My Heart
Much can be said for experience and I’ve been blest with old gardeners and lots of garden magazines. Both have been good friends.
So today is the second day of the week but it is the first workday. Old Fuzzy and Big Fuzzy have about four days left of their bus driving for the spring quarter of this year. We are gearing up for our summer season.
Many years ago I believed that the summer season was our ‘off’ season, only to discover I had it backward. Summer brings gardens and their garden produce. If we aren’t planting we’re pruning or upkeeping or picking. At some point, there is a quandary between preserving and upkeep.
The best thing we could have done was mulching in order to keep the weeds down as we went through the summer but that isn’t always done as it should be done. I remember the long journey from my first years to these last few years.
Much can be said for experience and I’ve been blest with old gardeners and lots of garden magazines. Back in the day we became acquainted with the publication ‘Mother Earth News’. There were others of course that dealt more with general larger farming practices and we melded all of what we learned to arrive here.
Yet people need to get back to learning how to provide a portion of their food even if they only do a terrace with some bucket or container plants. This last year has pointed to the fragile balance of life. We in this country have for several generations come to depend on our local large grocery store chains.
Back in my childhood, our grocery stores were small without the fresh fruits and veggies that we have today. You could find canned goods and some items such as potatoes. I don’t remember when cabbage or lettuce became available, but there must have been stores with those items.
Last year even the large stores were on occasion out of some products. It highlighted our dependency on these stores and the necessity to find new sources in the advent of life-changing circumstances.
It seems as if the changes in life happen so slowly that we don’t notice them happening. We depend on our transportation system and when that is interrupted our lives can change suddenly in ways we don’t always enjoy.
How do the days go by so quickly, and how do they turn into weeks, months, and then years? I’m sure there are scriptures that address this. Maybe in Ecclesiastes or Job?
Speaking of Ecclesiastes I was brought to remembrance of several passages from Ecclesiastes that have for years piqued my mind. There are so many thoughts in the whole chapter of Ecclesiastes number three:
Ecclesiastes 3:
1 For everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven:
2 a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
3 a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;
4 a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
5 a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
6 a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
7 a time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
8 a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace.
9 What profit hath he that worketh in that wherein he laboreth?
10 I have seen the travail which God hath given to the sons of men to be exercised therewith.
11 He hath made everything beautiful in its time: also he hath set eternity in their heart, yet so that man cannot find out the work that God hath done from the beginning even to the end.
12 I know that there is nothing better for them, than to rejoice, and to do good so long as they live.
To Be Continued…
