Fruits from the Garden

It is harvest season here in New England where we live. Since I was a child I have loved to garden. Even after losing a lot of the use of my hands due to a joint disability my love has not lessened. However, the kids now are my hands and they help in working the soil and harvesting what we grow.  We have learned many lessons in the garden.  

We live on a small piece of land in a town that has many many squirrels. The squirrels which seem to increase in number every year, pass their time raiding the garden. We have adopted several strategies to deal with this. One of the primary ways is to go underground. Growing vegetables such as tomatoes although a favorite of our family, rarely produces mature fruit. Before they turn red, they are stolen by the critters. We always plant a few tomatoes holding out hope but more and more we try to grow things underground which has proved to be much safer. Our crops of choice are garlic and potatoes. Garlic is too smelly for most insects and rodents to interest them. The potatoes while sometimes get dug up for the most part seem to grow undetected. 

In looking at our harvest bucket of potatoes waiting to be made into a potato salad, some thoughts came. What about our faith and the fruits that we wish to come through it? Are there not so many predators or as Scripture calls then birds who will carry away our seeds. How do we yield fruit today? Do we need to go very deep so those looking to take our fruit cannot find them...so they can grow and be ready for the harvest? Indeed our roots may have to grow very deep. Another lessen we learned is that the fruits we as a family grow are not the same as our neighbors. I do not know why we cannot grow certain things and others can when they live only a few yards away. Why do the squirrels take our vegetables and yet others have no problems? The garden has taught me many things. It has also taught me season to season certain plants in the garden will do well one year and not another even though seemingly everything is the same. To this one must just work and toil, wait and hope. We are not entitled to the fruits...it is by God's grace. To this we must always be grateful.

This year we had a happy surprise. There was a hope this spring that maybe we could try to grow pumpkins again. While in the past squash or anything similar to this was taken by our friends the squirrels, there was a hope we should not give up completely. The kids made mounds and planted some Cinderella pumpkin seeds. Pumpkins in New England take a long time to grow. One can plant them in June and they are not ready to harvest until the fall.

Something unexpected happened this year. Due to some grape vines growing near the garden that actually overshadowing some of the plants the pumpkins were able to grown undetected. We held our breath for weeks hoping no one would catch sight of them. While we could have waited longer for them to grow in size, as soon as they were showing their orange skin we picked them. The kids were very excited to pick our own home grown pumpkins! We have yet to decide how we are going to cook the pumpkins. But that too is the fun of waiting for one's harvest with anticipation. The cooking of the food is more special and much thought goes into the meal. We can share the potato salad we made with one batch of the potatoes we grew.  Yes despite many efforts by the squirrels there were fruits that came from our garden this year.  

P.S: I should introduce you to one of our friends.  They had many nice dinners thanks to the garden but we managed to have some, too. On a positive note Alina finds them a fun subject for her photography.

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A Child's Devotion to St. Joseph

Don't forget to unify prayers with the children during their meetings. A schedule of meetings is present on our website. By clicking "Join in Prayer" you can add your gold flashing light to our View from Heaven map.

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