Update Before A Break

Hey, everyone!!

 Isn't this cool weather and bright sunshine wonderful!

 It was on just this kind of day, thirty-four years ago, that James and I were married. Today is our anniversary!  We have a fun date night planned tonight and then he is taking off the week of Thanksgiving.  Cleaning the attic is on the docket as well as a visit from Katherine and Collin!

Then will come the crazy, wonderful race to Christmas!

 I have several baby projects in the works for Olive.  Christmas Eve will be here before we know it, so I am going to take a break from blogging until the New Year.

But before the lull, I thought I'd bring you up to date on a few things.

Happy anniversary, Fred and Ethel!!!

 It was the day after our anniversary last year that James came home and told me that our neighbors had rescued a mama dog and her ten puppies.  We picked out Fred and Ethel within the hour.

They have dug nine million holes in the yard, eaten a dozen door mats, demolished our sprinkler system, and destroyed countless pairs of shoes, but every time they put their heads in my lap my heart melts.

The hens are doing well, in fact, when I went out to open up the coop the other morning, I panicked because there wasn't a chicken in sight!!!!  I threw open the door to find them all nestled snugly inside the laying boxes!!!!!  Eggs can't be far behind!

We moved the girls' coop just a few weeks ago to get them out of the shady corner of the garden that served them so well during the hot summer, and into a sunnier part of the garden for the coming colder weather.

The gray rectangle at the bottom of the photo marks where the coop was before we moved it out from under the trees.  It is so awesome to be able to roll the whole thing, coop and run, to new locations.

I shoveled the chicken droppings from the old location and used them to plant my pansies in front of the house.  

The fall pallet-garden is growing beautifully and James and I enjoy salad out of it several nights each week. We also had a delicious collard green soup.

And speaking of gardens, the LifeHouse Ministries Community Garden has had a great fall season.

From this ......

.....to this!
All the produce is donated to needy families in the community.

Our daughter, Katherine, has started a new yoga venture! 

Learn more about it at http://www.practiquenola.com/

And last, but not least, we cracked open a bottle of our inaugural batch of Turkey Creek Garden Muscadine wine, and it is delicious!!!! (Unlike our persimmon beer.)

Happy holiday season to you and your families!!!!

See you in the new year!

Love ya'll, 

Shelli

Rejoice with your family in the beautiful land of life!

 ~Albert Einstein

The antidote for fifty enemies is one friend. 

~Aristotle

The Pilgrims made seven times more graves than huts. No Americans have been more impoverished than these who, nevertheless, set aside a day of thanksgiving.

 ~H.U. Westermayer

The best of all gifts around any Christmas tree: the presence of a happy family all wrapped up in each other. 

~Burton Hillis

"It came without ribbons! It came without tags! It came without packages, boxes or bags!... Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before! "Maybe Christmas," he thought, "doesn't come from a store. Maybe Christmas... perhaps... means a little bit more!" ~Dr. Seuss, How the Grinch Stole Christmas!

Great little One! whose all-embracing birth
Lifts Earth to Heaven, stoops Heaven to Earth.
~Richard Crashaw

Christmas Gifts For Gardeners

Is there a gardener on your Christmas list? If so, consider yourself lucky! There are many gift-giving options for the plant lover in your life, here are just a few:

Seed and Bulb Catalogs - Many gardeners begin shopping for seeds and bulbs right after the holidays. Flipping through colorful catalogs on cold, rainy days is how many gardeners make it through the winter. A collection of catalogs, and perhaps a gift certificate to go with them, would make a welcome gift.  Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, Garden Delights, and Seeds of Change are specialty catalogs that you might want to add to the tried and true Burpee, Harris, and Park catalogs.  Favorite bulb catalogs include Brent and Becky’s Bulbs and Old House Gardens.

Seed packets make great stocking stuffers.  One of the most popular plants at last year’s North Central Louisiana Master Gardeners Spring Plant Sale was ‘Split Second’ morning glory. Receiving seeds for this plant would put a smile on any gardener’s face!

Gardening Magazines - Gardeners love to dream and plan. Many of us find inspiration from gardening magazines.  Garden Gate, Horticulture, and Fine Gardening are some options.  Of course, a favorite is Louisiana Gardener published right here in Ruston!  Louisiana Gardener is one of sixteen state specific magazines published by State-by-State Gardening. Each state’s magazine is written by authors, nursery owners, Extension agents, and master gardeners from that state. Ideas and information gleaned from gardening magazines are a gift that will keeping on giving throughout the year.

 Gardening Books- Most hobbyists accumulate a library of reference material and gardeners are no different.  Here are a few books that would be a welcome addition to a gardener’s library:

The Well-Tended Perennial Garden: Planting and Pruning Techniques by Tracy DiSabato-Aust  

Louisiana Gardener’s Guide by Dan Gill and Joe White

The Southern Gardener’s Book of Lists by Lois Trigg Chaplin

Tough Plants For Southern Gardens by Felder Rushing

Gardening In The Humid South by Edmund N. O’Rourke, Jr. and Leon C. Standifer

Month-By-Month Gardening In Louisiana by Dan Gill

The Southern Heirloom Garden by William C. Welch and Greg Grant

Donations- Many families have replaced gift-giving with Christmas donations to charities and community organizations in honor of their family members.  If this is your family’s form of giving, you might want to consider donating to the Caroline Dorman Nature Preserve in honor of the gardener on your list.

 Caroline Dorman was born in 1888 at her family home, Briarwood, in Natchitoches Parish close to the village of Saline. After attending college and teaching for a short time, she went to work for the Louisiana Forestry Department as a public relations representative where she was instrumental in establishing Kisatchie National Forest. Later Caroline became a beautification consultant for the Louisiana Highway Department. She also acted as landscape consultant at Charity Hospital in Alexandria and Hodges Gardens Park in Sabine Parish near Many.  Caroline helped establish the Louisiana State Arboretum in Evangeline Parish.

On her death, Caroline Dorman willed her home to the public. Briarwood, the Caroline Dorman Nature Preserve, is open on Saturdays and Sundays during the months of March, April, May, October, and November. Your donation would further the legacy of an amazing horticulturist and preservationist.

You might want to keep your donation a little closer to home by giving to one of our local school gardens. Cypress Springs Elementary, A.J. Brown Elementary, and Choudrant Elementary each have gardening programs taught by Master Gardeners and the AgCenter.  Any gardener would be proud to promote gardening with our youth. Contact the AgCenter for information about donating.

Outrageous Fantasy Gifts- Each year Neiman Marcus publishes its catalog of outlandish, fantasy gifts. In that vein of thought, you might want to get your gardener a gift that’s really over the top, such as….

Sous-Gardener In A Bottle – Just rub the bottle and repeat three times, “I need help.”  Then out pops a burly gardener with a shovel in one hand and pruning shears in the other!

UltraRose – The self-fertilizing, self-pruning, pest-free, disease-free, thornless rose that blooms a different color (of your choosing) each day.

Weather Wonder- A programmable, invisible dome custom-sized for your garden that will maintain perfect temperature, rainfall, and humidity for a carefree gardening experience.

Happy holiday shopping to you and the gardener on your list!

**Don’t forget the December 1^st deadline for the Early Bird Special ($25 off tuition) for the new Master Gardener class beginning in January. Call the AgCenter at 251-5134. Hey, this class would make a great gift!!

Perfect Day

With Thanksgiving right around the corner, I found myself thankful for a great day last weekend. 

 It was nothing fancy or impressive,

 just simple and sweet.

The day started with the Master Gardener Fall Plant Sale at the Ruston Farmers Market. 

This is the sale where the gardeners bring plants from their personal gardens to share with the public - divided day lilies, rooted Peggy Martin roses, wood fern, crinums, garlic, and on and on. Prices ranged from $.50 - $5.00 which is just phenomenal!!

  After setting up, it was fun to stand around with friends and talk about the plants we had brought; discussing the right amount of sun for the plant and its best fertilizer. 

 It was also fun to visit with our customers and answer questions about their prospective purchases and we had lots of young customers this year. I love to see young people interested in gardening. 

  

Then it was off to the Boy Scouts' Scouting For Food project.

 As you know, this is an annual food drive conducted by the Boy Scouts each November.  The empty bags are put on front porches on the first Saturday of November and the filled bags are collected on the following Saturday.  The food is donated to local food banks/pantries which in Ruston is Christian Community Action (CCA). Parents and scouts brought the bags they collected to Emmanuel Baptist Church where it was weighed and categorized. (The national goal was one million pounds of food!)

Then the food was packed for transfer to CCA. 

It was wonderful to see the storeroom at CCA fill up with a huge variety of food items. 

Local groups participating in events they love and believe in, 

and that benefit others -

 can't help but be thankful for days like that!!

Love ya'll. 

Shelli

Thanksgiving was never meant to be shut up in a single day. 

~Robert Caspar Lintner

For each new morning with its light,
For rest and shelter of the night,
For health and food, for love and friends,
For everything Thy goodness sends.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

The unthankful heart... discovers no mercies; but let the thankful heart sweep through the day and, as the magnet finds the iron, so it will find, in every hour, some heavenly blessings! ~Henry Ward Beecher

Sunday Schoolism #30: Prayer

"Prayer presumes a position of confident trust, believing that the God of the exodus has the power to release the captive and to reverse bad news to good."

                                                                                               Bill J. Carter

                                                                                      Adult Bible Studies

                                                                                      Uniform Series   

                                                                                                      

Rescheduled!!!

The sale has been rescheduled for this weekend!!!!!!

Gardening At The Detention Center or Are You Hanging Out With The Right People?

For the November meeting of the North Central Louisiana Master Gardeners, 

we met at the Lincoln Parish Detention Center. 

That's right, the jail!

Amazing pumpkins from the garden greeted us as we arrived!

We were there to learn more about their inmate gardening program. Little did we realize we would come away from the morning uplifted and inspired! Here's the skinny...

In 2013, the Lincoln Parish Sheriff's Department assumed responsibility for the day to day operation of the Detention Center. Warden Jim Tuten, a gardener himself, decided that a vegetable garden could be a worthy program for the jail for three reasons. First, vegetables grown in the garden would cut down on food costs.  Second, seeing inmates out working in the garden would contradict the public opinion that prisoners just sit around and watch TV all day.  Lastly, working in a hot, dirty garden could be used as a discipline tool.

Warden Tuten's first two predictions about the garden came true. Produce from the garden reduced the grocery bills by thousands of dollars and Ruston residents soon began to talk about the new, big garden at they saw on Camp Road. But his final prediction never materialized.  Instead of inmates wanting to avoid working in the garden, they soon began requesting to be a part of the project saying they were "looking for an opportunity to change their lives," said Tuten.

Tommy Sutton is in charge of the garden which started out less than one acre in size, but has grown to over two acres.  This summer the garden produced 5,000 pounds of tomatoes!! The produce is dedicated to the prison kitchen first, then remaining vegetables are sold wholesale to local produce stands. Any remaining produce is sold to the public, and a couple of times the final leftovers have been donated to the Christian Community Action food pantry.

 The garden earned $5,000 at the end of its first year. Proceeds from the garden project go into the inmate welfare account which, among other things, has purchased a three room portable school building for the Detention Center campus.  GED readiness, anger management, and parenting classes are taught in this building. 

Growing the vegetables themselves has required the inmates to improve their math, science, and reading skills.  The inmates are required to calculate square footage of the garden plus the type and amount of fertilizers and pesticides needed for maximum vegetable production. 

After the first growing season, Mr. Sutton observed that they could get an early start on next year's garden if they had a greenhouse to start their own seeds.  The owner of Irrigation Mart (and my sweet neighbor who brings me figs and persimmons and lets me pick thorn less blackberries) donated the skeleton of a greenhouse.  The inmates revived and refurbished it and soon added grow lights confiscated during a drug raid by the Sheriff's Department. They hope to have fresh tomatoes from the greenhouse by this Thanksgiving!

Some of the tomato plants are over ten feet tall!

After seedlings from the greenhouse are planted, they are watered by hand.  Each inmate has his own watering can and according to Mr. Tuten, there is some serious competition over whose seedlings are doing best. The local fire department donated old fire hoses to use when the seedlings are old enough to hold their own. (Support for the garden program from local groups such as the Fire Department and Irrigation Mart was heart-warming and made me glad again to live in such a great little town as Ruston.)

After listening to Mr. Tuten's informative and inspiring presentation, the Master Gardeners toured the garden and greenhouse.  We also peeked inside the carpentry shop where inmates build a variety of  items for sale as well as display cases for a wholesale jeweler.

Jean McWeeney and Cheryl Maxwell, who also serve on the board of the Farmers Market, consider inmate built picnic tables as a possible purchase for the new Farmers Market building.

So there you have it, a garden that is changing the lives of the people that work in it, giving them something to belong to and be proud of.  And as to the question in the title of this post, we had a great time at our meeting and always do, so if you're not having as much fun, you might be hanging out with the wrong people!!!! Sign up for the Master Gardener class which begins January 13th and hang out with us.  We'd love to have you!!!!  Call the AgCenter (251-5134) for more information.

Love ya'll.

Shelli 

 

It's A Girl!!!

 It's a girl 

and 

her name 

is 

Olive!

Katherine and Collin's dog, Ody, made the special announcement with balloons tied to his collar!

Olive

Peace and Harmony

Looking forward to meeting you, little girl!!

Love,

Sheen

A mother's treasure is her daughter.

  ~Catherine Pulsifer

The father of a daughter is nothing but a high-class hostage.  A father turns a stony face to his sons, berates them, shakes his antlers, paws the ground, snorts, runs them off into the underbrush, but when his daughter puts her arm over his shoulder and says, "Daddy, I need to ask you something," he is a pat of butter in a hot frying pan.  

~Garrison Keillor

Sunday Schoolism #29: Far From Perfect

"He was far from perfect, yet Jesus saw in him great potential and promise.  Peter's example assures us that God will forgive us when we turn away and can use us in spite of our failures and shortcomings."

                                                                                                   Bill J. Carter

                                                                                                   Adult Bible Studies

                                                                                                   Uniform Series    

Fall Plant Sale

Thin Places

I was recently at a workshop where the leader mentioned "thin places".  Now this workshop was on fasting, so you can just imagine what ran through my mind concerning thin places. My excitement rose as I thought I was about to learn of some mystical place where fat was miraculously dissolved from your body with absolutely no effort on your part!! I was ready to pack my bags!

Much to my chagrin, but then fascination, she explained that thin places are "places where Heaven and Earth are closer together." On the website, The Guardian, thin places are defined as a Celtic term for "those rare locales where the distance between Heaven and Earth collapses." Eric Weiner, in his 2012 article Where Heaven and Earth Come Closer, says you are in a thin place "when thoughts fall away and only a luminous quality remains." Rev. Dr. Mark D. Roberts describes thin places as "a place where the boundary between heaven and earth is especially thin. It's a place where we can sense the divine more readily."

I couldn't help but wonder if I had ever been to a thin place. 

           -When my family and I stood on the beaches of Normandy in France this spring, I     definitely felt the whisper of the prayers that must have been said by hundreds of young men as they faced the ultimate and, for many, the final challenge of their lives. Does great sacrifice create a thin place?

           -When James and I were in Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons last year, we stood mute in front of many breathtaking vistas.  Does majestic natural beauty constitute a thin place?

           -I have said prayers in 925 year old Westminster Abbey and 852 year old Notre Dame Cathedral. Does history make a thin place?

Are these thin places communal, where every visitor feels something ethereal? Probably. So what about personal thin places? I couldn't help but think about the private thin places in my life....

          -A swing on a back porch overlooking a westward facing pasture where laughter echoes.

          -A tiny house where opera played on the stereo, Paul Harvey spoke on the radio, and squeals erupted from Pounce games.

          -A garden built by a loved one's hands and tended carefully through the years where Moses lives and the hummingbirds buzz. 

Whether communal or personal, do thin places have to be stationary locations? Can thin places be events or memories?

            -The birth of a child, when joy and thankfulness so filled your heart that Heaven truly               felt closer than ever before.

            -A funeral where the life of a loved one is celebrated and then released to Heaven.

            -A simple time with friends or family when you realize how blessed you have been just because they are part of your life and your appreciation for that blessing swells so large that it creates a thin place between you and Heaven.

The very idea of a thin place as a place or time when Heaven is closer to the earth, means that creating thin places is possible!! When we acknowledge that the joy and peace we feel in our lives originates in Heaven, and we reach out to draw Heaven closer - a thin place is created. 

Love ya'll,

Shelli

God is in the hearts of all, 

and they that seek shall surely find Him when they need Him most. 

~Louisa May Alcott, 

The soul can split the sky in two and let the face of God shine through. 

~Edna St. Vincent Millay

Let God's promises shine on your problems. 

~Corrie Ten Boom

God enters by a private door into each individual. 

~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Today, I wandered through the field
Where buttercups and daisies grew;

      My Spirit loved ones went with me,

      And God was there; all this I knew!

I saw Him in the sunny sky

      And in the flowers at my feet;

      I heard His voice in songs of birds

      Upon the wing, so pure and sweet!

~Gertrude T. Buckingham