The Garden’s Glory

September 9, 2013Stuff I Actually ThinkJeanie

I actually really believe and wholeheartedly encourage this! People sometimes jump too big into gardening, get overwhelmed and never try again. START SMALL, I say, and then work your way, little by little, towards sustainability and good health!

So, I love Pinterest and I love Gardening and I love that Pinterest lets me “pin” good gardening ideas (occasionally really bad gardening tips) and all sorts of inspirations to my heart’s content. I use Pinterest like a bulletin board, where you tack something you don’t want to lose. I use it like a file of clippings – just pinning anything and everything that strikes my fancy: articles, photos, good websites – all things I can go back and explore later. Over the last almost-2 years (the length of time I have been Pinterest-ing),

I have pinned garden-related things like these…

Garden Quotes:

“Leave room in your garden for the angels to dance.”

“I live in the garden. I only sleep in the house.”

“Gardening is cheaper than therapy and you get tomatoes.”

Ideas I want to use to get my grandbebes excited about gardening and growing things and being outside.

It’s working!

Instilling the knowledge of the miracle of planting and growing food and flowers into the next generation is a very worthwhile endeavour. Having some fun games out there, too, does not hurt the cause!

I find help on specific crops and gardening ideas I want to check out:

Hey, why not?

Inspirations – gardens that I dream of tending one day, with all the accompanying barns, outbuildings and chickens!

First, you should be aware, this is how I see myself in the garden…not as the over-heated, dirt-smudged-faced, sweaty mess that I actually am.

Nice, neat little greenhouse boxes. Yes, says my left brain as I venture out with hoses that never crinkle and in the cutest garden togs ever.

Truly one of my FAV Houzz images ever. below! In. my. dreams!

Then there is the more natural, slightly dirtier garden that leads to another garden, that leads to another garden, and so on and so forth…

Things Dave needs to build for me this very minute!

I have long-wanted, since I started gardening in 1997, as a matter of fact, some simple and beautiful obelisks for my garden. How fortuitous to have found these plans. *batting eyelashes now…

And why not one of these while you’re at it, Dave Rhoades?

Just cute garden paraphernalia.

Every year things grow that flat-out surprise me.

A red toolbox planter…hmmm…where could I put Dave’s junk?

There isn’t like a theme going on here or anything…but I seem to desire an outdoor bathtub and an outdoor shower…

Honestly, I dare not do a garden search on Pinterest, or I’d never have time to actually garden again for all the eye candy and good ideas I’d be finding.

See my Pinterest Garden Board {{HERE} ‘cuz it is fun and educational!

It’s a Birthday Potluck

September 7, 20134 Home & Garden/Food & Seasons, Stuff I Actually Thinkgarden tomatoes, homegrown tomatoes, tomato, tomato dishesJeanie

a.k.a A Good Excuse to have Lots of Homegrown Tomato Dishes on display.

Yes, other people are bringing food, as well. But God willing and I get this right, here is what I am working on: Tomatoes, of course!

A marinara sauce, a simple tomato marinara from the juiciest, most delicious tomatoes in the world, which just happen to be growing in my backyard this very moment! There will be lots of garlic and a generous chiffonade of basil from the very same garden. Just enough Kosher salt to add the perfect kitchen blessing and very nearby, if not in it, some Italian sausage and beef meatballs. It will be served with both extra thick spaghetti noodles for the kiddos et moi, and some hot, steamy spaghetti squash (also from my garden) for the Whole30s {not me} among us.

Fresh Bruschetta, which is essentially the same as the marinara, truth be told, but served cold, uncooked, all tangy and garlic-y and taste-buds-exploding YUM! I have recently discovered eating it atop garlic-grilled portabella (also known as portobello, whichever), and that is, dear readers and friends, divine, as well. Otherwise, some hot, crunchy baguette, brushed with olive oil and toasted, then rubbed with a fresh clove of garlic is a wonderful vehicle of delivery, soaking up the seasoned juice so beautifully as it does.

Red & White Salad – with some green for good measure. This is an old standby and should be made daily in the summer kitchen. My dad loves it. I discovered that if I make my own dressing from really good extra-virgin olive oil and white wine vinegar, it takes it to a whole new level. It is simply very very red chopped tomatoes, very green and juicy chopped cucumbers, and a whole Sweet Vidalia onion chopped. Toss in really good Itailan Dressing and it is actually refreshing to eat for breakfast, lunch, after a workout – whenever!

Caprese Salad. I mean, how can you improve on the traditional Insalata Caprese? It’s a simple salad, made of sliced fresh mozzarella, tomatoes and basil, seasoned with salt, and olive oil. Perfection, really, but Dave brought home these tiny Mozzarella Fresca Perlines (pearl-sized little balls) and they seem like they might get lost on a traditional Caprese plate, so I am going to use them with bow tie pasta, and of course I’ll drizzle with a sweet, dark balsamic. That goes without saying, yes?

This is a time of glory for my homemade tomatoes. I cannot help myself.

~~~~~~~~~~

Oh, and there will be some delicious fresh-made Basil & Walnut-Pesto to go on the pasta if some one prefers. And some Garlic-Seafood Scampi, too. For the birthday boy (Tristan).

I am also working on Tomatilla Salsa and Tomatilla Guacamole today. But that is an entirely different situation, altogether. :)

Real Community

September 6, 20131 Christ is All, Stuff I Actually ThinkTom & LisaJeanie

The ones who hear you’ve been displaced {kicked-to-the-curb, removed, dismissed, expelled, terminated, cut off, locked out, let go}, whether you deserved to be disinherited or not, and come outside the borders and stand there with you anyway. Those are your people.

There won’t be as many as you thought. But wow, you’ll finally understand the worth of the ones who stay.

David left…and escaped to the cave…When his brothers and his father’s household heard about it, they went down to him there. All those who were in distress or in debt or discontented gathered around him… (1 Samuel 22.1-2)

They might not look like the most beautiful bunch at first, but I bet to David, coming out of that cave, they looked amazing.

Look around. You are not alone.

{Plenty}

September 3, 20131 Christ is All, 4 Home & Garden/Food & Seasons, Stuff I Actually Thinkabundance, galatians 6, gardening, harvest, harvesting, peppers, planting, plenty, scriptures about gardening, scriptures about harvest, sowing and reaping, tomatoesJeanie

[the LORD] will fill your barns with grain,

and your vats will overflow with good wine.

Proverbs 3.9-10

I haven’t gone out to harvest today’s garden goodies yet. But this is already in my “tomato bowl” this morning. The bowl is 18″ diameter, 6″ deep. And full – 4 types of tomatoes.

For a few months, gardening has been tending to, working, weeding, watering, feeding, watching over with hope and expectancy.

Then suddenly…

He who cultivates his land will have plenty of bread…

Proverbs 28.19a

I can hardly get used to this heavy-with-harvest time. I go out to work a little, water a bit and come in with so much reward, my arms and shirt filled with garden goodies of all kinds – enough to enjoy and share! And I am still overwhelmed by these daily benefits (loaded with them!), astonished with joy over finding new mercies among the leaves, sort of amazed and giggling at the miracle of it: Look what God has done! I apologize in advance – I cannot help myself. I throw a load on the counter and whip out the iPhone. *snap!

Dave caught me scrolling through my phone’s camera roll and smiling. Because this is the time I was waiting for {{nearly breathless, quietly~quietly hoping}}, and am yet so happily dazzled over: harvest time! I knew down deep it was coming {hoped-against-hope it would}, but I have still been captured by surprise!

And I will restore for you the years that the locust has eaten—the hopping locust, the stripping locust, and the crawling locust…

And you shall eat in plenty and be satisfied and praise the name of the Lord, your God, Who has dealt wondrously with you. And My people shall never be put to shame.

Joel 2.25-26

It takes all my strength not to plaster all 37 images I have taken of my veggies in the last week right here on this blog. Yesterday, as I was juggling red, juicy tomatoes and heavy, dark green cucumbers with assorted peppers and just-right zucchini with straightneck squash to bring them into the house, it was perhaps the third load, as the sun was shining on me and the purple petunias were cheering me on in their perfumed and wavy way, I heard a voice (in my spirit, not literally) narrating my story from heaven ~

“The seeds were buried in hot, black soil on a spring day by faith. Waiting, not always patiently, but certainly with expectancy…waiting…Then one day, the harvest became so plentiful she could barely keep up ~ armfuls of plenty, abundance filling every nook, every cranny. The time of abundance had come. At last”

Yes, I know I am a little over-the-top about gardening, but don’t you also find it incredibly stunning that God allows us to join Him in creating a profusion of life-giving food? Don’t you think it is an honor to get to tend to these miraculous growing things and then He just gives them to us?! I am a humbled recipient of the summer yield, a wealth of delicious, seed-bearing, life-giving, nutritious, lovely sustenance for my body and soul – this from a seed I watched die in the soil. Supernatural provision, people!

I am intoxicated with gratefulness for the Creator. I am.

Do not be deceived…A man reaps what he sows…Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. Galatians 6.7-9 NIV

Labor Day

September 2, 20132 Mi Familia, 6 Looking Back // Memories!Jeanie

This actually has nothing to do with Labor Day, except that these were my labor-days. I was just trying to remember, and…

Tara

My first official labor contraction with Tara was 5:55 am. I got to the hospital at 6:45 pm (after a day of hanging out with my mom), was wheeled upstairs and Tara was born at 7:16 pm. So 13 hours and 21 minutes total labor, but only 31 minutes of it at the hospital.

Stephanie

With Stephanie, I think I was sort of in labor while I was sleeping, but since I was sleeping and she wasn’t due for another 5 1/2 or 6 weeks, I wasn’t even noticing. There were other circumstances, but suffice it say the doctor told us to come to the hospital because I wasn’t really in active labor, but maybe I was…and I think we got there around 11 am. She was born at 2:10 in the afternoon. So, I guess I was in labor for at least 10 hours (but not really) and only about 3 hours and 10 minutes at the hospital.

Tredessa

Tredessa was so late. They decided to induce. I arrived at the hospital around 4 pm to get ready for it, but I had gone into very mild labor around noon, while eating nachos at the Target snack bar. So, while they decided what to do, Dave and I played Scrabble waiting for the doctor to arrive. I was winning, but our game got interrupted when she suddenly decided to arrive…and the doctor almost didn’t! She was born at 7:40 pm. So about 7 hours and 40 minutes of labor, 3 hours and 40 minutes of it in the hospital. Dang, I wanted to finish that game!

David II

Rocky. Oh boy, for real! We were suppose to be leaving town, but I knew the doctor wouldn’t be happy. But we were in the car on the way, at around 11 am, I was like, Oh-I’m in labor. We stopped for lunch and it seemed to stop. We started to go again and it started again. We turned around and went home. We took a nap and there was no active labor at all. I thought I was just freaking myself out. So we said to each other, “Let’s throw caution to the wind.” Famous last words.

We were 2 hours into our journey at around 5:30 pm when I realized I was having steady 10-minutes-apart labor contractions. Ay-yi-yi. But I tried to tell myself I was just doing it to myself again. We arrived in Gary, IN to see my parents. I grabbed a clock and got into a quiet place to figure it out. They were solid, true contractions. Soooooooo…..I decided to get back in the car and drive the three hours home quickly so the doctor wouldn’t know I’d left town (am I a people-pleaser, or what?). My parents graciously offered to keep the three girls and we left their house around 7 pm – planning to make it to Kokomo. Just before we actually left the metro-area, just about to hit the interstate towards Kokomo, I was feeling freaked out and there was a hospital. I decided – Hey, let’s just run in there and if they tell me I am not even in labor, I can just calm the heck down and get on with life. Let’s just check for the sake of argument. They checked. I was dilated to 6 at 7:30 when we got there and when I told them I needed to leave immediately to get back to Kokomo, pretty sure they were signaling security in case I actually tried to leave. Rocky was born at 9:28 pm. We’d have had him on the side of the road if we’d tried to make it home.

So, a total of very sporadic labor of around 11 1/2 hours, but only about 2 hours at the hospital.

Stormie

Finally. I got this thing, people. She was also (like Dessa) verrrrrry late. But I woke up, boom! 6 am – in labor! The neighbors took the other 4 kids and actually lived across the street from the hospital, so I was there in just a few minutes. She was born at 10 am straight up. So 4 hours of labor, maybe 3 1/2 of it at the hospital.

Two lucky things for me:

I never had to do a birth in the middle of the night after a long day. I always got my sleep. Was I lucky, or what? maybe God was sparing everyone around me? I don’t know.
And – I obviously preferred laboring anywhere but at the hospital, if at all possible. At least 75% of my laboring was done on my own terms: not in the hospital, which I highly recommend to you current baby-bearers! Really!

But make no mistake – it was L A B O R !!! Hard labor. Oh, I love good, hard work! I do!

Technology

September 2, 2013Stuff I Actually ThinkJeanie

Mind-boggling, isn’t it?

Song for a Sunday // He’s All I Need

September 1, 20131 Christ is All, 5 Songs I am Singinghe's all i need, jesus, need, pentecostal chorus, pentecostal music, prayerJeanie

I’ve sung this song a million heart-felt times, as a Pentecostal preacher’s daughter and beyond. The simple lyric and soul-and-spirit-engaging melody could draw us right in, as I was growing up, and make us Pentecostals worship and cry out to God for a long time on a Sunday night – back when there were still Sunday night services.

He’s all I need. He’s all I need. Jesus is all I need~

He’s all I need. He’s all I need. Jesus is all I need!

Author-unknown

The Crabbs captured the feel pretty well here.

No matter how sophisticated I ever get in my song choices or worship, in the really intimate times with God, this one still says what I need to say, the way I need to say it. Because Christ IS all, Jesus is everything.

I am helpless, hopeless, broken. I struggle, I fail, I fall again and again. I blow it, when will that ever stop?…

But He? Is ever faithful, ever true, ever forgiving. In my helpless state ~

You are the Source

You are the Light

You are the Life

You are the Answer

You are my Help

You are my Provision

You are my Champion

You are my Creator

You are my Restorer

You are my Shield

You are my Peace

You are my Rest

You are my God, my Father, my true Abba-Dad

You are my All in All, and all I really need.

This song and me – both relics. But my need for a Savior? Current. Very current. Thank goodness there is this ~

Music

The Year of the Tomato

August 31, 20134 Home & Garden/Food & Seasons, Stuff I Actually Thinkbeefsteak tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, early girl tomatoes, garden, heirloom tomatoes, tomato, tomatoesJeanie

Ah, yes…

Some years, the zucchini hogs all the glory, just producing and producing and flowering and fruiting out all over the place. the cuke has had its year and green beans know how to arrive in glory.

But I garden mostly for tomatoes and this year is just a really good tomato year. When I stumbled in to the kitchen for coffee this morning and saw tomatoes in bowls and on trays on every counter and the kitchen table, too, I realized that I must have picked at least 3 dozen tomatoes yesterday – to add to a couple dozen still just sitting around.

That included tomatoes from 4 plants: an heirloom tomato, which, as they are known to be prone, contracted a disease and is dying, but still yielding its’ fruit like crazy (a lesson to be learned); a Sweet-100 cherry tomato plant which is madly fruiting golf-ball-sized tomatoes, an over-achiever to be sure; an Early Girl, which wasn’t particularly early, but which is certainly giving us armfuls of perfectly-globed 6-8 oz. tomatoes; and finally the beefsteak. I picked almost a dozen of them yesterday and at least 6 of them were almost a pound each. They hang off a slice of bread – they’re that big. And that is fun. Dave was helping me show some off (below) – but then I got more!

I always tell everyone, gushing and exuding true love, “If you can only garden one thing, make it the tomato.” And the tomato is loving me back this year, delicious on my taste buds and in my tummy! :)

Poblano Heaven

August 30, 20134 Home & Garden/Food & Seasons, 5 Songs I am Singing, Stuff I Actually Thinkchile relleno, dinner, garden meals, green chile, mariachi music, poblano peppersJeanie

Oh-my-goodness, people // tonight was the night, oh, yes it was! I made my Cheater Chile Rellenos with the delectable-sweet-mildly-spicy-luscious Poblanos from my garden!

They are cheater, to be sure. What part? I did not make a homemade batter, nor take the time to make my own Green Chile (which, as they say in Colorado, is its’ own food group!) for smothering purposes.

These peppers came from one plant in one square foot of my garden (and there are more to come!).

I rubbed them with a little bit of olive oil, then roasted them over a hot grill, until they blistered and blackened a little. Then into a Saran-wrapped bowl they went to continue to steam and soften.

About an hour later, using gloves (pepper disaster last weekend – different story, yikes!), I gently removed the blistered outer skin leaving the dark green, smokey, savory amazing flavor of the pepper right where it belongs (never ever run them under cold water to peel, it works to clean them, but the flavor is washing down the drain)!

Next, I split them open, removed the seeds, stuffed them with shredded Monterey Jack cheese and then wrapped them in an egg-roll wrapper (purists make an egg batter, but I like the crispness and simplicity of the egg roll wrapper – thus, I am a cheater).

Then they were deep-fried just until the wrapper achieved that slightly brown, crispy condition.

Finally – smothered in Green Chile from Santiagos, for that truly Colorado-style, pork-roast and chile flavor.

I also made cilantro-lime rice and had some gor-geous Colorado-grown sweet corn (with real butter and some red pepper). We had the homemade salsa and huge bowl of guacamole (thanks-to-the-hubs::see previous post on his hilarious generosity) with OTB chips, and some cold, incredibly sugary-sweet, chunks of watermelon from the Western Slope for dessert, but really?

My heart was full with just the Poblanos on the plate —-smothered in green chile! My very soul was satisfied!!!

Oh, I adore a Poblano – they are my sweet Green Chile choice (even over the much more well-known and tasty Hatch). Poblanos are mild, yet the most wholly flavor-packed of the chiles, and beautiful in shape and color, to boot!

Did a Mariachi Band show up as I prepared them? Was I dancing the entire time? You be the judge! Go ahead – guess!

It was so good, I cannot even tell you!

I grew a whole bunch of okra seeds

August 29, 20134 Home & Garden/Food & Seasons, Stuff I Actually Thinkbeefsteak tomatoes, Brussell's leaves, garden, late-summer garden, okra, sweet-potato vineJeanie

As okra goes, I stunk at growing it this year. I kept waiting too long to pick it and ended up with a whole bunch of brown, hard seed pods. So I have a lot of seeds…but did I wait long enough to remove them, or should I have let them completely die off on the plant? Will they be useable?

Guess I’ll be back to frozen okra when I need it. Does anyone ever see it fresh anywhere? At Sprouts? Anyone?

Meanwhile – I was noting the okra leaf…haven’t I seen something like that somewhere before? Oh, yes: everywhere in Colorado!!!

In other {GARDEN} news~

What is the deal with the beefsteak tomatoes? Are they really like twins or triplets and sometimes even like quardruplets that just join together so we can beam over our 2-pound blushers? I have got these gigantic beefsteaks on the vine, heavy, juicy and so deliciousssssssssss! Yes, I am scheduling regular BLTs at this time in my life!

Does anyone know if you can eat the leaves of the sweet potato vine – especially if they are completely hogging up all the room in all of my flower pots?

Down to the last of the gargantuan Brussel’s Sprouts leaves. Washing two big sink-loads as we speak, which will give me space for Chinese Cabbage for the fall garden! I popped some seeds in 2 days ago and in this heat, they have already germinated! Perfect!

Now-these leaves – You can stir fry them, use them in a fritata, cook them the same way you would cabbage or broccoli or kale, you can use them as a wrap for a crab filling, make a sausage soup, roast them with garlic or make flavored, baked chips out of them. I am sharing these ideas for my kids because everybody is going home with some Brussels’ leaves! :)

Do you know what I love most about this time of year? It’s ripe.

When I stepped outside this morning, the air just smelled ripe. Everything tastes better, all the colors are richer and the garden is reaching its’ intended glory. This is why I planted and weeded and fed and tended. For now. The world is heavy with ripened fruit…

Jeanie Rhoades // Thought Collage

Wholehearted-living somewhere in the middle of all the years.