Progress in the Garden

Sugar Snap Peas

Our progress this year has seemed very slow.  I think the fact my teaching job, our school, and the Department of Education of NYC has been in flux has added to the situation.  Then there was the "death" of my car.  I have spent an extra 2 hours traveling each day in May and June.  That plus the need to borrow my wife or daughter's car to even get to the plots has been difficult.  Of course, there have been the regular garden varmints as well.

At the congregational garden, we did have a harvest of Sugar Snap Peas.  These were distributed on a Saturday morning.  We also had some greens, but not enough to distribute, so a large mixed salad of mixed greens with radishes was prepared  for the Oneg/fellowship time.  Those areas were replanted with beans (in place of the peas) and a variety of root vegetables (beets, carrots, turnips, parsnips and root parsley in place of the greens).  The tomatoes are a little slow, but the tomatillos are blooming.

Beets and Perpetual Spinach

The varmints have been at it.  There was a stinky skunk family.   While they were smelly, they did not eat vegetables.  They have been dealt with.

Gnawed on Cabbage

Pod Peas in the Secret Garden

Then there is the woodchuck family.  They have dug under a garden gate and help themselves to various greens and root crops.  They seem to like cabbage a lot.  They have made a burrow by the building  and seem quite settled in.  A couple a weeks ago when we were at Laurie's cousin's Bar Mitzvah, it was reported that the children were chasing the critters away from the beans they have planted.  (Note those seeds were donated by my brother and some plants have survived.)  I think I have stopped the woodchucks tunneling into the garden and we will be investing in substances that they do not like, but does not hurt them.

Squash at the Secret Garden

Besides my own, there are two other gardens.  I have not been to the potato garden for some time, but the owner reported that the peas are up and growing.  The other garden we might refer to as the Secret Garden.  It is surrounded by trees, bushes and vines, but was used in the past as a garden.  Every time I have gone, it has been extremely moist.  So the tomatoes in the Secret Garden are growing very slowly.  Some of the squash that I planted came up, but most of it may have rotten from the extreme moisture in the ground.  The wetness encourages weed growth.  However, the broccoli is doing very well and promises to have a good harvest.

Broccoli at the Secret Garden

Things are rather slow now, but we look for a harvest in good time.  The same is true in the spiritual life.  
Galatians 6:9 says,  Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up."  With the garden and with our life in Messiah, we must sow, weed and care for it, so that we reap a good harvest in good time.

Don't Grow Weary

"And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not."
Galatians 6:9

Farming and gardening is hard work and it takes patience.  We have several fields that we are working in and we are starting to see a harvest.  At the congregation, we have harvested some radishes, arugula and thyme.  We hope to be harvesting spinach and lettuce very soon. Last Sunday we planted a variety of tomatoes and peppers, tomatillas, onions.  It's a good thing to share fancy seeds with the congregation.  (See below.)

Purple Potato

Even so, weeds can get ahead of us.  It takes constant vigilance and perseverance to keep the weeds from taking over.  We have had a slight incursion of cabbage loving varmints at the congregation.  I think that's due to some viewing without shutting the gate.  I was warned about deer at the new site and apparently they made a bed out of the garden there one night.  The property owner stuck some tomato cages near the broccoli to discourage them.  Now,  that I returned, he's beginning to learn what broccoli really looks like.  We have shell peas, head lettuce, and broccoli planted there.  The last weekend of May he and I planted tomatoes (Paragon and I think Rutgers) as well as Amaranth there.  As for the Amaranth, either we will have a nice display of Love Lies a Bleeding or we will also have some Amaranth grain in October.

The last Sunday in May, we planted at our last year's potato site.  We did not like the results of our yellow and russet potatoes, so instead we planted red (like last year) and purple potatoes.  We transplanted some muskmelons.  We also planted edible pod peas, amaranth, rue (to discourage the deer) and cucumbers.

Edible Pod Peas

The bad news in gardening is at my house.  My neighbors love chipmunks and it seems that they must call them by name and feed them on their front yard.   They are munching on almost everything I put in my raised beds in the front yard.  I put the good stuff that my brother sent me there.  So these chipmunks have munched on the Tomatoberries and mini yellow tomatoes he sent me.  My experimental artichokes are all but gone.  They have made short work of the brussel sprouts, eggplants and other things.  They have even found their way to the back yard garden and enjoyed (so far) every tomato plant and pepper that I have planted there, except one.  Woe is me,   but  I will persevere and replant with some cayenne pepper powder and netting.  Also, the good news is that they do not seem to like potatoes, lettuce or spinach.

Our spiritual life is very like persevering in planting.  We must begin by having the Word of God take root in our lives.  We continue by diligently (with the Spirit of the Lord"s help)  rooting out the weeds of sin in our lives.  We must resist the incursions of the enemy of our souls.  While that may not include hot pepper, it does include constructing conscious limits to our activities.  That is barriers that keep spiritual chipmunks (and worse) from the gardens of our lives.  In many ways this is a constant struggle, just as a garden can be.   Like a garden, there will be good fruit if we do not grow weary.

PS:  There are more pictures, but they are going in upside down.