So Sad

We ended up with 7 baby chicks. From yellow to brown to black. Adorable little balls of fluff. I went out to check on them I got home and I kept counting only 6 chicks. Looked everywhere and then I found the little chick with brown on head floating in the big water tub, I would have sworn it was too high for a baby to get into! It made me so sad. Emptied tub so no more lose their lives but there are plenty of dangers on a farm for little ones to get into trouble. Boo hoo.

Baby Chicks

Pat went went out to do the morning chores and came right back, saying he saw a baby chick. I couldn't find my shoes fast enough! So I race out there and you could see one popping it's head out of the left side of her feathers and I reached in and being very gentle pulled some of her feathers aside saw at least 3 baby chicks. The whole time I did this she pecked at my hand but the pecks weren't as vicious as when she just had eggs. It is so exciting. Can't wait until they are all hatched. Which they should be by the end of today.

Naps

I just woke up from my nap. It seems I need one almost every day now. My mind feels sharper after a nap and I feel like I can go on until evening now. I got to talk to my best friend in the whole world today, Sharon M, and it always makes me sad that we are so far away from each other. But thank God for cell phones, and e-mail. All you pray-ers out there please join me in praying for my friend, God knows what about.

I wrote last week about memorizing, and this week I realized I should do it like anatomy in college. Index cards and carry it with me and drill myself when driving or a few minutes to spare, plus I wrote keywords to remind myself of the correct order. I thought I already knew the 23rd Psalm but apparently I didn't remember the exact order! So that has been my passage this week to memorize. I trust with more effort the memorization will get easier. Anyway, I went and got the index cards and the cute little boxes to hold them in for all the people in my Sabbath school class. Walmart has these cute little snap box holders in the back to school section this year. Just don't throw away the cardboard insert or you'll never snap your box again until full of cards. I cut the insert into a front, back and bottom joined piece (got rid of the top section) so I can put the unused cards into the cardboard sleeve and keep the card or cards that I am memorizing in front of the insert. Did this make sense?

We ate our first two tiny ripe tomatoes from the garden last night for supper. You forget after awhile just how much store bought tomatoes lack, even the ones still on the bit of dried up vine, until you have that first one out of your garden. Oh, the juicy sweetness that bursts into your mouth as your brain does a giant sigh of bliss! Fresh tomatoes! Summer is here at last.

We finally got the parsnips, carrots, beets and radishes re-planted with the sawdust on top to help with moisture and we have radishes coming up thick as thieves and teeny tiny little beet sprouts are visible. The wind and heat here have been extra wild this year. Makes you feel like a brand new gardener wringing your hands!

I have been following several different blogs this week and one of them is a woman gardener in France, they have bind weed there, too! Some people write, some people take pictures and some do both. It's very interesting! I need to get my childlike spirit rekindled and take more pictures. It is important to see other's worlds through their eyes.
If you are reading any other blogs, tell me about them and why you llike them and I'll share mine with you, too.

Have a wonderful Sabbath and rest in Jesus.

4th of July

Well, we decided there were too many wild cherries yet. So we picked the rest and today I enjoyed the holiday by making 4 batches of wild cherry pancake syrup and 4 batches of wild cherry jelly. Dad Coady is coming for supper of dogs and buns, chips and potato salad Dad Troyer style and baked beans.

The wind is blowing like mad and the trees are bowing halfway to the ground with it! The dog always freaks out with the wind howling like this.

In case you ever have wild cherries to pick the recipe is 3 1/2 cups juice to 5 cups sugar and 1 pkg of pectin. To make the syrup just omit the pectin.

Now I'm out of jars, so guess I will be buying many more for the bumper crop of grapes and plums to come.

Hope your 4th is fun and you get fireworks to watch. None for us, too much fire danger.

Lesson for next Sabbath

Please read Psalm 15-28 for next Sabbath and memorize one verse. Plus pray for all the members of class so they will find memorization easier than we did this week. I, personally found it extrremely difficult. It was a great big fuzzball in my brain week. Satan doesn't want us to memorize God's word. But I realize that much of it is my sinfulness and finding other things more important than God's word and I am ashamed that I can remember which row of re-inkers has the brightest blue or the new book I want to find at the Library and who wrote it, but couldn't memorize Psalm 5:1,2 adequately to recite word for word. I find it easily to remember concepts and what it means but verbatim!!! Sad, isn't it. How do we get ourselves to find God's word valuable enough to store it in the quick retrieve part of our brain? Any suggestions?

Anyone who has good ideas that work for them please share with me so I can share them with the class. And if you are a pray-er, pray for Julie, Bill, Peter, Pam, Debbie and myself. Thanks, in advance.

wild cherry jelly

Sabbath school class: this week read the first 14 Psalms and memorize at least one verse of the 14 to share with the class. We read last week that people in Bible times memorized much more readily than we do now and we talked about how we need to memorize more because in the time before Jesus comes we might not have our Bibles any more and we will need to comfort ourselves and others with God's Word, and hence the only way we can do that is by memorizing.
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The nanking cherries (wild type cherries) did well this year and the ones that I planted 6 years ago when I first moved here, the ones God blessed and made live, did the best. I made 10 batches of jelly yesterday! It only took me 7 1/2 hours to do it and that was after all my morning jobs away from home! And there are still more to pick if I feel in the mood. I'm sort of thinking that the birds could enjoy the rest.

When we first moved here, Pat was gone helping his Dad back in Denver so I tried to dig holes to plant the trees that I'd lucked into because someone didn't want their order from the conservation agency. The ground was like concrete and I couldn't dig a deep enough hole to bury roots so I finally heeled them in and told God if they lived it would be because he made them live despite my pathetic efforts. And they did live and they always out bloom, give the most berries and it is because of God and God alone that they do well.

The others that we planted the next year do okay, though. The next year we planted wild plums and hackberry trees. All are doing good, if is continues as it looks I'll be making plenty of plum jelly later this summer. The hackberry are just a deciduous tree that forms a wind break.

Our asparagus plants are doing wonderful and our mouths are watering for that tiny crop we can eat next year and the big crop we can eat the year after that!

I had to replant the okra as the first crop didn't take and we are going to have to re-plant carrots, beets and parsnips as the first planting did so poorly. We have so much wind here! It dries the soil and since it rarely rains (high desert) we have to irrigate everything and we have had a late melt this year (hasn't happened yet!) our irrigation water has been cut to only 60% of what we usually get. But we are finding that sawdust is good to put on top of tiny seeds so it will hold in the moisture better and give it more of a chance to germinate. Our tomatoes are pathetic, too. We are trying to germinate some more in the shop to supplement but something, a mouse?, ate almost all the tiny first leaves off 2 nights ago!

Well, I'd better get back to cleaning my craft room, any excuse to play seems more fun! If I'd quit being such a pack rat and if I'd put things back when I was done; I'd be someone else! Kind of like telling someone today my weeds are growing...like weeds!