The Sneaky Bunny With Bad Breath

This year we planted our first garden in a long while.  Read more about that HERE. 

I can hardly believe that we've enjoyed lettuce, carrots, grape tomatoes, and one cucumber. 

However, we're not the only one enjoying our garden. 

It appears that a little creature has had more then his fair share of our garden treats. 

Hmmm... we need to do something about that! 

Eager to uncover the mystery, the boys kept watch and looked for tracks. 

One morning when they went out to check the garden they saw an extremely cute, 

little bunny rabbit scampering out of OUR GARDEN!  

Do you see the nibbled up lettuce in the background of this picture?

 Our little furry friend ate the foliage on our carrots, the rest of our romaine lettuce, our brocolli plant, some spinach, some of the leaves on our green pepper plant and some garlic??? 

what? That's quite a sophisticated palate little bunny!

Thankfully, our sneaky bunny doesn't like our cucumbers which are growing like crazy up our trellis.

 He better keep away from my tomatoes. :) 

Summer Salad

I love salads and thankfully Darin and the boys do too. (Although Aaron likes everything separated.) 

Look at this awesome pile of romaine and spinach I picked from our garden this week. Delish!

One of our favorite summer salads is a Chicken and Fruit Salad. Here is the recipe:

3 cups cooked chicken, cubed

1 cup sliced celery

1 cup seedless grapes, halved

20 oz can of pineapple tidbits, drained (fresh pineapple is even better!)

11 oz can of mandarin oranges, drained

1/4 - 1 cup chopped pecans (the more the better in our house)

lettuce, torn 

dressing:

3/4 cup (or less) of stevia

1 tsp salt

1 tsp mustard

1 cup oil

1 tbsp poppy seed

1 1/2 tbsp onion juice or finely chopped onion (1/2-1 tsp of onion powder works)

1/3 cup vinegar

We use the "Measure Mix and Pour" from Pampered Chef to mix the dressing. 

It's awesome, but any bowl will work fine. Hope your family enjoys it as much as we do. 

Sowing Seeds

In April, we planted a garden. I shared with you how we prepared the soil and carefully planted our seeds. The next step was to water the seeds and let the soil soak up the sunlight, all while we waited and waited to see sprouts. Every day the boys and I ran outside to check on our seeds, hoping to get a glimpse of some green poking through the earth. Hopeful that today was the day we'd get a glimpse. It was hard to be patient and we were curious what was happening beneath the soil.

Within a couple weeks, many of the seedlings had sprouted. Oh boy, were we excited! Each day we continued to take care of them, checking for weeds and adequate water. It was a slow process watching our little bright green sprouts. Now we wait for them to mature and produce a harvest. More waiting!

I was blessed on Saturday to attend our church's women's retreat at a local botanical garden. The theme was "Sowing Seeds" and it was so timely for me to learn about how the kingdom of God is like a seed. Just like the seeds we planted in the ground, the kingdom of God is mysterious and living, planted within us and produces abundantly by dying.

Here are some thoughts shared that encouraged me.

• "A seed takes time to grow. Much of the growth is unseen for a long time, yet there is still something happening below the surface." In our lives, the Holy Spirit is planted in our hearts and there is growth taking place even though we may not see it. 
• "Being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus." Philippians 1:6
• "... humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you." James 1:21 
• As God is at work in us, it takes humility to wait for Him to do His work. We must repent as we try to control that growth and believe with hope that He is at work. 
• "Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds." John 12:24
• "Our part is not to run away from the pains but to walk through the briars and thorns and let Christ teach us how to turn each scratch into positive learning about the depths of God's love." Jack Miller
• "Dying opens our eyes to the newness of life."
• We can see God at work as we die to our self. 

The analogy of a seed needing to die in order to produce many seeds really struck me. Recently, my mom received a vase of beautiful sunflowers. Inevitably, these sunflowers had to die since they had been cut from their roots and would only last a short time in water. She saved one of the sunflowers and dried it out. From that one dried out sunflower came many seeds to produce more beautiful sunflowers. In the same way, as we die to our self we can rejoice that He is doing a good work in us and producing abundantly!

One of the speakers shared that as believer in Jesus (and in particular as a mom), we experience dying in three different ways. We need to die to our self due to increased time demands. We need to die to our expectations (as we experience broken dreams and broken relationships - either in our kids or in ourselves). Lastly, we need to die to our self as we wait for change (either in ourselves or in others). The result to all the dying is new life!!! "Just like Jesus' hour of dying is the hour of glory, His death brings US new life!"

As I muddle through the end of our school year, struggling with my reactions to unmet expectations I can be confident of this...it is GOD who makes all things new. He is at work, growing me and my children. He is changing me, even though I'm impatient and often can't see evidence of His work. The roots are below the surface, but they are there. I need to repent and believe. "In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength." Isaiah 30:15

"Jesus is a lover of our souls and He doesn't stop pursuing us!" Amen!

Green Thumb?

I don't necessarily have a green thumb, but I am drawn to planting and gardening. I love being outside. I enjoy pulling weeds and I love freshly grown veggies. I think what I lack is experience, patience and focus. (Funny how my lack of patience seems to affect all areas of my life!) I've had minimal success over the years as I've tried to garden, but I just can't give up YET.

Our garden has been in the works since last year. I got Darin on board with trying out a raised bed vegetable garden using the square foot gardening method. He loves to build so he made me a raised bed and attached a mesh screen to the bottom to keep out the moles and voles. By the time we got the bed made, it seemed too late in the season to really get going with the garden so we put the planting on hold.

Last weekend we finally moved forward with gusto and I'm pretty excited! I'm thankful that Darin is as eager as I am and so willing to join me in this project. Our garden is loosely based on the theories in this book.

I am also thankful that Luke is SO helpful and hard working. He delights in projects like this and he is definitely old enough to be an asset. Looks like he needs a larger wheelbarrow and wagon. Oh my,  he's getting big!

First we leveled out the garden and made sure the screen was attached to keep out the critters.

 Then we mixed 1/3 compost, 1/3 peat moss, 1/3 vermiculite.

 We wet the soil and smoothed it out.

We measured out our grid and attached twine. 

Luke helped hammer in the nails after attaching the twine.  

Then we got busy planting! I have a few more squares to plant, but we're off to a good start.  

My expectations are pretty low, but I'm hoping the conditions are right to get at least a little bit of veggies. Then maybe we can learn from our mistakes and have more success each year? We'll see!