Commissioned

Matthew 28:18-20

And Jesus came to them and spake unto them, saying, All authority hath been given unto me in heaven and on earth. Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit: teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I commanded you: and lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. 

Whole books have been written about this passage, songs have been sung, preachers have spent hours teaching their congregations about this verse.  Most Christian people call it the Great Commission.  What I have to say about it won't be much, however I've been observing churches friends and family have been attending and I've witnessed a disturbing trend.

The above verses command Christians to go and make disciples.  One observation I have is churches today aren't doing that.  They set their program and present it as a takei it or leave it proposition.  To me this is not how churches should operate, they should look and see what their community needs and offer that.  In some communities this outreach might be a food bank. In others it might be a community center with projects or games for children, youth and families alike.  In a more rural setting an outreach might be a roping, or a ranch fun day.  Here's the kicker in all these settings the message is the same.  "Your past doesn't matter, God loves you, He's provided for your future, your eternity, in the form of Jesus Christ. Trust In Jesus for your salvation."  John 3:16 “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life."

The next observation is that the above message is getting lost in the shuffle. Church leaders today are so worried about attendance, tithes and offerings, the congregant who is the squeakiest wheel, and so many other details that pale in comparison to The Commission.

The Garden on Memorial Day Weekend

I noticed I posted some pics from May 4th, so I thought I would post pictures of the garden at the end of the month too.

The approach to the garden.  The hoses on the ground are soaker hoses I haven't gotten around to stowing away.

The squash and zucchini are looking pretty good.

The strawberry a are blooming and setting fruit.

The blackberries are ripening.

The tomatoes are looking good and we're picking fruit everyday.

The container garden is green and growing.

The dog

The posts below will eventually be a part of pergola for the grape vines over our patio.

The grapes.

Surviving and Thriving

We got the expansion added to the container garden.  We've even added a 4 blackberry plants to it in the ground, not the containers, they seem to be surviving so far.  The best part about the expansion of the container garden is it only cost about 15 bucks.  We had a neighbor who is moving and was giving away some welded wire fencing, I had the t-posts in my metal scrap pile, so we only had to buy I corner post. 

Here is some pics of the garden from this morning.

The expansion is from those bales on the right to the fence at the gate.  We still need to move that pile of sand, but that will go in the bottom of those containers.

Another view.

The regular garden, we put up bird netting around the tomatoes today and Trudy fixed the bird netting around the strawberries.  Today I also got the watering timer installed so in our heat the plants will be happy to be watered at 4:00 in the morning.

Two of the new blackberries we grew these off of our original bush.

The other two.

In these planters are horseradish plants.  They were planted about three weeks ago. They will have to grow two years before we can harvest the root, but we'll always have fresh horseradish for our culinary delight.

That's all the updates for now. 

The Garden May 4th 2014

Our little homestead is moving right along we have a couple of projects.  Here's some pictures.

We're expanding the container garden and will have the fence extended today.  We then have to finish installing the drip system.

2014 Garden

I once again have gone months without updating the blog.  Life has gotten in the way and the trail through the mountains and valleys of life has been very eventful.  As time passes I'll share some of what we experienced over the course of 2013.

We are trying out a new drip system in the garden.  We'll finish the basic system, the we were given a timer system that I will install as well.  I may have to play with it a bit, but this should increase our harvest, because the watering will be more consistent.

These 5 pepper plants survived the winter and no watering.  We decided to leave them and plant the watermelon in amongst them.  

New peppers for the year. 

Below are the pictures of zucchini and yellow  crook neck squash that are coming up.  I'm going to try something different with them this year.  As the plant grows I'm going to remove the lower leaves and tie the main plant to a pole.  We'll see how that works.

Lavender I don't know how to use this, but apparently my wife does.

Something to draw bees.

The onions are coming up.

In the background of the last picture you can see the elderberry... It's the two plants at the end of the onion planter.

There is more to share, but for now adieu.