in my garden today.

The weeding is about 74% done. Amazing how fast the weeds grew while I was gone to TX for two weeks. I have had to water like crazy just to get the ground soft enough to do the weeding.

There is a frog (toad?) named Timothy in the garden. The kids name critters immediately upon finding them, always biblical names. So Timothy is the frog in the garden. I think he likes being found. We saw him yesterday too.

I hope Timothy likes Japanese Beetles. They always arrive in the last week of June. And they have just arrived. How do they know? They eat fast. Except for my sunflowers, they seem to be attracted to the weeds more than anything else. Well, they like the broccoli, too, but it's history now.

We also found a lot of worms today. ("These are my favorite worms, Mama." says Cody.) Big, huge, thick earthworms. But here's the yuk: the earthworms came out while I was watering and then they died in the heat. This attracted a lot of flies. Ick.

I pulled the broccoli (7 plants) out because it was gigantic, like scary movie gigantic. And because it had rust. I figured it wasn't going to get better, so out it went. I think I'll put some pumpkins in there.

Nobody came in with me from the garden today. Yesterday, I had two lightning bugs in my shirt when I came in. (Tickle, tickle. I don't like bugs, but these are very nice. You don't want to hurt them because they made these pretty little lights at night.) The day before that - a daddy long-legs perched right on my shoulder when I got inside. Like a really goofy spider-loving pirate. But I didn't find anything on me today.

But I did find a size 10 (little boy size 10) trail of muddy footprints through my house because after Cody said goodbye to Timothy and the worms, he came inside and played dollhouse. I know EXACTLY where he went, there's mud everywhere.

I love my garden. It's in pitiful shape. The weeds, drought, beetles, rust, slime (on the lettuce since I watered - total yuk), etc make it a lot of work, but the process is rewarding (I love to think while I work out there and I tend to get to do it alone) and the harvest, however small it might be, is so worth it.

I plant the seed, but God makes it grow.


He grew up before him like a tender shoot,
and like a root out of dry ground.
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. ISAIAH 53:2