Return and Re-publish

News Update: The GetawayGarden has retured to the place of its origin.....right here on blogspot!

Although I had high hopes of what could be with our own ".com", I recently allowed sensibility to win over the daydreams. Letting the domain name/hosting expire, I've come back to where I first enjoyed writing and sharing--what I love and learn--things I make and grow--from my garden and from my heart. Any former GetawayGarden followers will notice I have already republished previous posts, and added a couple written while we were missing. I'm excited for the good things to come. As always your comments and suggestions are welcome. Thanks for waiting, and see ya again soon.

Blessings Abound: Quick Thankful Jar Project

Maybe you can tell by my presence here, or lack thereof, for pretty much the whole summer that our garden production has been…let’s just say not abundant. Ok, in fact it is the worst garden I have ever grown. But rather than get stuck in the rut of grumbling about it, I’d rather think of our non-garden related blessings which have been in great supply!

To help us keep our focus in the right direction my husband suggested we start a “Blessing Box” or “Thankful Jar” type of thing. If you can’t guess what that would be then here is our take on it: Everyday we will take a small strip of paper and write down something we recognize as a blessing, or something we are thankful for, etc. and put it in the receptacle to be accumulated until Thanksgiving at which time they will read and we will start all over again. And they don’t all have to great big items either…IN EVERYTHING GIVE THANKS!  There are so many little blessings to be noticed each day!

Reasons for writing down your blessings:

•  It helps keep your “wanter” from being out of wack when you make a conscious effort to notice everything you already have be given, above and beyond your basic needs. (The Bible tells us in 1Timothy 6:8  “Having food and raiment let us therewith be content”
• It is a reminder that You are blessed so that you may be a blessing to others.
• You cannot be grumbling or angry and thankful at the same time, and writing down your blessings forces you search harder for more and more things to write…and it just happens to change your outlook and thinking about alot more things as well.

Now for some people it might work just to have an envelop taped to the refrigerator door, or a small box or basket placed on a table near the door of your home, or some other place where you can jot down a few words and drop the paper in  as you begin each day.  However, as you may have guessed, I get a crafty idea once in a while.  I decided I just had to make something special for us to use. And here is what I did:

I took a canning jar out of the cupboard (remember, not many veggies this year so I can count that as a blessing to be able to have an empty jar for the project!) and took the flat lid off the top but put the ring back on for a little decorative touch. Then I printed a little sign the says “Count Your Blessings-Name Them One By One”. I printed it on plain paper and simply glued it onto the front of the jar! Super easy with a glue stick or with kids school glue (I added a few drops of water to school glue to help it spread smoothly on the thinpaper).  Next I dug around in the scraps of supplies in the Craft 

Cabinet and found a piece of burlap ribbon, some red berries, and a few strands of raffia which I fashioned around the top ring just to dress it up. I made a small pocket of fabric to hold the blank strips of paper and a pen and attached it with part of the raffia.

The finished product is sitting on a shelf near our kitchen table. I guess all that’s left to do now is to start counting and filling up that jar! 

Picking up where we left off....

Sweet Pea, Pumpkin, Sprout, Cabbage, Bunny, Little Birdie, Baby Bean, —(Let me see, any other garden references?) It doesn’t matter what you call him, he is finally here and just in time for growing season!

I took a break from writing posts and (ashamedly I admit) from pretty much everything else garden related, as we were doing a little growing of a different sort!  Yes, we have added our long awaited firstborn to our nest. We’re now in a fairly good routine, and Mommy’s eager to get out side and play in the dirt again! (I am thankful the desire to garden, and the taste for eating more veggies again has returned. Unlike my LOVE for chocolate…which I suppose is not really a tragedy after all.)

With the demands of a newborn to consider, I have scaled back the crops to fit in only our original section or “Veggie Garden 1”.   I am quite sure I can handle the upkeep on this smaller version just for this season, especially with the help of my youngest brother as a guest gardener/weed puller! The basics (tomatoes, peppers, green and yellow beans, cucs, zucchini, eggplant) were all started in the greenhouse, but kinda late since I should have had them started just about the time we were getting ready to go in for delivery.  Since the peppers never sprouted, I resorted to store bought plants: 2 each of jalepeno, big berthas, and sweet banana. I also picked up a few “early” cabbage plants though I couldn’t find the 45 day cabbage like we had last year. Oh, and I added a few new purchased plants to the herb garden (rosemary, parsley, dill, basil) since my seedlings for those are struggling too.  Everything has been planted out while the weather has been rather cool and rainy.

I think that is just about where we left off last summer as far as the garden goes. There are also a few projects that we worked on over the course of this sabbatical so I will probably write up some posts about those things while we wait for the weather to warm up and the gardens to get growing! Check back soon…