Tag Archives: urban garden

Spring Planting

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Happy Spring! It certainly doesn’t feel like it around here – with sub-zero temperatures and five feet of snow on the lawn, but the calendar tells us Spring has arrived!

By now we should have started some seeds indoors… but it hasn’t happened yet. The cold weather and my poor results from attempts last year have deterred me from being adventurous with my seed selections this year. Buying small plants and seedlings is easier. Let the professionals start the hard and delicate part of planting seeds. Then, I will just carry on from there. I don’t have a hothouse for tomatoes or peppers. My soil is not ideal for some of the more particular crops. And I’m too impatient for Lufas or teeny seeds like daisies and other flowers. I’m excited to try – last year we geared up in February for the first fruits. Failure makes me cautious. You’ve heard me say that growing is God’s miracle, we just plant the seed! I should just leave Him to His job.

Photo by Nikola Jovanovic on Unsplash

I watched a cute little YouTube clip from a kid’s object lesson on this topic. I love how Nature is so good at teaching even the most straightforward lessons. Jesus used them often to help His students learn. I’ll link the video in case you need a Sunday school lesson…

Seeds are dormant, hard little creatures that sit around waiting to die… protectors the “Bible mom” calls them. Keeping everything safe until just the right time at just the right moment to bloom, explode and display all their blessings. Plants and seedlings, on the other hand, are vulnerable and out there. They start out delicate. And if they get good care… well, they can become the mighty oak!

Unfortunately, last year my seedlings didn’t grow well. I let the protectors down and the producers just didn’t catch and flourish into the big plants they were intended to be. The few my mom got did pretty well at her house… she got some fruit. I guess her conditions were better.

And so it is with us. We need to be in the right conditions to flourish and grow. We need to be in a good church body with good teaching. We need to be mentored, encouraged and coaxed to grow. We need to feel confident enough to break down that hard protective shell of seed and sprout into seedlings and vulnerable plants. We need to be watered and fed and protected from the outside when we lose our shells.

And we need to be that protector for others. Those of us that are parents are all too familiar with this. We raise our kids, giving them all the attention and allowances we can. Eventually, they sprout and produce their own fruit. (Eek… am I heading to grandma zone??) But it’s true! Time waits for no one. We have limited chances to do our best. Still… it’s never too late! Even sickly seedlings can pick up with a bit of sunlight, a little water and some good food. They may never be the strongest in the garden, but the fruit is possible!

Photo via Jenni Haikonen

So let’s learn from spring buds, shall we? Encourage. Help grow. Seek it for yourself. Plant yourself in good soil. Break down your hard seed shell and bloom!

Here’s that kid’s video clip. May have to look up the “Bible Mom” again. Seems like a nice lady! 🙂 Bible Mom Lesson

Blind as a Bat

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A few years ago we bought a bat house to put up. My hubby has a thing about mosquitos and bats supposedly eat 1000 mosquitos per hour. I have since learned this is a myth. They eat insects (among other things) but not to this extent. The bat house is still sitting in my shed. There are too many inappropriate spots on our property to house the fascinating creatures of the night. So the idea of a mosquito-free summer evening got abandoned. However, the last week in October is #batweek, so let’s muse a little on their behalf, shall we?

Ontario Parks recommends bat houses.

There are 17-18 species of bat in Canada (depending on what site you visit). The “little brown bat” is the most common… and likely the one to roust in your attic. Who decided on such a name? Not only do you have to be the most common, did you have to be named as such? Anyway. Bats are weird-looking little things. Big ears, big noses, flappy leathery skinned armed wings, and belly buttons. The only flying mammal. Apparently, they don’t have too many predators either. The odd hawk or eagle will pick off some smaller bats but disease is one of their biggest dangers. Rabies is common, but a fungal infection is their most significant threat. Fungi love close quarters in damp dark areas… and so do bats… so you can see how quickly such threats spread among a population.

Let’s look at the whole “blind as a bat” thing. Bats, in fact, have excellent eyesight. They just happen to hunt at night, so they rely on echolocation in order to enhance their ability to catch prey in the dark.  A study carried out on bat behaviour said that “bat brains have to constantly integrate two streams of data, obtained with two different senses, to construct a single image of the world”. They typically use their eyes to find food during the daytime when it’s light and rely on their hearing and echolocation in the dark. Originally, their erratic flying patterns gave the impression that they didn’t see where they were going. We’ve now learned that the dips and dives are a result of bouncing sound waves here and there in order to navigate their environments. It’s a fun trick we used to play … jingle your car keys around a bat and see their reaction. Apparently, it sounds like bugs to them. Some species actually have advanced vision and can see Ultra Violet. Often, a bat’s vision is even greater than that of its human counterparts. Truly a unique presentation of God’s handiwork!

Mexican Freetail Bats. Flying off into the sunset. 2001-08

Aristotle once said, “For as the eyes of bats are to the blaze of day, so is the reason in our soul to the things which are by nature most evident of all.” (BlindasaBat). Which got me a-thinkin’… What can we learn from these little creatures? We recently had a few big events occur in our neighbourhood. One celebratory and one tragic. Both were far removed from God’s plan for our world. As a Jesus-follower raising a family in a pagan world, I am reminded how easily I become blinded to the darkness around me. I dip and dive around issues appearing to aimlessly snatch out tidbits of “good”. How quickly the fungus of “dark” finds its way in when we stay too hunkered down in our caves.

I need to learn to sharpen all my senses and use discernment whenever I can. Like a bat brain, I need to constantly integrate all the information that I filter through each day and be “in the world but not of it”. It’s hard. It’s tough to present only “One Way” in a politically correct world of constant clicks and echoes. Surround yourselves with others who are like-minded. Bats nest by the thousands! I’ll pray for us both that our vision is clear. Be blessed my little batty beloveds!

It’s a Jungle Out There!

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I thought this week’s blog post was going to be about sweet peas. Pretty little flowers. Popeye and Olive Oyl’s cute little cartoon baby. The fragrant little plant that makes a great veggie. We have some peas… and I dunno if they are sweet peas or not… but I have them growing in our urban garden. I like them… they grow well and we’ve had some great harvests. I was going to tell you about how I went out to tame them with some clips and string and bamboo skewers and how proud I was of them. But that is not how this muse went.

I went out to discover the garden has become a virtual jungle. The great rains we’ve had in the last few days have turned the place into a labyrinth of green! Okay, I admit it. Perhaps I am not as diligent at weeding as I should be… but these are not just weeds… the actual veggies have exploded! Currently, we have some zucchini plants and some cucumbers which are holding their own and doing their “normal” spread. They are behaving. The peas and beans are now quite ladened down with heavy vines and I am not sure how to separate them. They have no more space to expand to, so they are growing into each other. Even my strawberries are shooting out tendrils!

Yet, my biggest “expander” (and I say this with a little excitement) is our pumpkin vine! The youngest wanted to try it this year, so we simply threw a few seeds in a space near the end of the garden before the sunflower patch. Well… as they say, if you plant it … it just might grow! Our pumpkin has now weaved it’s way through the sunflowers, down the fence and reaching up along the side of the lawn into Neverland! The vines have taken over!

So, I did a little research. Apparently there are two different kinds of “vine” expansions: twining or hold fasts. Vines that use tendrils wrap around their supports using thin, leafless stems… those curly cues you see on grape vines, for example. Other climbers use “sticky” pads or aerial roots to adhere to almost any smooth surface. Like ivy growing on ancient castles. So how do they know to grow up and wrap around something? They don’t. Vines do something called “thigmotropism”. Those little stems grow until they mechanically “hit” something… by wind or whatever… and end up twisting around the structure to hold on. This is why you can “train” vines to climb a trellis. (Obviously my jungle proves we have not done this!) There are some very cool looking slowmo videos of “thigmotropism” out there. Look it up!

Not my peas…but Sweet Pea (lathyrus Odoratus) is a photograph by Maxine Adcock/science Photo Library which was uploaded on February 24th, 2021.

So… what’s our take away from my jungle adventure? You got it… John 15:5 comes to mind. “I am the vine, and you are the branches…” Growth occurs when we are attached to a stable structure. Heaven knows we certainly need something stable in this ever changing world!! Especially when we are facing struggles. Or the unknown. Or simply putting the “feelers” out on a big decision we need to make. Wanna know another cool thing about thigmotropism? The bigger the stimulus the plant receives, the faster the tendril growth and the stronger the coils become! Sound familiar? Yup, often our biggest valleys in life produce the greatest and strongest amount of spiritual growth!

Well… turns out my fragrant and pretty sweet peas were not as encouraging this week as my jungle of pumpkin vines! I guess that is just the way it is sometimes in life. Here’s to “thigmotropism” and to you, my growing friend! Hold fast this week!