Psalm 145

Psalm 145

1 I will extol you, my God and King,
    and bless your name forever and ever.
² Every day I will bless you
    and praise your name forever and ever.
 

³ Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised,
    and his greatness is unsearchable.

⁴ One generation shall commend your works to another,
    and shall declare your mighty acts.

⁵ On the glorious splendor of your majesty,
    and on your wondrous works, I will meditate.
⁶ They shall speak of the might of your awesome deeds,
    and I will declare your greatness.



⁷ They shall pour forth the fame of your abundant goodness
    and shall sing aloud of your righteousness.

⁸ The Lord is gracious and merciful,
    slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.

⁹ The Lord is good to all,
    and his mercy is over all that he has made.

¹⁰ All your works shall give thanks to you, O Lord,
    and all your saints shall bless you!

¹¹ They shall speak of the glory of your kingdom
    and tell of your power,
¹² to make known to the children of man your mighty deeds,
    and the glorious splendor of your kingdom.



¹³ Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom,
    and your dominion endures throughout all generations.

[The Lord is faithful in all his words
    and kind in all his works.]
¹⁴ The Lord upholds all who are falling
    and raises up all who are bowed down.

¹⁵ The eyes of all look to you,
    and you give them their food in due season.
¹⁶ You open your hand;
    you satisfy the desire of every living thing.



¹⁷ The Lord is righteous in all his ways
    and kind in all his works.
¹⁸ The Lord is near to all who call on him,
    to all who call on him in truth.



¹⁹ He fulfills the desire of those who fear him;
    he also hears their cry and saves them.
²⁰ The Lord preserves all who love him,
    but all the wicked he will destroy.

²¹ My mouth will speak the praise of the Lord,
    and let all flesh bless his holy name forever and ever.

How my garden grows

Welcome to my little patch of food production. A little plot of land that produces a great amount of food. I have only been a lover of gardening for about 5 years now as I never really had a chance to grow my own before I was married. Now that it is my own yard and my own product I love to watch each stage. This is a bit of a longer video where in I talk about the little bits of my garden and how we make it work. If ever you have questions please feel free to ask. I love to talk about it.



Garden tour 2013 from Angie Kroeker on Vimeo.

Happy Growing to you all. 

This is not the truth.

When you see these pics you will think this is where we are right now, but its not true. Nope. In fact today we have had rain most of the day and the green is luminescent.


My garden is planted and waiting to come up out of the ground.


The grass could use a mowing and the mud is all over the back porch.


Our main computer, the one I do all my blogging from has been shut off and not to be touched for nearly a week. And today My husband the computer genius that he is, has brought it back to life.

I built this snowman when the snow was on its way out cause Suzie had asked and wanted one so bad. There are not pictures of it but shortly after I had built it she had tried to knock it down.









Mud puddles to jump in.


And yes these are gravel streets for you. The water is not clean but in fact quite dirty.






Funny to look at these pics of my girls in their winter jackets and the pile of snow. We are far from this state of being and summer is just around the corner.


The reason I say "around the corner" and don't give it credit for being fully arrived is for the fact that we have had frosts at night even at the end of May. It is never truly safe to say it is summer in Manitoba till June.




But till then we will relish the fact that it is far from winter. The season is just beginning.
And though it seems to have come on as a bit of a surprise this year we'll get into the full swing of this summer thing and find it to be gone long before we are done with it.

May you have a great rest of the weekend. 

Back in the groove?

Let's see if I can make a bit of a come back here. I have been on a bit of a discovery journey these days and fill all my free time with searching out the new information that I have come across. There are two key things on which I am more keenly focused. One is the Bible, The Word of God. And the second is being more focused on raising my girls with intention. I don't know how to put that exactly other than there is less time spent doing what I want for myself and more time focused on them. I'm not saying that I have it figured out. But I do know that the more time I spend with my face attached to a screen the less time I am truly focused on them.


As for the first thing? My intense desire to truly understand the Word of God? I have discovered that I did not really understand what it meant to read everything in context. I did not truly understand what the Bible as a whole pointed to. It points to one thing and one thing alone. As I mentioned in this post The most important thing is this one truth. That I am a sinner saved by Grace and that I need to be reminded of this great and wonderful truth daily.


But I do want to get back into sharing a bit of our lives. I want to let you in to our home even if only through the pictures and few intermingled words.

Here's the thing. I will be short in writing my posts, I will take little time to edit them. and I will not be fully linear and coherent. But I will do my best. The posts for the next while will be short and sweet (or so I hope).


And here I share a few photos from Easter. Yes I am that back logged in my posts but that is okay.


Sunday was Jade's birthday and this year is quite the contrast from last. Last year we had her party outside. She sat in her diaper eating cake at the picnic table.


This year it was indoors with snow still surrounding the picnic table outside.


But yesterday I planted some seeds to go in the green house. I cleaned the back yard a bit. I removed the rotting pumpkins from the front yard (yes, from fall, Yes, really gross. Suzie asked why they were there. My answer, cause I was lazy last year and didn't deal with them. I think that won't happen again. I'll let you know next spring). I swept off the front porch. It felt like spring and it felt good.


Today it snowed.


Maybe spring will come this year. Maybe.



Until then I guess I will just keep on keepin' on.

How does your garden grow?

Many mentions have been made of life being busy. Well here is a bit to show for it.

Produce from our own back yard!!

 Yes, we can grow Broccoli. I know I had no clue of that till this year. This was our first attempt and it was all made possible by this great new plan for our garden...Beware, long rambling garden post is about to commence in 5..4...3...
2...

1...
I have been head over heels in love with our garden this year. I mean, I have wanted to be out there. I look forward to the hour a day or more spent just puttering around. I will work out there when the sun is beating down full force without complaint.How could I not when the before looks like this.

All organized and clean.

And the current looks like this!!

Yikes I love it! I feel like I have a bit of a garden forest started out there.

So let me introduce you to each section of my garden. (I am so proud of how it grows).

Before...oh yeah before I go to far along I just want to share how this plan has made the Broccoli attempt possible. I am convinced that I have anywhere from two to three times more planting space then in the past. I could have most likely planted my garden this densely before but with a few set backs.

1: our dirt packs so hard that weeding and hoeing is a real B... (I know I should not even imply a swear but that is how much I hated hoeing.) Now I can reach over these lovely squares and just gently tug out the offending little plant and send it flying into the path.  (the reason nothing gets too packed is because I am never walking on the dirt next to my plants and the dirt mixed in the boxes is mostly compost and peat moss, super fluffy growing stuffs)

2: Planting this tightly without the grid and the raised bed would have made it more difficult to keep track of where everything was when first planted.


3: and this is one of my favorites, Suzie can spend any amount of time in the garden and know that she is not getting into the Plants and hurting them. She is very concerned that it all grows well and she can keep track just as well as I can of how it is doing.


Currently. I have got four squares of lettuce, four of spinach though one did not grow for some reason. 16 pepper plants. 7 tomatoes plants, One was taken by a cut worm. 4 cucs and two squares full of edible pod peas. This is plot number one.






Oh yeah, and three zinnias. These I planted early and then moved so one did not make it in the beginning of the season.

Plot number 2, Before (they are numbered by the distance from the house.)



Currently, Here you will find. 4 more squares of lettuce planted a few weeks later than the first plot. 4 more squares of spinach the same. 4 squares of Fennel (no I have not grown this before, I do not know what to expect). Six Broccoli plants on the left and six cauliflower on the right. 12 squares with carrots and 12 with beans in the back.



Did you know that when you cut of the first fully formed bunch of broccoli more little guys start up, You are supposed to be able to get a few harvests out of one plant. Again something I didn't know.




Fennel up close. We'll see.

From the back of plot number two looking out to where Jade spends most of her time while I work in the garden



Anywhere but in. She is not as big on the leaving the plants alone so they can grow aspect of the garden.

Plot Number 3 - before



Currently, Here I have one more cuc off to the right. 12 squares with onions, two pansies for some color, 8 squares with beets, two more zinnias, four muskmelon or cantaloupe, and four butter nut squash. Also a whole bunch of empty squares cause I was not used to this much space. Will probably plant more lettuce in a few weeks.


From the back side of Plot number 3.


Cantaloupe flowers. Come On Little Buddy, You can do it.


Ah yes, the mud days. She came in after this little session of play and was very upset that her boots were dirty. I am still working so very hard on getting her to understand that if you play in dirt, most likely you will get dirty. We're getting there.

Last but not least is Suzies plot. Hers has no number cause it is her very own. She directed the where the plants should be and she planted all the carrots herself. So in the back you will have carrots on the left and a pansies with two pepper plants on the right. In the front row you will have the exact reverse.

And that is how our garden grows.

::

Here are two strips of dirt that "grow" some of the best things of all. Childhood memories.

I was not sure how I would feel about having my grass pounded out by swinging feet. I have discovered these two patches of dirt are the best thing that have happened to my lawn.


One more cuc cause I had him and he needed a place to go.


The girls decided to offer to mow the lawn, I was grateful for the offer but alas it was a bit late. I had just finished and also run out of gas.

Jade points out the on/off switch, Suzie keeps a close watch to be sure she is getting it right.

P.S. If you actually read all that stuff about the garden and want to know where the idea came from I will set you up with a few links. She introduced us to the book that is all about square foot gardening.