patchouliandrose

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Never let anyone tell you you can’t. This tree is growing on a boulder.

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Don't Just Hear, Do

Don’t Just Hear, Do

I woke up this morning and after reading some of the Bible and journaling I went out to the yard where a couple of Barn Swallow were flying around, low to the ground, catching insects. I’d seen them off and on over the last week or so and wasn’t sure what they were, but they are, indeed Barn Swallows. The birds that are infamous for “dive bombing” cats, dogs, and people. As I watched them, they…

[patchouliandrose]

Happy Friday!

Today I harvested our first Lungo Bianca Cylindrical Summer Squash! This is the first year we’ve grown this variety and boy do I love it! First of all, look at that color! I love the light green. I also love that it has a bushier nature than other squashes, so it’s great for smaller gardens. I cannot wait to eat it! From what I’ve read, it has a sweet flavor, so I may pair it with sweet potatoes and black beans and cheese, with a yummy Chipotle seasoning. I dunno, it just sounds good. Maybe I’m just hungry?

Also, the Rattlesnake Green Beans are forming! I was so excited to see them that I had to run in and grab my phone to snap a picture – seriously, this garden is photographed as much as my human children. It’s ridiculous, but whatever, it brings me joy. Aren’t they darling?! I love the purple speckles on the pod. Unfortunately they aren’t super visible in this picture. Maybe they’ll show up better as they grow. I mean, they’re just little babies right now.

We also have baby Golden Midget Watermelons (not the nicest name, I know, but that’s its name) on the vine and several Black Diamond watermelons growing that were apparently planted by our watermelon plant last year! Don’t you just love when that happens. Mother Nature says, “You’re going to want these, so here you go.” I’ll take them and enjoy every juicy bite, thank you very much! We’re likely to have more watermelon than we’ll need, so I guess we’ll figure out what to do with the surplus when it comes. My husband will want to sell them and perhaps he is right. I can’t simply give away everything. I work my ass off and while God and Mother Nature do most of the work, I need to see at least a little of the value in my effort. Right?

I tend to struggle in that area.

Anyway, today my daughter and I also cut back the Arugula and separated the seed pods from the stems. Here, you can see her dissecting one and checking it out. Incorporating science lessons into real life makes me so happy and I love that she was so into it! Anyway, we had a lot of Arugula and with the sudden heat wave we had not long ago, a lot of it bolted. So we have more than enough seeds to share with others next year, (Yay!) which leads me to my next topic…

Seed Exchange! I have seeds ready, if anyone is interested in getting some. These will be good for planting in the spring of next year, except in some areas, they may be able to be planted in the fall (ie broccoli in warmer zones). Just check your zoning. To get these seeds, I just ask that you pay postage. With the Forever stamp being .55 now, I’m asking .60 per packet to cover my costs of materials and the PayPal fee. I’m sorry, I do not accept any other form of payment at this time. If you’d like any of the seeds pictured below, please let me know ASAP, as I have cross-posted these to the Seed Exchange group on Facebook. (Note: Continental US only at this time) If you are local, please call or text me and we can set up a time to meet.

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Please don’t hesitate if you would like any of these seeds. I WANT to share them, even if you don’t have a lot (or any) gardening experience. It’s ever a bad time to learn and growing things is always a wonderful experience, even when we have struggles – for example, my rose bush looks so, so sad right now. I have no idea what happened. I only know that I’ll cut her back to the ground and she’ll come back next year and hopefully she’ll feel better. It happens. Sometimes we place a plant in a location and it’s not very happy. We move it to a better location, or we just rip it out and try again another year. It’s okay.

Through gardening, God is teaching me so many things – patience, grace, humility, hope, trust, faith, and the joy of harvesting what we sow…both in the soil and in our lives.

With that, I wish you a wonderful weekend.

Xx

    Garden Happenings Happy Friday! Today I harvested our first Lungo Bianca Cylindrical Summer Squash! This is the first year we've grown this variety and boy do I love it!

[patchouliandrose]

I’ve started reading the Book of Judges, because of a book I read recently entitle Ready to Rise by Jo Saxton. I may have mentioned the book in my previous post. It’s a wonderful book and I highly recommend it to women, especially women leaders – whether in the home, in small groups or large organizations – it’s a fabulous resource. When I bought it, I had no idea it was faith-based, so that was a pleasant surprise to me. I read it because I felt compelled to buy it based on the fact that I felt like God was urging me to lead.

Let me be clear on this. I don’t know that God wants me to lead on a large scale. I used to think that and I tried to force things to happen and when things didn’t happen, I got discouraged and gave up, but God has never relented in his urging me to lead.

The thing is though, he seems to be urging me to lead in my family and to lead in small groups. I’m no longer worried about a large following (which is why I deleted my old Instagram account that had nearly 1000 followers, which I know is not huge, but who am I? I’m just somebody’s mother), nor am I worried about who supports the cause, because it’s not MY cause. It’s God’s and God keeps sending me to women in the Bible who led by supporting their families and their own homes.

Which brings me once again to the message I received in my early twenties: Set your house in order and wait on the Will of Heaven.

God has never stopped telling me that.

Recently, with all that’s going on in the world, I began to lose hope. I went to bed early one evening and cried myself to sleep, cussing at God and telling Him about my hopelessness and my anger and my sorrow for all that’s going on. I told Him everything. I wanted to give up on the idea of a ministry (which is what He’s been pressing on my heart for the last year) and I told him I really didn’t want to do it, but if he wants me to, then He better get to showing me what on earth He wants of me, because I was losing hope.

That night, I woke up with Seeds of Hope and Seeds of Change in my mind. I wrote them down. The day before, my mother said she received a message of Seeds of Prayer. That morning, I awoke with a strange sense of peace over me and I realized finally, what I needed to do and that is why Seeds of Hope was started.

What I love most about it is it’s small. It’s a small group of kind-hearted people who want to make a change in the lives of children who are impacted by poverty and/or homelessness. Since it started, we have donated $800 to City Gospel Mission, and we’re set to give 25 nature-inspired kits to local businesses and a church to give out to children, and we have a collection of books and quilts/blankets to give to SAFY, for children in foster care in Kentucky. We are also putting together a free seed exchange so that we can help to increase food diversity in our country.

It’s not much, but it’s something. I’m learning that big change rarely happens suddenly. It happens through small, daily actions and through grassroots movements.

I think this is what God had been trying to tell me all these years, except I was too hard-headed and proud to listen. I wanted to be recognized. I wanted to be noticed. I made it all about me, not Him and because of that, I failed.

What I’m learning about in the Book of Judges was how Deborah and Jael did things on a very personal level to bring freedom to the people. Deborah spoke with Barack and encouraged him through her faith in God’s word, to fight against Sisera and even then, Barack was not willing to do it unless she went with him. Then, it was Jael being underestimated by Sisera himself that she was able to go through her duties as a woman – providing him with drink and rest – that she was able to slay him and thus free Israel. When I think of this, I wonder, what would have happened if either woman decided to go against what she was called to do? What if Deborah spoke publicly to the people herself rather than speaking with her husband privately? Or what if she had blown off God’s voice completely and said nothing? What if Jael had turned Sisero away instead of welcoming him and being a good hostess as women were expected to be then?

God is teaching me that His work is large no matter how small it seems when we’re doing it. Everything we do can be to His glory and therefore very big and important, even if to us it’s just sweeping out the garage and hanging garlic and parsley to dry, as I just finished doing.

I think God is teaching me that family and community are vital in these times and they are two things that have been undermined, while fame and popularity have become the goal. The more followers you have, the more clout you have, the more perceived authority you have and yet we have seen throughout world history that many leaders are not good, nor do they have the best interest of the people in mind. Deborah had discernment and I think we all could use a little more of that. Time to step back, have personal, private conversations and build up our families and our communities.

Because I truly believe that without those things, healing cannot happen in our world. We cannot care about our environment, or our country, or our town, or our own neighborhoods until we care about ourselves. It’s easier to build each other up on a personal level than it is to watch what’s happening in this world and feel so overwhelmed we feel hopeless and helpless.

You can make a difference. One day at a time. One person at a time. That’s all it takes and that’s all it has ever taken. And that’s the only way it is sustainable.

Do you feel a bit uneasy these days? If so, you may be interested in this Bible Reading Schedule that I found recently and plan to follow. If you’d like to join us in our Bible Chat group on Facebook, please visit our Seeds of Hope page in the menu.

    Keep sowing seeds of prayer, hope, and change.

Xx

    God’s Work Is Large, No Matter How Small It Seems I've started reading the Book of Judges, because of a book I read recently entitle Ready to Rise…

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Seeing

I’m not going to make by blog about race and social injustice, because that’s not why I created it, but with everything going on, I simply cannot get it off my mind and while I’m still gardening and working and painting, and quilting, and homeschooling, I’m also listening to others and their experiences regarding racism. One lady suggested White people examine their own experiences and give voice…

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The Truth Pains Me

The Truth Pains Me

With all the turmoil in our world, I am questioning God’s plan for me. On the one hand, I feel led to go out and to be a vessel of his light, but on the other hand, when I see the world, I don’t want any part of it. My shyness is crippling on a good day, much less during such unrest – as necessary as the unrest is.

I don’t believe in division.

I don’t believe in race, period.

I don’t believe in…

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Gardening with Children

To forget how to dig the earth and to tend the soil is to forget ourselves. Mahtama Gandhi

  When I was a teacher, I remember talking to my students as I ate lunch at my desk so I could help them get caught up on other work they had for their classes. I don’t know why, but they seemed to enjoy coming to my class and I disliked sitting in the cafeteria with the teachers, who spent their time…

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When Fear Reigns

I truly believe that when we allow fear and ignorance to reign-  isolation, violence, and despair quickly follow, and it seems to me that this is what we have allowed to happen in our world.

Why do we always find ourselves back here? Why are we always back to wondering how tragic deaths like George Floyd’s occur? I believe it’s because we continue to look outside ourselves for the solution. We…

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Around the Garden Photo Story

Around the Garden Photo Story

German Chamomile looking very happy

Sweet little alium with a thunder cloud back drop

Our blackberry brambles are loaded with blossoms this year

Clover, purposely down and loved by pollinators

Orbs on a giant blue hosta

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Big Changes Coming

A few years ago, I prayed to God to please guide me to the path He wants me to follow and I told Him I’d go there. I’d follow it. While I’m a pain in the ass – to which I’m sure God is nodding His head vigorously – I have tried hard to do this and to trust in Him.

This morning, I woke up and while I honestly didn’t feel like reading the Bible, I opened it anyway and read the first two chapters of…

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Menopause - the age of empowerment?

Menopause – the age of empowerment?

It’s so strange, being a woman. We are celebrated for our youth, for our appearance – especially when slathered with too much makeup, for our children, our homes, and our ability to fill stomachs with edibles, and yet actually being a woman is mentioned in whispers.

Periods are kept quiet.

Birth, until recently, was undermined to point that women were practically taken out of the picture, with…

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Apple Cinnamon Bread

I’ve always enjoyed baking breads and cooking up yummy things in my kitchen, but the quarantine has provided the perfect opportunity to hone my skills.

There is just something about delicious bread that I can’t get enough of and this apple cinnamon bread is no exception. Because I’m one who usually skips the story to get to the recipe, I’ll not spend time explaining why my family devours this…

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Dear Covid-19,

While it would be easy to complain about things you’ve taken away from our day-to-day lives, I want to take the time to say thank you.

Thank you for giving me time to do a little painting of my house. It may very well look like a high school art project, but it’s mine. I’ve wanted to do it since we moved here and never made time. Thank you for providing the time for that.

Thank you for giving me time to bake bread. I have fed sourdough starters in the past and only ever made pancakes from the discard. You provided the quiet time to actually bake some bread and to my surprise, it was delicious.

Thank you for reminding me what’s most important to me: family. That’s the one thing I miss in all of this and I have set a goal to have big family dinners when this is all finished. In the meantime, I’m using this restful time to explore and create new recipes worth sharing and handing down to my children. It’s been fun.

Thank you for giving me time to quilt and meditate. It’s been time well spent and I’ve enjoyed every single second.

Thank you for the opportunity to take online classes to better hone my writing skills. I’m learning new things, connecting with other writers, and even more important: getting over the fear and insecurity of sharing my writing. It’s been HUGE.

Thank you for the time freedom to write. The words seem to pour out these days and for that I’m grateful.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to find my personal style again. It feels good to ditch the Insta-fashion and embrace my own quirky style.

Covid-19, you’ve shaken things up, but I’m glad God has allowed you in the world. I know there are many losses and I mourn for people who have lost loved ones and I mourn with family and friends who have lost loved ones. It’s traumatic and painful and life-changing, but I am set on finding the good in all of this, because there is always good in it, if only we look.

So thank you, Covid-19, for shedding a light on what is very good in this life and for pointing out what it most important, and reminding me that I need very little to live a full and happy life.

You can go away now.

xoxo

Resa

Dear Covid-19 Dear Covid-19, While it would be easy to complain about things you've taken away from our day-to-day lives, I want to take the time to say thank you.

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God Keeps Promises

I went on a bit of a sabbatical – a personal break from social media. I was feeling slightly overwhelmed with all the noise and in the past, when this occurred, I felt the need to fly away completely, which led to my deleting accounts and ultimately shutting off the service to my phone completely. This time, I decided to lean into the need for rest and inner quiet. Instead of running away from it…