Things To Do During Pandemic Lock Down

   OK, so the first week wasn't so bad...we caught up on TV, read, weeded the yard, mowed the yard, watched more TV, I even cooked. Now I'm bored! So here are a few suggestions for keeping your sanity. 

Start veggie seeds inside to plant as soon as the weather stabilizes...I'm writing this on April 14 and it is snowing outside my window! I live in Middle Tennessee and it was nearly 80 degrees last week! This too shall pass! We will need our vegetable gardens more than ever this year. Look at my post about seed starting here. 

Go online and dream about all the cool plants out there that you might want to add to your landscape. Check out Burpee Seeds, Search eBay for "plants" you'll be amazed by what you might find. Here are a few of my favorites: https://www.johnnyseeds.com/,  Park Seeds and plants,  Gardeners Supply Company  even ETSY

Get my Gardening book on Amazon for more tips and lessons on gardening 

Step By Step Guide To Plant Propagation Revised Edition

  Share with us here in the comments about what you are doing to keep from being bored out of your mind.

                                                                                                                                                                       

Follow Up on Last Post: Coronavirus

Let's get specific! If you haven't read last week's post do so now...just scroll down. Now here is the followup:

I posted this on Facebook today:

Many of us have been praying every Sunday at 3:00 PM for God to heal our land. Now the request is for us to pray every day at 3:00 PM Central time. I totally agree with this, but before you pray you may want to read this and ask for God's forgiveness before you ask him to heal us. There is a condition for the healing ...read on: 

Folks, we have all been passing this scripture around and asking for prayer…this is a very good thing, but we have ignored what the Lord is actually saying. There is a condition in this verse, “turn from your wicked ways”. He is talking to His people here “My people”. Who were God’s people and why were they seeking God? In Israel at that time there was a terrible drought, locusts and pestilence (illness). The study notes in my Modern Life Study Bible say this: “God’s pledge to heal the land was not unconditional. In order for the Lord to fulfill His part of this agreement with the Israelites, there were certain stipulations: The conditions: Humility, prayer and seeking God’s face, Turning from wickedness”

Friends, we have sat by quietly and by our complacency (I’m guilty of this for sure), allowed these very laws to become the law of our own land. We made legal the thing that is an abomination to God. Here is just one of many I found: Romans 1:26-27 “For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was meet.” Enough said!

We voted to allow babies to be aborted for our convenience.

The following quote is from  a Christian website: Ratio Christi https://ratiochristi.org/

In the Old Testament

“Several passages in both the Old and New Testaments could be cited to support the idea that God recognizes that human life begins in the womb.  Isiah 44:24 we read, “This is what the LORD says— your Redeemer, who formed you in the womb: I am the LORD, the Maker of all things, who stretches out the heavens, who spreads out the earth by myself, “ Note that the Lord clearly says He formed us “in the womb”.

Then there is Exodus 21:22 “If men fight and hit a pregnant woman and her child is born prematurely, but there is no serious injury, he will surely be punished in accordance with what the woman’s husband demands of him, and he will pay what the court decides.”   Here we note that it is a “child” that is born prematurely Psalms 139:13 says, “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.”  Again, the image of being formed as a human being in the womb.

New Testament support for abortion?

One final example will really drive home the point.  In Luke:41-44 we see the meeting of Mary, who is pregnant with Jesus, and her cousin Mary, who is also pregnant with John the Baptist.  “when Elizabeth heard the salutation of Mary, the infant leapt in her womb.” Then in verses 42 to 44, Elizabeth “cried out with a loud voice, and said: ‘… For behold as soon as the voice of thy salutation sounded in my ears, the infant in my womb leapt for joy.’”  So much for trying to establish Biblically that life begins with the first breath.”

 

Many of us as Christians have turned our backs on our neighbors, co-workers, and others who don’t know Jesus as Savior. Believe it or not, in this day of immediate access to information, there are people, probably in our own neighborhoods, who don’t know Jesus. We are sitting around our home and in our churches and letting the world quietly go to hell!  

We need to ask God for forgiveness and get up out of our pews, our comfy den in front of the TV, and go out into the marketplace, the highways, and byways and talk about Jesus. We need to get down on our knees and ask God to forgive us! Then Maybe God will forgive our sin and heal our land!

 

 

 

 

 

More Important Than Plants & Gardening!

I don't think I've ever written about anything other than things related to the garden but I'm going to deviate from that this one time. Next week we will get back into the dirt. 😉

Many of you, like Bill and I, are sheltered in place right now. We are healthy and hope to stay that way. We loaded up on groceries and had them delivered to our home. Other than checking on my homebound mom, I don't plan to leave the house and yard.

I have asked my women's home prayer group to join me this Saturday from 8:30 - 10:00 (anytime you can pray will work) and let's seek God's help for our world, our country, our communities and our families. Please use this powerful promise is 2nd Chronicles as a starting place:

2 Chronicles 7:14 King James Version (KJV)

14 If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.

I would love for you to post a comment here as God begins to answer our prayers.

Spring Is Here!

Not only am I sick and tired of gloomy wet weather but now I'm "sheltering in place" to keep my old bones from getting sick! I pray all of you will get through this coronavirus scare as healthy you were when it started. If it will ever stop raining, Grandson Tad and I are going to rake up all the leaves we didn't get around to in the fall. 😏

With that in mind, Let's think happy thoughts of sunny weather, spring flowers and packets of seeds to plant.

Wren's Nest

My spring flowers are popping up all over the place - some in places they were not growing last year. Birds are busy building nests ... Miss Wren has a big messy nest in the corner of our porch roof.  Below are a few pictures of what's blooming and some links to other "spring" posts.

Next week I'll talk about what's happening in the greenhouse right now.

Sweet William

Two-tone Daffodil

Garden Path

Hellebore 

Coral Bells

Hen Bit

                                                       Bi-Color Spirea Buds

Roadendrium 

Other Posts you might like:  Hardy Camillia  

A Penny Pinching Tip, Camellias Are Easier Than You Might Think

Spring Fever Advice 

Growing up in The Nineteen Fifties

It was a spring-like day today, Sunday too, so we raked and burned leaves this afternoon and roasted hotdogs over the chimenea fire. Actually, I roasted hotdogs and we both ate them. 

I asked Bill if he remembered the story of The Little Red Hen. I was feeling a little like that little chicken at the time. Bill didn't remember the story and that precipitated a conversation of just what did we remember about growing up. The following are a few of the flashbacks we came up with. 

 Maybe this will take you back in time too.

Bill remembers his little red peddle car, playing cowboys, Saturday movies (my mother would not let me go to those...(Mama was way too protective!)  Bill was about ready for a Sunday nap and not much interested in going down memory lane with me but the whole thing got me to thinking.

   

I grew up in the 1950s, my earliest memories are when we lived in Sheffield, Ala (now known as Muscle Shoales) There was a little store about a block from our house and sometimes Mama would go there for something and I would get a nickel to spend on penny candy. For 5 pennies could get a hot cinnamon jawbreaker, a peanut stick, a peppermint stick, or other "penny" candies. If I wanted to blow the whole nickel, I could have a Baby Ruth Candy Bar.  

Mama and her friends liked to go "shopping". We had a McLellan's Five and Dime store in our town and if I was good, I got 15 cents to spend there. It was always hard to decide between a new paper doll book or a coloring book. I loved the movie star paper dolls. There was Bette Grabel, Doris Day, Shirley Temple or maybe Marilyn Monroe. I loved cutting out the paper outfits and dressing up the dolls.

 

We moved several blocks away when I was six. We bought a new bigger house and there were kids on both sides of us. We played cowboys and cops and robbers. My little friend and I were always the robbers because the boys were older and we didn't get a choice. I remember one time they locked us in the washroom (a room outside the house where the washing machine was...no dryer back then. We all hung our clothes on a clothesline outside) I don't remember who let us out but I think the boys got into trouble over that one. 

I got my first bike when we lived there and it took me a year to learn how to ride it. I was scared I would fall! The boys next door finally got tired of watching me push it around and taught me how to ride. We had much fun with our bikes. There was an alley next to my house and it was the perfect place to ride. Our street was too busy to be safe.

 As I said above, my mother was very protective of me...honestly, she was too protective but I managed to survive anyway. She would not let me go to the Saturday movies with all the other kids. For some reason she let me go once. It was a Hopalong Cassidy film and I had a great time. I have no idea what caused her to let me go but she never did it again. Mama and Daddy would sometimes take me to the movies at night. I remember seeing The Greatest Show on Earth and all of us kids played "circus" for weeks after that one. A swing set can become a terrific trapeze with a little imagination.

"Kick the Can" was a fun neighborhood game too. It's a wonder we survived that one. I remember getting a pretty nasty cut from a jagged can top.

 Of course, "dress up" was a favorite with the girls. We would dress up in old curtains and play like we were movie stars or singers. Our front porch was the stage and we would sing all the popular songs of the day from our top step theater. Sometimes we played "wedding" or "flower shop". We would dress up in old lace curtains and make bouquets from the blooms on Mama's flowering shrubs. I guess that may be where my love of flowers and plants got its start.

  We walked home from school every day. It was only a few blocks and there were sidewalks all the way. One afternoon we decided to take a short cut through a vacant lot. The grass was about waist high and there was a little path through the tall grass. About halfway across the lot, we scared a huge black snake and it chased us all the way across to the other side! Talk about scared! I'm not sure if we or the snake was the most afraid but I promise you we never took that short cut again!

I probably could write another book about childhood adventures. Heck, maybe I will, but in the meantime, I'd love to read about your favorite or most funny childhood stories. Was your mama as protective as mine? Post a comment below and share it with us all.  

My Cure for the Winter Doldrums...

I am one of those people who get the blues when the weather is dreary. S.A.D. Syndrome visits me nearly every winter in spite of the florescent lights and big windows. I have the best cure for it...my greenhouse!

The following are a few pictures I took last week when I went out there to clean up and plant a few seeds. I wanted some early lettuce and a tomato or two.

Bear in mind that my greenhouse is small. It's 8 X 18 feet but that's just about all that would fit in our backyard since we have a big art studio that takes up quite a bit of the space back there. I bought it from Morton's Horticultural in McMinnville, TN. They delivered it and set it up as part of the purchase price. Here is a link to an old blog post about that here: My Greenhouse Adventure.


Anyway, last week the little sunny greenhouse was just what I needed to lift the winter doldrums and remind me that spring will be here before we know it.

Inside the greenhouse

 As you can see the Christmas and Easter Cactus, as well as other hanging baskets, are happy and in the next picture a mixed pot that otherwise would have succumbed to the frost by now. I'll refresh it a little in the spring and pop it back into the yard.

Meyer Lemon Tree

Myer Lemons are the best! I have this wonderful little Lemon tree that produces at least two crops of the biggest and juiciest lemons ever! I've already harvested the Christmas crop and as you can see, it's blooming again. I have to use an artist's paintbrush to pollinate it because I really don't want bees in the greenhouse..LOL! 

 I can never bring myself to toss the poinsettias. So the greenhouse is a good place until they totally lose all the red leaves. I usually compost them in late spring...it's less painful when all those leaves turn green. 

Sweet Bay Tree and babies

I have had this Sweet Bay tree for many years. It was in a tiny pot when I first got it. I keep it pruned to fit into this big storage tub that has drain holes drilled into the bottom. All these plants are moved outside after the danger of frost is over. I use the Bay leaves all year in many of our favorite dishes. Salmon steaks are wonderful if they are grilled on a bed of whole Bay leaves. Last year I pruned the tree and had so many branches that I gave them to my local fresh market..she passed them along for free to her customers. We made a lot of folks happy! :-) As you can see from the babies in the small pots, Bay trees are easy to root.

So if you have space and can afford a greenhouse, I highly recommend having one. If not, plan a visit to a local greenhouse and get an early spring fix!