Gardening is good for your health

Yep!
Gardening is good for your health! Not just the vegetables and fruit you get out of it, but the actual process of gardening- getting your hands dirty, pulling weeds, picking your vegetables, it's healthy for you! Ever since we started the process of gardening we have just enjoyed it so much. I thought maybe it was just a nice new hobby, getting back to the way God created things to be, but it's obviously been so much more! Anyways, I'm not good at explaining all the technical stuff, so here's an article that does a better job!


Why Gardening is healthy for you


Every morning I walk through my garden and then every evening right before dark. I find that it calms me, and puts me in awe of how God created everything to work and to grow. I just love it so much. I want to invite everyone over to come see my garden but I doubt they'll have the excitement I do about it lol


Lately I've been training my cucumbers to climb up tomato cages instead of spreading out on the ground and taking up so much space. They were stubborn at first, but now they're catching on, climbing up on their own, wrapping the vines around the poles and back to the stem. It's like they have a mind of their own!

I'm going to take this in a slightly different direction for a moment. Yesterday in church we sang "He Loves Us". The verse goes:
"He is jealous for me
Love's like a hurricane
I am a tree
Bending beneath the weight of
His wind and mercy
When all of a sudden, I am unaware of these afflictions eclipsed by glory
and I realize just how beautiful You are and how great your affections are for me."

To be honest, I've heard that song so much that it was on my "overplayed" list, but this sunday is really spoke to my heart. This past week the Lord has really been showing me how He'll meet me where I am. I'm pregnant, and when I'm pregnant I'm grumpy, tired and irritable. All I want to do is rest. I don't want to get up and read the Bible. I don't want to get up and do anything. When we sang this song the Lord brought to my mind my garden blowing with the breeze. I often times will let the kids play outside and I'll just sit back and admire the garden. How the leaves sway in the breeze, how the bee's jump blossom to blossom, and I just take delight in it. Well with the image of the garden in my mind, that was me...I was swaying to the wind of his mercy and just like I take such delight in my garden, even more so He delights in me, His child.


This big big powerful mighty God delights in me. He sets His affections on ME, this grumpy mean pregnant woman. I don't even like myself half the time.....but He still does. He loves me so much that He'll meet me where I am, He'll speak to me through the garden, He speaks "my language" because He delights in me. 

He'll meet you where you are too, just take a step out. 

Garden Update

I don't really have much to talk about today. Life seems to the be same most days, and I'm good with that! We get a little variety of change from time to time like this week we're dealing with a yucky stomach virus.

The biggest news around here, well, at least for me, is to see the garden growing! Being that it's my first "real" garden I'm anxious to see it start producing fruit and veggies! We have a few things growing!

We had our first strawberry not long ago, infact, we had a second one shortly after that the kids were excited to share with their Mimi.

We have a few tomato's growing as well. Not sure how they're going to do though since the plant doesn't seem to be doing very well. These are from two of my potted tomato plants and I just don't think they were getting what they needed from the pot. I transplanted them to the ground. I'm hoping it's not too late to save them.

We also have a cute little roma tomato growing. The squash look like they're going to blossom with flower any day now! Just waiting!

Just because I love to see progression pictures, here's what the garden looked like when we planted everything at first:

and now 3 weeks later:

It's not the BEST picture in the world, but you can see how much bigger the plants are. I should go through row by row and take pictures. Yeah, I'm pretty nerdy and into my garden like that lol.

Well, that's all I have for now! Happy gardening!