Of Harvests and Thank Offerings

My mother would call this blossom in January yet another token of the Lord restoring the year that the locust had eaten.  Or seemed to have eaten, at least.  In a way, I think she would be right.  The proverbial locust did appear to have his way with things for a while.

But we just kept planting beside all waters, not knowing which would prosper, this or that, and guess what?

They all seemed to prosper, those plants in several states.  It's just that we left Apollos to water most of those, and these plants here, in January, are the ones we'll get to harvest ourselves.  In fact, we enjoyed the first bunch of our own heirloom cilantro yesterday, on our haystack lunch.

Here is one of our three best little tomatoes, which you can see is a bit lopsided.  I don't know why he grew that way; I just hope it doesn't hinder his maturing process too much.  I'm generally of the opinion that looks don't much matter, as long as the produce is healthy and tasty in spite of funny shapes.

We found a YouTube video on pollinating tomato plants, and although we don't own a suitable paint brush or an electric toothbrush, we did find a little battery operated device that vibrates.  Which is what we used to jiggle the pollen around in the tomato flowers this evening.  That's supposed to help simulate the buzzing of bees and get the pollen go to the right place in the flower.

We do see bees here from time to time, but since we are still having cooler days interspersed with days in the 70s and 80s, they stay hidden away a lot of the time.  {That's my theory, anyway.}  We hope there will be more bees soon, but meanwhile, we thought we'd try to help things along a little.

Have you marveled over the beauty of a bean blossom lately?  And to think this is just a volunteer, an unexpected delight.

S.M.I.L.E.

I don't think it will be long until we have a small harvest of beans.  There are four or five already growing on the plants.

We do have one more cold night in the ten-day forecast.  It's coming on Tuesday night, so we'll cover all the plants again like we did Thursday and Friday nights last week.  It didn't end up frosting those nights, and we gratefully thanked our Lord for caring about such small things as the baby beans in our garden enough to preserve them one more time.

Now, that's not to say that if it did frost and kill our garden, we would think He didn't care.  It's just that this time, He saw fit to give us a few more days, at least, of pleasure in the green and growing things that have filled our yard with the eager anticipation of watching for each new leaf, each new bud, and each new developing fruit.

And we are grateful, still eager to see what's in store on our waist-high volunteer sunflower, among other things.

Have you read lately in the Bible how in Israel people gave a firstfruits offering to God when they harvested the first lovely ripe things from their gardens and farms?  I don't know if I've exactly done that before, but we did this weekend, after a sort, with just a few extra dollars to something special through our church.

Not because we felt obligated.  Because we are thankful, for Jesus' leading and care in our lives over the course of our four-state gardening year.

And because gifts that help bring the gospel to people who've never heard it before bless the heart of Jesus.  That's what we want for all our tithes and offerings, actually--the gospel getting planted, watered, and harvested just a little more than it would if we had never returned something of the blessings God so graciously puts in our care.