Hello friends!

Today was absolutely gorgeous here in Missouri! It reminded me of spring! It's time to start planning my garden for this year! Our mailbox has been filled with seed catalogs! Oh, I just love browsing through them!! You may not know this, but I'm an avid gardener! I love it!

This past summer I was very late in getting our veggie garden in... I mean late... like how about July 4th and in the middle of drought late!? We had a lot going on, which delayed me. We also went to Colorado for my graduation. Still, I was determined... I wasn't going to go through a summer without some fried green tomatoes, and some tomatoes in the freezer for the winter...even if I wasn't harvesting them till fall. So, we tilled and we tilled, I prayed and I prayed, I weeded and I weeded, then I watered... and I watered... and I watered... Did I mention I watered??? Then, finally we had a storm, which was a blessing... 'cause I didn't have to water! However, the wind knocked one of my tomato cages to the ground and my promising tomato plant keeled over! Well, I wasn't going to let that get me down! So, with a bit of ingenuity I managed to piece the plant back together again with some mesh-stuff I found in the garage. Well, that little plant seemed to perk back up again and by fall it was bearing tomatoes! I planted 12 plants and asked for the Lord to bless them, even though it seemed impossible for them to survive in that drought. I thought, if only I could get 2 plants out of the twelve to survive that'd be great! The Lord was faithful and I didn't loose one plant and I did get those fried green tomatoes after all! ;)

I was thankful for my little pioneering tomatoes, but I had really hoped for some pumpkins in the fall too. But, I figured I'd be happy with whatever I had, since it was so late in the season. I didn't find any pumpkin seeds but I did find a packet of lemon cucumber seeds. Since I didn't have anything to loose, I planted them in a few little hills and prayed that God would bless them. The days of summer passed one after the other and I noticed that I had lemon cucumbers coming on the vine. However, the other plant growing on the hill beside them just didn't look quite the same! Then, to my surprise, one morning I found Jack-Be-Little pumpkins lying beside my lemon cucumbers! I was so happy... thrilled to tell the truth! I ended up with 20+ pumpkins off my one little plant!

I was so thankful for my little garden last summer! It was very, very small compared to what we normally put in, but I learned some big lessons too! For one thing, God knows the desires of our hearts and He does answer! Nothing is small or unimportant to Him! He knew I wanted some little pumpkins for the fall. He sweetly surprised me when I found them growing in my garden! I think that lil’ garden means more to me than many of my large gardens in the past.