 to 5 plants, we harvest about 10#'s of potatoes. What an especially blessed season we've had!

Our onions are ready to harvest as well and although they're not as big as we'd hoped, they've still grown and we've learned quite a bit from growing them this year. I know that onions may need a little more room to grow, much like the potatoes did. We may make mounds for the onions like we did with the potatoes. We'll see though.


One thing I've learned this year~weeds are a blessing! Yes, I said it! Weeds to a certain extent are a good thing. Now, let me clarify. We have made sure our plants have plenty of horse poo mixed with course saw dust around them and no weeds directly around the plants. However the weeds are allowed to grow where there are no plants. The reason for this is that we do not use pesticides on our garden. If we did, it would not give us the rich and healthy crops we pray for and work for. We've experimented this year and last year and have noticed an interesting trend. The bugs really like the weeds that naturally grow in this area, but the flowers and plants that we plant here are not dined on quite so much. As a result, we have allowed the good Lord's creation to do it's job better than we ever could by providing food for the bugs to dine on so they don't dine on our plants! For example, my roses have been so beautiful with blossoms as big as a tea plate. Like the one shown below.

This one is not completely out, but it was beginning to show such promise. The Japanese Beetles were so voratious last year that they ate my roses and their leaves down to the hips and the veins. I put out traps for them, but they still came to my roses....and my flower bed was weeded! Fast forward to this year and I've only weeded before Vacation Bible School at the end of June/beginning of July. After that, just a little here and there to make sure my herbs and flowers have sun. The Japanese Beetles came in full force this year and ate the weeds! Now, my husband's raspberry bushes are another story. Those poor things have been eaten down to the veins. So, we're going to strategize a little better for the sake of raspberries for next year.

This year has also brought some interesting monkey wrenches in to our plans. We are going with the flow though and just adjusting our plans as God changes them for us. I can look out the front window and see the entire front of my house that is dug up. We'll be having a gentleman come within the next week to help us dig up the rest of the front of our house down to the bottom of the foundation. We want to make sure the foundation is fully water proofed and there is little to no moisture getting through the walls. We would seriously like there to be NO moisture getting through, but honestly with the pourousness of the cement foundation there could honestly be just a wee bit of moisture, unfortunately. But thankfully we're fixing the problem now so that we won't have to deal with it later.


A positive result of all of this is that we're putting up a new wall in the basement once the waterproofing is done. Thus begins the remodeling of the basement. This means no more paneling! Hooray! Here is what the basement looked like when we moved in and there was a mouse dancing around in the basement kitchen. LOL


Of course if you've been to our house recently, it no longer looks like this, nor do we have the big blue couch. The wall that we're water proofing is to the right in this picture all the way around to the fire place.


This is what the basement wall looks like now.

My dear husband has been working on it as time allows and as the wall dries out with the dehumidifier and fan blowing almost non-stop. What a blessing he has been!

I will be entertaining suggestions for what to do with the carpeting and how to recarpet the 6' x 22+' area that needed to be ripped out. I was considering buying 6' x 6' square carpet pieces from Ollies or maybe redoing this entire area with an entire piece from Ollies. I'm not sure yet. I'll discuss any and all options with my hubby and I'll be happy to post pictures through the entire process.


In the mean time, please pray for me. I need more grace, mercy and peace through all of this. Things don't move fast enough for me, so I have a tendency to let things raise my stress levels, which isn't good for my blood pressure. One of the things that is bothering me is the increased amount of dirt that seems to go with this project. While I wait for the next step to occur, we'll be concentrating on schooling, so that will be helping me to keep my mind on other things. I'm organizing my sewing room more every day too which will help.
Thank you so much for your prayers!


Blessings,