Harvest Blessings

My garden was probably about this most neglected this summer as it has ever been. With a full wedding season to do flowers for, still quite a few music students to teach each week, working part-time at the floral shop and hosting AirBnB guests I just didn't have a lot of time left to spend in the garden. But even with my neglect we were blessed with many things to harvest and enjoy. My heart just overflows with thankfulness.

I just love the beauty of the Eggplant and it's flower. These first pictures were taken in late September. Up here in Northern Minnesota we don't count on being frost free after the beginning of September but not only do I think we had a fairly long frost free time anyway but we at our place are specially blessed with a longer growing season because the river gives us a special micro-climate were we get a much later frost then even our neighbors across the road from us. Yesterday and overnight we got snow and I was quite sure that was the end of my garden but I went up to find the the tomatoes still weren't dead and I was able to pick more of them and the cabbage, brussel sprouts and kale look great. It is rather amazing to me.

I just love the beauty of all the different flowers that we can grow easily in our garden! Zinnia, Calendula and Nasturtium 

Mara had started a lot of seeds in her apartment to plant in our garden - including Cabbages. I normally just plant them from seed in the garden but this was our best cabbage year so I think they enjoyed having a head start.

This was a prolific tomato plant. They were small so a little tedious to use but still nice to have.

Mara gave me Gladiola Bulbs for Mother's Day. They were gorgeous!

The beans did well. Some got away from me and I will either save for seed or dry to use that way. But I was able to put quite a lot of green beans in the freezer and I am very happy about that.

I have been able to can some salsa and tomatoes. I am thinking I might manage to do one more batch still.

Another thing we have been harvesting just lately is Shaggy Mane mushrooms that decided to pop up heavily in a section of our yard. We have included them in several meals and both Mara and I have frozen some as well. They are delicious! I love mushrooms!

Megan made this custard the other day using eggs from our chickens and Milk from my parents' goats. It is always fun to make and enjoy delicious food that comes from our own homestead.

Seeds saved from the dill and some brassicas (which I plan to use for sprouting), Apples from my parents (I did have one tree produce a few decent sized crab apples this year and another one that was prolific in unusable crab apples) - we are thankful for all the apples that they share. I have been able to make and can some applesauce and dehydrate quite a few. I still hope to put up some apple pie filling. Also pictured is a basket of tomatoes and peppers. 

Not something from the garden but branches from our woods and yard have been frequently heating our home this fall. I love having a fire in the fireplace that leaves the house feeling so cozy!

A special part of the harvest is picking the flowers! :-) I love them so.

Last Saturday we went beyond the garden harvesting and butchered chickens. Our laying hens were over 3 years old and were not laying much anymore. So it was time to do something. I was feeling a little overwhelmed by the project but Thomas and Mara said they would help. What a huge blessing. We all learned some new things that we hadn't done when just helping before. It actually went pretty smoothly and I am thankful to have that job done. I cooked pretty much all of it down for quite a few hours (since they were old and tough) and then canned a bunch of broth with meat in it. That is a lovely addition to both of our cupboards.

Megan meanwhile was working on Apple Pies. We also found more mushrooms that day.

Those are all of my harvest pictures but I thought I would share some other fun fall pictures as well...

Last Saturday after the butchering some friends came over and we went canoeing for a while. It was so fun to get out on the water and enjoy the fall colors there. It was also great to spend time with my new friends. A totally fun experience.

After ladies Bible study on Sunday we had fun roasting Hotdogs for supper. Heidi is especially found of doing this and she requested it. I was super thankful she did as it was a a fun way to get outside and enjoy fall just a bit more.

I cleaned our Chimney earlier this week (one of those activities that I hadn't done before but really wasn't very hard). The view from the roof was beautiful! 

How is your Autumn going? Are you counting your many blessings?

 

A Beautiful Day

This morning I happened to notice this quote on the top of my calendar:

"Give every day the chance to become the most beautiful day of your life." Mark Twain

That really struck a chord with me today. I am a lover of beauty and I love having beautiful days. So what makes a day extra beautiful to me? How can I give this (and every day) a chance to be a beautiful day? Here are some things that I came up with that I think help in making days beautiful for me...

• Starting my day with Prayer and time in God's word. This gives me proper focus and peace to go through my day. I believe this leads to beautiful days more than anything else. Part of my prayer each morning when I rise is that the Holy Spirit would work mightily in me and that God would give me the strength that I need for this day. As I read God's word I am looking for insight in how I can more closely follow God's will for my life. 
• Keeping my eyes open to all the gifts of beauty that God has sent into my life that day. Sometimes I am good at noticing and thanking God for these things and sometimes I am not. The beautiful days in my life are the days that I do a good job of noticing. I like to actually write a list each day of things I am thankful for but the noticing and saying "thank you" needs to go far beyond that one list in the morning. The pictures below are a few of the beautiful things that I have noticed and thanked God for this month.
• Trusting God even when it is hard. There are days that are hard. We might hurt physically or emotionally - whatever. But when I surrender to God and go ahead and trust through my tears that day becomes a beautiful day to me.
• Having times of truly fellowshipping and enjoying the company of others. When I truly take the time to listen to others and learn a little of their story I am so incredibly blessed. Those are beautiful times for me. I am also blessed when others listen to me and I can share a little of my life with them. I have had so many of those beautiful times just lately - I am so Thankful to God for that. I am not always good at listening. Sometimes I think myself to busy. Sometimes I just get to thinking about something else while somebody is talking to me. This is something I am working on. God is so patient with me! A couple of surprise incidents of this lately that I truly enjoyed was last Wednesday I met our AirBnB guest who was from Germany and she and I ended talking for 2 hours. Then on Sunday a new neighbor who I had tried to go meet a couple of times (I left notes as she wasn't home), came by and we had a great time getting acquainted. 
• "Praying through your day" was a phrase I heard while out at Nationwide Youth Roundup in July. It is basically the idea of praying without ceasing but it seemed a little more feasible. :-) I have been working on doing this and it is a huge blessing. I still have a long way to go in making this my life completely but with the Holy Spirit's help I believe it will happen. The idea is to invite God into every conversation and activity that you do, to keep a running conversation with Him throughout your day. This truly can lead to beautiful days!
• Fulfilling God's purpose for my life. There are things that God has blessed each one of us with, gifts and desires that He has given us to serve and bless others with and to Honor Him with. When I use the gifts that He has given me to the best of my ability I feel fulfilled and that makes for a pretty beautiful day. For me that often means doing something with music, flowers, adventuring, creating things or spending time with people (and for me I generally prefer to do any of that while spending time with people too). For you I am sure the list is much different. God created you with just the gifts and desires that He wants you to have. 

Those are some of my ideas in how to have beautiful days. I would love to hear your thoughts on this as well in the comments section!

Some of the beauty that I found in my days this August....

Produce from our garden - as weedy and messy as it is God still blesses us abundantly!

A deer waiting patiently by the roadside. Megan and I had fun watching it.

I had a lovely time driving along Lower Red Lake while making a flower delivery last Saturday. This picture doesn't do it justice.

Fun architecture while exploring Stillwater, MN 

A beautiful Netta on the bank of the St. Croix River.

Theo, Anna and Gigi were my other beautiful companions on that outing.

It was so neat to get to spend a little time fellowshipping with Wayne and Betty when we happened to be in the Twin Cities at the same time.

I always love spending time with these lovely ladies - Anna and Margaret (above) and Christy with Me (below)

My beautiful Megan enjoying some very attractive desserts from Cossettos.

We got to see my niece Beatrice at her job at Cossettos. Megan and I loved getting to explore that beautiful building a little bit and pick from the many delicious and beautiful options of desserts. Beatrice isn't working there for long as soon she is headed to Pakistan to help with mission work and I am super excited for her in getting to do that!!

So many beautiful things about this picture... This is a small portion of our church group - people who love the Lord and they love and care for one another. We are continually working to do that better. In this picture we were preparing gifts to give out in our community to spread the message that God loves them and that we care about them too. Several of these girls went with me last week to go and invite people that live near the church building to come to an event that we were planning. I was so blessed by their eagerness and cheerfulness.

One of the Crazy Olympic games that we had at our church picnic. It was fun for me to get to lead those games and for so many to get involved and enjoy participating.

Berry picking amidst the wildflowers. So many gifts from our Creator. Sometimes it is hard to grasp just how many He gives us each and every day!

These very neat and interesting little rosettes were growing on the rose bushes where we were picking. I have spent a lot of time out in the woods and fields and don't remember seeing this before. A pretty lovely gift that we enjoyed that day.

My beautiful sister Martha picking berries amidst the wildflowers. 

A bouquet from a wedding last weekend. I feel incredibly blessed to get to do the work that I do. God truly has made my life beautiful.

 I hope you have a beautiful day!!!

Happy Independence Day!

   I had a great day and feel incredibly blessed. I hope yours was good too!

   I feel blessed to live in a nation like the United States of America. A country that has a lot of flaws and problems but still was founded out strong principles and one where we still can celebrate more freedom than much of the world. I am grateful.

   There have been a couple of reminders to me today of how we get to choose our perspective and our reaction to the circumstances in our life.

  - One reminder was seeing/hearing various negative reactions on the condition of our country and how they didn't feel like celebrating. There are times for mourning to be sure and times to take a stand but I also think it is helpful to us if we look for the good in the situation and be grateful for the very many ways that we are blessed in this country. Just my thoughts on that. :-)

   - The other one was personal to me. For many years we have had 4th of July parties. I love hosting and it was something we worked together at as a family. And then the kids started going to Teen Bible Camp which is over the 4th usually and then Ken left. This year it was just me rattling around in this big house (Jonathan moved into his own apartment in April). Mara, Thomas and Malcolm had left on Saturday to spend the summer in Wyoming, Aaron and Megan had gone to camp and Jonathan was working most of the day. My first reaction was that I didn't feel like hosting a party on my own. But then I decided to go ahead. I was feeling  a bit blue about this day but God turned it into an awesome one!

Since Jonathan had to work most of the day I checked if he had any time available and he had some in the morning so we met up at 8:30 and biked around the lake. I really enjoyed getting to visit and spend that time with him. Lake Bemidji is around 16 miles around and we did it in 1 hour and 20 minutes. It was a lovely start to the day.

Next up on the agenda was time with these lovely ladies. I taught Barb her piano lesson at 10:30 and then we had Bible study followed by lunch. We usually do it at my place but we usually all contribute to have lovely lunches. It was a great time and everybody came dressed appropriately for the day which was fun.

 I decorated my table for the day which is something I love to do. I used my lovely Paul Revere Cream Pitcher for putting some of my garden flowers in. That made me think about all the lovely ladies that got that set of dishes for me this winter. I am very blessed!

  This evening a group of over 50 came to hang out at my place. Only a few of them did I invite before yesterday afternoon. It was pretty impromptu but people brought things to share - we had a lovely meal and some lovely times of fellowship.

SuSan did the majority of the dishes which was a blessing!

My friend on the left recently published a book and we enjoyed visiting with her about that. If you are looking for a new read which is the interesting story of her troubled childhood where she didn't know who her Dad was to finding hope in God the Father, I would encourage you to check out her book.

It was a lovely evening to sit outside and visit. The mosquitoes don't seem to be as bad as they were for a while this Spring.

This little car usually gets a lot of love when we had lots of little ones over.

The men's area. We do visit together sometimes but often end up a little segregated. :-)

The kids enjoyed using different wheels on our driveway.

Matthias had his own private chip snacking place on the steps. 

  This has been a wonderful day - I am so Thankful to God for it! I hope if you might be struggling with feeling blue or lonely or an any sort of a funk that you will make the choice to be thankful for the good things that you do have and start counting the ways that God has blessed you. Reach out to others and seek to encourage them. I believe you will be blessed!