God is just so AWESOME!

I feel led by the Lord to share my testimony here. So I have been working on writing it. In doing so, I was able to see where I was, where God has brought me, and some things that God just hasn't completed in me.

Every need I had, He has provided for. As I worked on my testimony, I saw places where I still needed God to work, to bring healing and deliverance. Scary places that I wasn't sure I wanted to go again. I'm still on that journey, but I see God in it. Every need I had was taken care of. If I needed a friend to come along side and pray, that was provided. (I have some awesome friends who are just prayer warriors. I want to be like them when I grow up! Truely Titus 2 women.) If I needed someone to step in and give Godly advice (read correction here), it was provided with love. When I needed to read something to address a certain issue or bring light to it, I somehow "ran across" the right article, Bible passage, or radio show. There were battles as well. The enemy doesn't want us whole, healed, delivered. If he can keep us beat down with his lies, he can keep us from experiencing the best the LORD has for us.

I knew that for God to use my testimony, I had to be transparent. This was the most difficult thing I have ever written. I have poetry that I have written at some of the most difficult times of my life that don't even come close. I am now writing it 2 paragraphs at a time and I am not finished with it. My prayer is that I get through it and condense it but I feel I need to wait for the Lord for direction in that.

I guess I said all that to say, God has been there through every difficult step. He has provided for my needs and my families needs. He has been my shield and my fortress. I have learned to lean more on Him and less on me.

Garden Update!!

This is an update:
I am having so much fun with this. I love my garden, I love being in it and watching it grow. It has started getting hotter here so I have to go out early in the morning or late in the evening.


These are the daylillies my aunt and uncle gave me this year for my birthday. Aren't they cute!!


This is the Lily they gave me last year! Very pretty! It multiplied 4 times this year!




This is one of the bucket brigade. They are growing faster than I expected.


This is our corn. They aren't all the same hight. Don't know why.

This is zucchini. If you look really really closely you can see a baby zucchini. It's soooo cute!!! :)

This is an over view of the squash plants. They are bigger than I have ever grown and have lots of buds on them. I'm very excited, except they are all growing together. I don't know how that is going to affect them.

As you can see the cherry tree has cherries now. The birds and the boys are in an epic battle to see who will eat the most! My money is on the boys!

So thats it. I'm very excited about it this year. Much more than last year. Everything that has come up is doing so well and looks like I will be able to put quite a bit up this year. My girls will be helping me this year. One is quite reluctant but I think she will come around.

Be Blessed!!

Check this out!

http://myblessedhome.blogspot.com/2009/06/prophesying-tongues-and-baptism-of-holy.html

Very very good article!

More Garden Pictures

Time for new pictures from the garden. I took these about a week ago. Yep, it took me that long to get around to putting them here. Life has been busy!

Here are the strawberries! The chipmonks LOVE them!!! Taz has had 1!!
Zucchini and yellow squash. They are doing awesome! I was having an upclose look today and some have bud on them!!

Corn, and weeds! you can see a few zucchini on the top right. The corn is growing at different rates. Strange really. One might be 18 inches tall and the one beside it is like 6 inches tall.

This is my weed/dirt garden. There are a few onion sets at the bottom that are kind of doing something. Not really, the ones between the potatoes are about to bloom! Didn't pray over this one because it did so well last year. Just kind of added it flippantly to the prayer for the big garden. Big mistake!!! God has already shown me who to help with food from my garden. I'm so excited!

The bucket brigade. Tomatoes hanging from the frame my hubby made. They are growing like crazy! I am so impressed. Maybe next year we can try some other things besides tomatoes!

My Potatoes! They were planted in a 9 inch deep "gully". The dirt is stacked about 18 inches high on the plant. I stopped adding dirt when they bloomed. they are so pretty!

Beets for the hubby. I saw them today and they are huge!

Our garden has been so much fun this year. Our large garden is growing by leaps and bounds. Of course it is also growing poke salad. I could have an entire garden of the stuff if I wanted! In some places the weeds are out of control but now that the rainy season is almost over, I will be able to get to them. The kids have really enjoyed it too. Taz gets excited about helping in the garden. We still loose plants to his cause but of course it's worth it. He is learning so much!

Garden today

We have had nothing but rain and storms for days so as you can see, their is debri in the garden. Some of the green beans were washed up and we had to cover several of them back up. At the very end you can just barely see the potato mounds.

This is our baby corn! This is the first time we have seen it poking out of the ground. Ain't it cute!

This is one of our strawberry plants. I think we may have a few this year. Ignore the weeds please. They grow thanks to the rain too.

This is our baby squash. We have about 4 rows of squash. Love 'em!

Here are our potatoes. Wow have they grown! I ran out of dirt to cover them today! Looks like we may have a few potatoes this year.

baby beets! Hubby loves them.

I also took some pictures of the iris' and the cherry tree today too! BEAUTIFUL!

Farmers

The kids just love taking these pictures! ok not so much...this first one took a couple of takes because he looked more like he was gritting his teeth than smiling. These 3 love being in the garden with me. It was dusk when we quit working this day! No I didn't work them like slaves all day.

She helps with anything in the yard. She wanted to use the chainsaw one day when helping her dad! NOT HAPPENING!!

There were about 8 seeds in that hole! The picture below shows what he was planting. A little hard to see but it's corn. He was a bit tired of the camera too! lol

It has rained very consistently the last few days so we have been able to plant and not water because the sky was opening up and drenching everything. I have had to cover the potato plants twice in the last 3 or 4 days. I can't wait to have yummy potatoes to eat!

You won't find any pictures of Destini in the garden with us. She isn't the gardening type. She will be more of a city dweller when she is grown and leaves home.

Be blessed

The Garden

Lots of outdoor work going on around here. My husband cut down some trees yesterday that I have wanted gone for 2 years! YIPPIE! Me and the children have been working on the gardens getting them ready to plant and putting in seeds and plants. We also planted some bushes recently. So lots of changes to the yard! I love spring!

This is the garden before the tiller got to it. What you see in the dirt is coffee grounds and egg shells. It helps kind of fertilize the soil a bit. We have mostly red clay here so the soil needs lots of help. We also bought a trailer full of mushroom compost this year to add to the clay. We doubled the garden size this year too. I'm trying to gradually get up to having enough vegetables to put up (freeze and can) so we can eat that more from our garden then from the store for the year. We aren't there yet. There are six of us and we tend to give a fair amount away. It's really hard to know what a tenth is when the plants keep proucing vegetables to be able to use that to be a blessing. I just give where I see a need.

Here is my little Taz helping by putting the coffee grounds in the dirt. This was supposed to be for flowers but my husband expanded it out from the house so it will also house some vegetables this year. Where Taz is standing has peppers and onions planted now. The area that is blocked off with the plastic pretend rocks has tomatoes in it now. The onions help keep rabbits out. We also planted marigolds and alissym to help with pest control. I have been looking up companion planting to make the garden better as far as producing and reducing pests. We are trying to be as organic as possible but its a learning process.

One of our little potatoe plants! Isn't it cute! The picture doesn't do it justice! We added some dirt to it so that only the leaves are poking out now.

We are going to make some markers for our garden this week. Actually the kids are going to make them. They just don't know it yet. I got the idea from Teaching Good Things. Here is the link http://teachinggoodthings.com/blog/plant-markers/ I like this idea better than the one I was going to use.

Be blessed!