This Summer's Garden

We put our garden in about a month late this year due to our little trip Out West. The week before we went on vacation we planted a few seeds: some sugar snap peas, carrots, kale, and lettuce. When we came home all but the lettuce had come up. I think the lettuce may have died in the Memorial Day heat wave the Midwest had while we were out in California.

I had a medical scare the week after we got home. The kind where you are thinking about how many years or months you might have to live. We had to wait over a weekend for a test, and that weekend when we left the health clinic unsure of the future all I wanted to do was garden. I wanted to get my flowers and vegetables and put them in the ground. I wanted to weed and care for the earth I that has been given to my care.

So the professor and I did just that. We went to the local garden store with the children and picked over what was left of the vegetables and flowers. I went back the next day and picked out some new perennials. If I was going to be super sick, I wanted to see flowers all summer, and I wanted the flowers to be there for years to come. Now, that I know I am not super sick, I am just happy to have the flowers to remind me of the goodness of being alive.

But that weekend we did not know, and we weeded the out of control garden beds, and dug and planted our tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, basil, parsley, and cilantro. We planted our dusty miller, panseys, and allysum. We dug up the grass on either side of our front walk, giving the sod to a neighbor who came by walking her dogs. We put in a decorative egder, and planted black-eyed susans, coneflowers and nepeta.

And now our garden is ready for summer. Our raspberries are ripening. I am slowly getting better from an illness that wiped me out after our trip, but turned out to be one I will survive.

The professor and I are writing this summer--he is on sabbatical this Fall and is writing a book. I am trying to get my projects in order. I am planning my own book idea (still in the very baby stages, but I want to get it ready to propose to a publisher this summer). I have home school books to order. And the next school year on the horizon. We still have a subject or two to wrap up (MATH).

But mostly we are just enjoying that it is summer. The windows are open most days. I am trying to rest on the patio. The kids are taking swim lessons, and scouring the garden for food that is ripe. And the flowers are blooming, and will continue to bloom.

Flowers and shrubs, bless the Lord. Praise and exalt Him above all forever.