Teaching Grace to my Little Gardener

Last week a friend of mine posed the challenge of making the most of teaching moments with my little boys. One concept I long for them to understand is grace - recognizing how and when to give it and knowing when it is given to them. The Baby is still too young, but he certainly presents plenty of oportunities for his big brother to show him grace. As their mommy, I'm learning that discipline and grace are equally important acts of love. You might remember back in the spring when the Man-child stomped my onion patch. It's an ongoing lesson.

Friday, the boys and I went to my favorite garden center, Logan's, to pick up fall transplants and seeds. Logan's stocks Tootsie Pops at the front of the store, and Daniel, the Man-child, is always eager to pick one out. As was my general practice, I told him before unloading him from his car seat that if he was very good and didn't whine, pull things off the shelves, or run around like a crazy monkey I'd let him have a sucker before we left.

He really tried hard to be sweet but understandably grew impatient as I read the backs of countless seed packets. At one point I had him sit in time out just so I could focus and not have little hands grabbing at my waist as he yelled "Up! Up! Up!". Otherwise, he was attentive to his brother and kept his hands off all the fun tools the store is stocked with. I was even complimented on their behavior by Karen who was assisting me. As we checked out, he went for the suckers and I let him pick one out. As I put him back into his car seat, I explained that he had whined and didn't deserve the sucker, but I loved him so much that I wanted to have grace on him and do something sweet for him.

"Oh, Mommy! Kank you so much. I'm sorry for whining and saying, 'Up-up-up.'"

The conversation continued today as we were driving home from errands and Sarah Evans' song, "A Little Bit Stronger", came on the radio.

"She is stronger, Mommy?"

I explained that the song was about how her friend had really hurt her feelings, but she was getting better now.

"Does she hurt her friend's feelings?"

"No, she might want to, but she's having grace and getting stronger and not going to hurt her friend."

Now I don't know if that's what the song was really about, and I didn't want Daniel getting too wrapped up in Sarah's personal life, so I redirected the conversation.

I explained how Jesus tells us that when someone hurts us, like hits us on the cheek, we may want to hit them back.

"Jesus tells us to say, 'You hurt me, but I'm not going to hurt you back. You can even hit my other cheek, and I will still forgive you and have grace on you because I love you.'"

"Oh, Mommy. So did she (Sarah Evans) hit her friend?"

"No, sweetie. She had grace... It's like when Baby Matthew pulls your hair. You might want to pull his too, but because you love him so much, you don't. You have grace on him and forgive him. You can teach your little brother grace"

"Oh, Mommy! So when I get home and Matthew pulls my hair, I will tell him that I love him so much and give him grace? And I don't pull his hair?"

"That's right. I'm so proud of you, Daniel. You really do understand it!"

Oh, Irene.

I just walked outside in the evening light from the low hanging pink clouds swirling past as Irene moves northward. Everything is blown in the northwest direction. The corn is down, the okra are bending, and the tomatoes bushes have grown heavy on the stakes. There is some flooding in the squash and bean tunnel. However, the newly sown beds remained intact with the straw shielding the seeds from wind and rain. We lost power several times today in the neighborhood, but it's back on now. Tomorrow I plant some greens!

Why Gardeners should be on Twitter

While I've been gardening for about 7 years, this is the first year I've really enjoyed an online gardening community. Back in February I branched off from my old blog to start LoveSown, and set up a Twitter account intended just for discussing gardening. It took me awhile to build up followers and find some of the people I really enjoy interacting with, but now I am enjoying taking part in a lively, witty, helpful and experienced bunch of gardening tweeps. If you garden and haven't yet joined the online discussion, you ought to consider it.


Relationships with Like-minded People
I have a group of amazing friends here in Raleigh, NC, but many of them don't garden, and certainly they don't get as giddy as I do over purple potatoes and Italian Climbing Squash. It is so rewarding to post pictures of garden beauties on Twitter and have someone celebrate with me. Also, A lot of funny stuff happens in life and in the garden, and often great anecdotes get shared via Twitter. Some of the best interaction comes on Monday nights during "Gardenchat" and during the daily gardenwalk.

Problem Solving
While you may ask, "What is better than Goggle Search?", Twitter provides personal interaction and feedback from a wide audience with years of personal experience. Now that I have built up a list of followers, I can post a question, tag it with #gardening or #gardenchat, and almost always get a response. Most of the time, gardeners are eager to help each other get to the root of problems and find a solution, or at the very least commiserate. It is through Twitter that I learned that Duct Tape is a much cleaner and easier method of removing squash bugs and their eggs off squash leaves.

The Exchange of Ideas
The gardening Twitter community is always tossing out links to blogs and sites about planting and growing, novel products, upcycling projects, and both new and tried and true methods of gardening. Because many of us are limited on space to garden, this becomes extremely helpful in making the most of our land or balconies and saving money. Fern Richardson's "Pallet Garden" ideas have spread like wildfire on the internet including on Twitter and Pinterest.

Learning about new Cultivars
If you only ever purchase plants at your nearby home improvement store, you are missing out on a world of exciting flavors, colors and textures in your garden. One of my favorite benefits of being part of an online community is getting introduced to new cultivars. Not only do you get a picture and description (same as on a seed packet), but you have the chance to ask other growers about their personal experience growing the plant. Yesterday, Lindy Ly from The Garden Betty posted her fall seeds, which sent me off to the store this morning to try some new things.

Networking
Twitter and Facebook are the two main avenues through which I have building up a loyal following on this blog, LoveSown. If you are a blogger, Twitter is a great way to share your posts. One key to this is that you have to give to get. Followers don't appreciate being constantly blasted with links to your blog if you never interact with them. Go visit other gardener's blogs, share their links, and leave comments!

Before you know it, not only will you be successfully networking, learning tons of new things about gardening, but you will have also made some fun relationships.

Garden Walkin' & A Little Talkin'

Several days before we left for the beach some of the spinach and chard had begun to sprout; however, upon our return there was no activity. It seems that either the heat or the bunnies got to them. I replanted indoors two days ago, and there is already germination, so I think I'll be working from transplants soon. I also reseeded outdoors and covered them with straw. Somewhere I read that straw van deter rabbits. The garden paths are totally covered in pulled weeds and plants, and there are a lot of bare batches in the beds, but I did manage to capture a few pretty shots over the past two mornings.

Melons Hanging from the Melondome

Purple Hyacinth Bean Blossom

Purple Basil Blossoms

Muscadine Vine

Garden Letdown.

It's that time of garden letdown. Where you've fought all summer to weed and water and keep the veggie plants healthy, but after one jaunt to the beach you return to find they have succumbed to disease, deer and disarray. Perhaps it is the oncoming fall, but I want to just let my hair down, kick my feet up and let it all go to hell in a hand basket.

This is the time of year I start taking notes. I must reduce the number of tomato cultivars next spring. I'm never planting Black Russian again - mind you have saved about fifty seeds from the one tomato my plant produced - because it is the laziest plant ever. I will add more compost and pull weeds more vigorously. I will remember to fertilize mid-season. I won't pamper the veggies with so much water early in the season next time. I'm sure you are familiar with the list.

Truth be told, the garden kicked my tail this season. Growth was high and wild; production was low. I made several meals from the beans, but it was nothing like my first summer with pole beans when I was able to blanch and freeze several gallon bags of excess. I'm not too devastated as this was the first year working with the soil; and creating paths, trellises, tunnels and an upcycled sink-pond fed my creative side, but in the end, don't we veggie gardeners measure success on the quality and quantity of food our garden yields?

It isn't all a loss. The okra has really taken off and I'm regularly breading and freezing new batches. The cherry tomatoes are still cranking out red succulent marbles of aromatic summer kisses, and herbs are piously tending to their own. The eggplant is finally coming in, but I don't eat it. The Italian climbing squash is a bumper crop this year, but the foot long greenish squash gives my husband the heebie jeebies.

The question is, to fall plant or not - or rather, how much to plant? I need to scale back for the season because of other work, but how can I resist those open patches of soil where I ripped out summer duds?

Beach Pics for Friday

We are wrapping up our final day at the Outer Banks. I'm slap wore out from boogie boarding and carrying around a baby everywhere I go. It's fun fun, and now I'm ready to get back home. I've loved all the colors and textures at the beach from the birds and weathered wood, to the native plants, to the fishing buoys hanging on the house next door.

An Egret for Tuesday

Moth for Monday

Giant Leopard Moth

Upcyled Planter Ideas

Although it is still summer, I am thinking about rooting some of our herbs to bring them indoors to overwinter. Of course, simple plastic planters I have from spring transplants aren't enough. They must be artsy or, at the very least, clever! These are some ideas I found online. Click on the images to be taken to their sources.

From Reduce, Reuse, UPcycle!

From Compai

From Calamity Jon

From Hen & Hammock

Flowers for Friday

If you've eaten okra but never seen it grow, you probably have no idea that those sometimes prickly pods have such beautiful origins. This time of year, morning walks always include picking pods and checking out the bumble bees in the okra blossoms. Last year I saved seeds from my burgundy okra using pantyhose and paint bush to prevent cross pollination with the neighbors' green okra. Several of the plants are producing greenish pods, so my methods weren't perfect. These flowers grace the entrance of the boys' bean teepee, or "Teebonacci". The bean vines of the teepee are entering the okra patch as they look for new avenues of upward growth.

Boys and the "Wild"

Living in downtown Raleigh, there isn't much "wild" to be found. My ultimate wilderness escape  includes tall trees, cool air and a mountain stream, but when not the mountains, I prefer my wild to be manicured and safe for letting two small boys run around and explore. This makes the J.C. Raulston Arboretum one of my favorite urban escapes.

This week the temperatures dipped into the low 90s with cooler mornings. Two mornings in a row I took the boys out to do their thing that my boys do - run, explore, climb, and eat snacks. Our favorite discovery was the pond of croakers. These frogs were singing up a storm on our first visit, which had the Man-child cackling with laughter.

By the time I took this shot, he was over it.

Meet Jolly. Jolly, meet Everyone.

We haven't seen any traces of Itsy Bitsy in weeks. However, as I was scouring the "Italian Trombetta" squash vines for pests, I was greeted by this green spider, whom I've named Jolly. I don't know if he has a web or not. I've only seen him hanging out on the same cluster of leaves for several days now. He is a Green Lynx Spider and is doing a little pest control of his own. The first time I saw him, he was next to a dead squash bug, whose lifeless carcass was being cleaned by ants. I'm not sure who was responsible as I was not a witness to the assault, but he looked quite pleased with himself.

She is So Prissy

When to Scrap a Veggie Plant

SCRAPPED.

Seasonal vegetable plants in the kitchen garden are typically annuals that experience a time of peak production before tapering off for the season. Occasionally, I've had plants take a mid-season break before having a second burst of production, which this makes me hesitant to scrap my plants before they are clearly dead. However, as I've learned to extend the growing season with fall crops and overwintered crops, a square foot of garden space becomes valuable real estate that I can't afford to waste on sentimentality or hope of just one more vine-ripened tomato.

When should you scrap a plant?

1) If the plant is showing signs of disease, scrap it. Prevent disease spread by removing the plant. This is especially important if you are a close planter like myself. Diseased plants should be disposed of separately from the compost you intend to put back into the garden.

2) If the plant makes you cry, scrap it. This spring I conducted multiple surgeries on the squash plants in an attempt to salvage them from the vine borers. Eventually, I saw the plants survived but were no longer fruiting. At some point, it's just not worth the effort anymore.

3) If production has greatly tapered off, scrap it, especially if you need the space for the next set of plantings.

4) If your freezer is full of the produce, scrap it. My neighbors still have frozen produce from two summers ago. Your other option is to donate your excess to programs such as Plant a Row, but it is also good to give the soil a rest before the next set of plantings.

5) If you are nearing the end of the season and the plant has still produced nothing, scrap it. I can't tell you how often I've tried to grow watermelons only to have 5" vines with 2" leaves at the end of the season. Why waste the space?

6) If the plant is dead, scrap it. I'm sorry, but in this heat, resurrections don't often happen in the garden.

Remember, if you compost, scrapping a plant is never a waste!

Reflections on Consumption

I don't regard myself as driven by consumption. I like to think I spend modestly and responsibly. However, I get antsy during the week if several days pass without a trip to the grocery, big box store or nursery. I begin to invent reasons why I need to shop. As I sit to reflect on my motivation and assess that all my needs are met, I get overwhelmed with self-disgust. I see that materialism permeates my thoughts and desires. Even what I deem a noble pursuit, one core to human existence - growing food, is tainted by my craving of garden gadgets, diversity for the sake of long growing lists and gardener's bragging rights. In reaction, I teeter between trying to downplay my tendencies and wanting to empty the house onto to the curb and build a hut on the back of my parents' property.

This past week I watched "The Story of Stuff" on YouTube. One quote by Victor Lebow blew me away. Here's the full version of it:

Our enormously productive economy demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfactions, our ego satisfactions, in consumption. The measure of social status, of social acceptance, of prestige, is now to be found in our consumptive patterns. The very meaning and significance of our lives today expressed in consumptive terms. The greater the pressures upon the individual to conform to safe and accepted social standards, the more does he tend to express his aspirations and his individuality in terms of what he wears, drives, eats- his home, his car, his pattern of food serving, his hobbies.

These commodities and services must be offered to the consumer with a special urgency. We require not only “forced draft” consumption, but “expensive” consumption as well. We need things consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced, and discarded at an ever increasing pace. We need to have people eat, drink, dress, ride, live, with ever more complicated and, therefore, constantly more expensive consumption. The home power tools and the whole “do-it-yourself” movement are excellent examples of “expensive” consumption.

- Victor Lebow, 1955

It is no wonder half the time I am blind to my materialism. The other half during which I am actually aware, I find it nearly impossible to escape it. Humans are hardwired to worship something - to spend their lives in service to something, whether that is social advancement, being a moral person, or hoarding away five lifetimes of useless goods. All of these are perused and evaluated on a comparative basis. Wealth is relative. Social standing is relative. Even our perceived morality is relative.

In one hand, it is next to impossible for one individual to rise up against the Corporate Machine that is America. However we can renew our minds daily, allowing truth to wash out the lies that our value is in consumption. Here are some words from Solomon, the wisest man ever to live.

I denied myself nothing my eyes desired;
I refused my heart no pleasure.
My heart took delight in all my labor,
and this was the reward for all my toil.
Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done
and what I had toiled to achieve,
everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind;
nothing was gained under the sun...

What do workers gain from their toil? I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race. He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live. That each of them may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all their toil—this is the gift of God. I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that people will fear him.

Evening Garden Walk

Morning Harvest

Gardening with Kids Gone Wrong

I ought to be smacked for always painting a picture of gardening bliss and pleasant domestitude. In reality, my legs are daily molested by mosquitoes, the Man-child wails when his clothes accidentally get wet, and due to intense sweat, I have to change clothes every time I come back inside. I'd complain about the Baby eating things outside, but compared to the cat poop he ate inside yesterday, I'm happy for him to consume how ever much mulch and dirt he likes.

Yesterday, the boys took an hour to fall asleep at nap time, after much wailing by the Baby who woke up before the Man-child. Wanting to let my older one sleep, I snuck the Baby out of his crib and we slipped outside because he wouldn't stop crying - apparently due to constipation. As soon as we were ready to cave beneath the sweat and bug bites, I tried to open the back door only to realize it was locked. This was also about the time the Baby was cured of his constipation.

So the two of us stood on the deck banging on the door hoping my other son would wake up and open the door for us. He didn't. That child sleeps like a rock at nap time, and so I ran around to the front with the Baby to ring the door bell before sprinting back to the deck. See, the deadbolt was unlocked, but someone had turned the other lock. If the Man-child came to our rescue at the back door while we weren't there, he might come outside and close the door behind him locking all three of us out.

After another prolonged session of banging, kicking, and yelling, the Baby was getting frantic due to his diaper pebbles and my frustration. We went back to the front door, and I proceeded to ring the doorbell repeatedly until the Man-child hollered back at us, "JUST A MINUTE!" Fortunately he came to the front door and was able to turn the key on the deadbolt. He claims he didn't hear any of the door pounding, just the door bell. Seriously? I nearly beat that door down! Ironically, my husband came waltzing in the front door only five minutes after our grand rescue.

So this is how gardening really goes. I managed to take some refuse to the compost bin before all this went down, but the real work was trying to wake up a napping boy.

Fungi

Every time it rains, clusters of gray tissue-thin fungi pop up in garden beds and walkways. They are so delicate, they vanish in a day or two. The scorching heat gave way to a week of downpours, and the yard is now peppered with strange mushrooms and happy weeds. The asparagus even got so bold as to send up new shoots, and the tomatoes are bursting at the seams. The summer squash aren't too thrilled about all the moisture, but they will be sure to forgive all as we bake out the rest of August.

Summer Blossoms

Coneflower

Cosmos

Dahlia

Hyacinth Bean

Hyacinth Water Lily

Giveaway! Kids Konserve Reuseable & Waste-Free Lunch Sack from Annie's

I love hearing about companies using creative marketing to both endorse their products and raise environmental awareness. Annie's Homegrown is doing just that with a reusable, recycled cotton lunch sack promotion. The sack is generously sized, has a spot on the back for the child's name, and has a velcro closure at the top. Here is their press release.

Annie’s Homegrown, Stonyfield YoKids, Honest Kids and Seventh Generation have teamed up to help families toss their brown bags this back-to-school season by offering a free Kids Konserve lunch sack with the purchase of participating products July 1, 2011 through September 30, 2011. Consumers are invited to visit Annies.com/bts11, print out the form then mail in proof of purchase of all four brands. Eligible products include: Any Annie’s Homegrown item Stonyfield YoKids Organic Yogurt 6-packs or Squeezers Honest Kids Organic Drinks 8-pack carton or 64-ounce bottle Seventh Generation Disinfectants (sprays or wipes) “We know lunches packed at home with real food are delicious, healthy options for kids,” said Aimee Sands, marketing director, Annie’s. “However, we also recognize that using new brown or plastic bags each day leads to unnecessary waste. That’s why we’re excited to launch this back-to-school promotion; it provides an easy way for families to reduce waste and be rewarded for trying a selection of products the whole family will enjoy.” The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that of the more than 3,960,000 tons of plastic bags, sacks and wraps produced annually, 90 percent are discarded and end up in landfills or oceans. Kids Konserve lunch sacks are made from recycled cotton and are great for packing school lunches, family picnics or on-the-go snacks. Kids Konserve (www.kidskonserve.com) provides lunch systems and products that are reusable, waste-free and sourced by the best and safest eco-friendly materials. More than a company of reusable products, Kids Konserve is a source of educational information that parents, schools and kids can use to keep learning about environmental stewardship. Annie’s Homegrown, Stonyfield YoKids, Honest Kids and Seventh Generation products are available at major grocery stores and other retail outlets nationwide. The free Kids Konserve reusable lunch sacks are available while supplies last. Limit one per customer.

LOVE SOWN GIVE AWAY ENTRY RULES
I have five lunch sacks to giveaway to my readers. To enter, please follow Love Sown via Google, NetworkedBlogs, Facebook, or Twitter (your choice!) and leave a comment with how many kids you have to give sacks to. I'll randomly select winners next Monday morning until all five sacks are accounted for. Be sure to provide a way for me to contact you if you win. "Kids at heart" are welcome to enter too!