{"id":16253,"date":"2015-07-16T08:24:01","date_gmt":"2015-07-16T13:24:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/?p=16253"},"modified":"2015-07-16T08:24:01","modified_gmt":"2015-07-16T13:24:01","slug":"thankful-thursday-gardens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/2015\/20150716-16253.htm","title":{"rendered":"Thankful Thursday: Gardens"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/category\/thankfulness\/thankful-thursday\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft\" alt=\"Thankful Thursday banner\" src=\"images\/buttons\/thankfulthursday2.jpg\" title=\"Thankful Thursday banner\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve been gardening for a few years now, with nominal success. I&#8217;ve started slow, trying to learn to be faithful in little &#8211; and, by God&#8217;s grace, the garden has gotten better and better each year. This year is the best yet. Today, I am so thankful for my garden and for others&#8217; gardens, for the grace of God in worked soil and fruitful plants.<\/p>\n<p><strong>This week I&#8217;m thankful&#8230;<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&#8230;for <strong>a chance to reflect<\/strong><br \/>\nI&#8217;ve never been a super intentional gardener, but I took some time after weeding this week to make some notes on what worked and what hasn&#8217;t worked with the garden this year (to help me with planning future gardens). I&#8217;m glad to be slowly growing as a gardener.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;for <strong>broccoli still going strong<\/strong><br \/>\nDid I mention that my broccoli is still going? My mom always got rid of her plants before now (even farther north.) I&#8217;m not sure if that&#8217;s because they wouldn&#8217;t produce or just because it was too much work to keep up with harvesting, but I&#8217;m delighting in fresh broccoli in July! We had some in our stir fry this last week.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;for <strong>zucchini and potatoes<\/strong><br \/>\nA friend from church had received some produce from another churchgoer&#8217;s garden when the friend was hosting ministry partners in her home &#8211; when the ministry partners left, she had an excess of zucchini and new potatoes, so she passed them on to me. We enjoyed the potatoes in a curry a couple nights ago and had fresh zucchini last night! (I didn&#8217;t plant zucchini this year because my plants died off right after their first fruit the last couple of years &#8211; I figure my soil must have something icky in it or else I&#8217;ve got bugs. I&#8217;ll try again next year when we&#8217;ve moved.)<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;for <strong>another try with the beans<\/strong><br \/>\nWhen I took the dehumidifier water out to water the garden yesterday, I noted that the beans are flowering again &#8211; I&#8217;m hopeful that this time they&#8217;ll actually produce.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;for <strong>a new garden bed<\/strong><br \/>\nNow that building is about to commence (and we&#8217;ll be moved before the next garden season), I&#8217;ve been thinking about my garden out on the land. I know I want to move my current raised bed out there (It&#8217;s very useful to me and I doubt anyone who buys our house will be particularly interested in a 4&#8242; x 8&#8242; concrete block raised bed!) But I also want to expand to two beds next year. The only problem is that it does cost some to assemble, and I really want to avoid excess spending while we&#8217;re in the building process. I was thrilled, when I went out to the land to assess what was left behind after the trailer was moved, to discover 49 cinder blocks that the trailer had been sitting on &#8211; 9 more than I need for a second raised bed!<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;for <strong>a reminder to break up my fallow ground<\/strong><br \/>\nBarbara reposted an a blog post she&#8217;d written about <a href=\"https:\/\/barbarah.wordpress.com\/2015\/07\/15\/fallow-hearts\/\">fallow hearts<\/a> yesterday &#8211; and it was just what I needed. As I read, I realized that I&#8217;d been letting bitterness harden my heart &#8211; and had been focusing on &#8220;getting past it&#8221; instead of on confessing it and rooting it out. God used Barbara&#8217;s post to spur me to finally start to deal with my heart &#8211; so that God&#8217;s word can grow and bear fruit in my life.<\/p>\n<p>Even as I improve as a gardener in earthly soil, may my heart&#8217;s soil become ever more receptive to the planting of the Lord.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been gardening for a few years now, with nominal success. I&#8217;ve started slow, trying to learn to be faithful in little &#8211; and, by God&#8217;s grace, the garden has gotten better and better each year. This year is the best yet. Today, I am so thankful for my garden and for others&#8217; gardens, for &#8230; <a title=\"Thankful Thursday: Gardens\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/2015\/20150716-16253.htm\">Read more <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Thankful Thursday: Gardens<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[42],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16253"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16253"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16253\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16254,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16253\/revisions\/16254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}