iSonto #28

This week we are thankful for the toys we have, including this dolly I played with as a child.

Elnathan was very happy to be able to go to playgroup this week, after missing it last week due to a cold. It is sweet the way they both stand at the gate, eager to go out. It is great to have the opportunity to go out and greet and pray for people in our community.

Nate also loved pretending to be an ambulance driver and coming up and asking if I was alright and if I wanted a "arm band" (known by others as a "band aid")! He would rush up to Mercy and say "oh the teeth" and try to stick his fingers in her mouth, imitating me trying to sooth her teething.

Natey's memory verse was "Let your conduct be without covetousness, be content with such things as you have" Hebrews 13: 5.

Mercy was busy learning new words. At playgroup she went straight for the dolls and said "dolly". Here she is joining in with chalking.

From garden to tummies . . .  

Corn, tomatoes, carrots, basil, chives, parsley, potatoes, beets, beans, capsicum, and more were on the menu this week. It is the time of year when it becomes necessary to cook a lot just to get through all the produce, and we can be grateful for all the variety as we change seasons.

A book we enjoyed together was "Wow City", a picture book about a tiny girl who goes on an aeroplane to a city and says "Wow!" all the time.

Encouragement, ideas and inspiration came from "Homemaking" by J. R. Miller. Quiet reading with Nate was a rich time of inspiration for me as I read about cultivating the right spirit in our home. It was also wonderful to skim read "The Comforts of Home", which really encouraged me in my love for order and beauty.


One funny moment was Nate saying at a meal "Jesus takes our sins away". Mummy basked for a few minutes in having taught him something. Then he said "that's not good. Its not good to take things away". I didn't laugh at the time, but tried to explain that it is good to take away bad things!

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iSonto #27

This week we are thankful for the . . .

* Plums Dave preserved single handedly, without my help!

* Two walking people, two hands to hold

* Bonjela for lots of hard days and nights of teething

Elnathan made us happy showing creativity in his duplo constructions. He also taught me several songs from Play School.

Natey's memory verse was "You shall not covet".


Mercy was happy to chew on corn, and had great success in clearing a cob with her six teeth.

From garden to tummies . . .

We had lots of vegetables to have with tortillas including tomatoes with basil, radishes, lettuce, and carrot.

A book we enjoyed together was "The Friday Nights of Nanna", a story about preparing the house for a Jewish Sabbath and then the family coming for a meal. We have been known to read this more than three times in one day. When we had our lifegroup for dinner and a study on Friday and they left Nate said "Our family are leaving now". This was both a good reminder to us that church is family and a reflection of what we have been reading about preparing dinners for guests!

Encouragement, ideas and inspiration came from "One Thousand Gifts" by Ann Voskamp again. I read the chapter about serving and cleaning being for God not people on just the right messy, frustrating day!

One funny moment occured because Nate wanted a car made out of an old beer can that Dave purchased on a trip to Madagascar, wihch is an ornament and not a toy. All this was explained, along with the fact that the car is for grown ups. These things are hard for a small boy to understand and he kept wanting to play with it. He said to me: "One day Gascar will come and he will give me the car as a treat. Gascar is a grown up." . . . We have been trying to explain that Madagascar is a country, not a person, but that is also hard for a small boy to understand!

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iSonto #26

This week we are thankful for . . .

* Dave's brother visiting from QLD with his daughter.

* Cousins Elnathan and Meggan being very kind to each other and playing together well.

* A swing for the little ones.

* Mercy and Elnathan laughing and laughing together on a chair

* Mercy walking all the way to the community center happily in the little walking shoes Nate used to wear!

* Our first corn

Elnathan was beginning to make up his own prayers, interrupting Daddy's prayers with "and thank you God for the cars, and for the trucks".

Natey's memory verse was 'Salvation is of the Lord" Jonah 2:9.

Mercy was very excited about her cousin visiting, and rushed to play with the two older children. Meggie loved Mercy's doll. Mercy loves the beach and delighted in the sand and water when we took them all to play there.

From garden to tummies . . .

Here is our future Saturday night dinner, to go with roast chicken.

Encouragement, ideas and inspiration came from "Homemaking" by J. R. Miller which is providing fresh insights into the importance of the way we treat each other in marriage.

One funny moment was Mercy laughing and trying to say "sit down" while she sat and stood from a stool over and over again. She found it funny, anyway, and it is a delight to laugh with them!

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Summer crops near their end

This afternoon we were thrilled to still be harvesting some lovely heads of corn. Our staggered planting has worked well this year, giving us fresh corn for nearly two months. We ate these with guests tonight after cooking them in foil on the braii with some butter, salt and pepper. Delish!

Maybe Mercy Joy is thinking "Hmmm . . . should I start solid food?"

"What do you think?"

One of the challenges of autumn is deciding when to pull things out to make way for new crops. Today the patty pan below got pulled out, as it looked like it was coming to the end of its life. I am learning to be more ruthless.

It is always a challenge to find space for winter crops because summer plantings like squash, pumpkins, and tomatoes last well into autumn. The broccoli and beets pictured below were planted as seeds in January to replace spring crops of peas and broad beans. They will provide food in late autumn and winter.

Today we bought seedlings of parsley, coriander, celery and spinach, which we will need to find space for. I like to grow from seed, but it has been challenging this year due to lack of space in the garden and the many threats to seed pots from toddlers and chickens :)! There have been many successes (broccoli, kale, turnips, silverbeet) but some notable failures, particularly cauliflower! We are still getting heaps of tomatoes, and the vines pictured below will probably be taking up space in our garden for another month. Nate is enjoying a tomato in this picture. He is still learning to choose the red ones, a good lesson in colours!

Here is our bowl of food after wandering through the garden some more . . . chives for potato salad, our last patty pan for the braai, capsicum and radish for a green salad (and lettuce still to be picked). There are lots of tomatoes hidden away below there too - this week has been busy again working out how to use those! We have frozen some plain (peeled, diced and cooked), and others made into a sauce.

That is our garden in pictures for this week. How is your garden going? Are you nearing the end of summer/autumn crops like us or starting a fresh spring? I am so grateful to God that we can look forward to the seasons each year and the different crops they bring.

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Saturday's Backyard Bounty: Fresh Corn on the Cob

Fresh corn on the cob has been the highlight of our garden bounty in the past week. There is nothing like fresh corn! It is not easy to grow corn successfully. In the midst of trying to give it enough fertiliser and water to be productive we sometimes wonder if we should give it a miss next year. Then we get our first cobs and we know that we have to try again! Our most common way of preparing corn is to steam it and eat it with a little butter. Tonight, though, Dave baked it in his Weber (a coal fired BBQ). He put butter, salt and pepper onto the cobs and wrapped them in foil. Wow! This is the most delicious way we have found to prepare corn on the cob. All our other vegetables for dinner were also from the garden excepting the onions: potatoes, carrot, patty pan squash, and garlic. This week we have also loved having an abundance of fresh tomatoes to eat in toasted sandwiches, fry for breakfast, and add to salads and sauces.

This week we planted cauliflower seedlings.

As I've walked through the garden this week I have been thinking about a couple of Scriptures. Firstly, God says that when the gospel (the good news of Jesus' death and resurrection to take the punishment for our sins and give us eternal life) is planted, He must make it grow. So it is with our plants - God makes them grow, we can only plant and water but God is in control. My failed cauliflower seeds make me think of this truth that applies both spiritually and physically. Secondly, there is a time for everything . . .a time to plant, and a time to reap. Now is our season of "planting" our family, a busy season where we have to concentrate on the essentials and cannot do all that we would like.

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The joys of growing corn

 

Growing corn has been so much fun this year! Each year that we have grown corn it has got better and better. We still have a lot of improvements to make, but we are happy with our progress. The first year we bought a few seedlings. The second year we planted seeds, but only the first planting produced ears. The second planting produced close to nothing!

This year we made four successive plantings. The first set of 22 plants produced 24 good ears! Yay! The second planting is also producing well. The fourth planting looks like it will produce poorly. Since corn can produce two good ears per plant, even our first planting has not produced excellently. Next year we hope to try putting heaps of fertiliser in, even more than this year, as we know that could improve our yield. Have any of you grown corn successfully with two good ears per plant? If so, what are your tips?

 

Elnathan loves the corn husks! Everytime I see my son playing happily with a vegetable or plant I am reminded that we don't need more toys. He is much more interested in new objects like corn!

 

I love eating corn. I've been known to put a can of corn in everything from pizza topping to potato salad! We have all enjoyed eating our fresh corn, taken straight from the plant and then steamed. It has also been delicious in zucchini slice, on pizza, with beans, and more! The taste is much sweeter than purchased corn.

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