Lessons from my tomato plants.

I am not an outdoorsy person. At all. I think nature is beautiful, but I believe it should be viewed the way God intended it: through a window.

This could be the reason why, when I said, "I would like to grow a garden this year" that I heard my husband chuckle softly. When I responded with, "Don't worry. All you have to do is till it. I'll do all the work" I'm sure he heard, "Don't worry. I'll make you do all the work while I sit in the house and enjoy the harvest."

However, I have to say that I am proud (and slightly surprised) that I have done a lot of working in the garden myself. The kids have helped, of course, but I've gotten down and dirty with the planting, weeding, and whatnot. Taking care of a garden brings to mind the original garden, the Garden of Eden. How nice it would have been to take care of a garden with no weeds, bugs, or other pests! I'm sure each time Adam had to work in his garden after the fall, he got a profound sadness in his heart, knowing what he had and lost in a moment's time.

It has also brought certain lessons to light. Case in point: my tomato plants.

We bought them from Walmart, good, healthy plants. I started with 3 and ended up with 5, plus a cherry one for Rach. I planted them and they did FANTASTIC!!! They got big and bushy, almost outgrowing the tomato cages I had put around them for support. They started to bear tiny green tomatoes. Yay! Then, something weird happened. They started to wilt, one at a time. I watered them more and it didn't help. I used Miracle grow. That didn't help. I even resorted to using pesticide to kill any nasty bugs I didn't see. Yet they continued to wilt. They also continued to bear fruit but the fruit didn't get very big. I have lately given up on the plants. They are dead and the fruit they were bearing, although starting to turn red, are tiny and rotten. Not good for eating. I did some research to find out WHY my plants had died when everything else in the garden seemed to be doing so well.

As I read articles on the subject, one thing caught my eye: Walnut Wilt. I had never heard of it before. Apparently, Black Walnut trees put out a chemical that is toxic to tomatoes and some other plants. It causes them to wilt from within and there's nothing you can do about it. Guess where I had planted my tomatoes? Yup. Close to the Black Walnut tree.

I was looking at my wilting tomato plants one night and I felt like the Holy Spirit showed me how this related to our lives. We may look good on the outside, like my big bushy plants did. Everyone thinks we are saved, everyone thinks we are doing good works for God. We can grow and start to bear fruit, yet have something hidden in our lives, a sin that eats away at us that no one knows about. We can try to hide it but eventually, it will show. We will start to "wilt." Our fruit that we were bearing, our good works, will be useless and rotten. Eventually, if we do nothing about this sin, it will be fatal. John 15:5-8 says: "I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered; and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned. If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you. By this My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit; so you will be My disciples." I find it interesting that the word "withered" is used. That's just what happened to my plants.

My fruit, the tomatoes are rotten, tiny and unusable. Christ says in Matthew 7:16-20 "You will know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thornbushes or figs from thistles? Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Therefore by their fruits you will know them." The outer fruits reflected what was happening on the inside. We can't be living a secret life hiding sin or even continue on as an unbeliever and still do good works for Christ. The works will be rotten and useless and eventually, people will see that. If we don't repent and ask Christ to forgive us of our sins, it will be fatal.

So that's my lesson from the tomato plants. I have since planted more tomato plants, farther away from the Walnut trees. Hopefully, they will do well. It's incredible how God can take something that I would view as a failure and make an illustration out of it so I could learn more and grow in Him. Our God is an awesome God!

And the answer is.....

Since I have 5 kids and choose to homeschool them, I sometimes get treated like a circus freak with two heads. For some reason, people seem to think it's ok to comment on our choices and/or ask rude questions. I thought I would take this opportunity to answer some of them.

1. There are 5.

2. Yes, they are all mine.

3. Yes, they are all my husband's.

4. No, they are not home from school sick. We homeschool them.

5. Yes, I am a saint, but not for the reasons that you think.

6. Yes, we are busy. But we also have moments of boredom.

7. Yes, you could do it.

8. Yes, it is legal.

9. We have to inform the school district and either take a test or get a written letter by a certified teacher that we are actually teaching our children something.

10. We are learning about the same things your kids are learning about, just in a different way.

11. No, I am not worried that I am screwing my kids up and taking away opportunities for them. Homeschooling is increasing in popularity and more and more colleges are actually seeking out homeschoolers.

12. Yes, I have them with me ALL DAY LONG so that means we all go shopping together, we all eat meals together, we all talk together, laugh together, etc....

13. No, we don't sleep in. Some homeschoolers do and that's fine, but we choose to get up and get our work done so we have the rest of the day free.

14. Yes, you really COULD do it.

15. Yes, I do teach them all on different grade levels, and yes, that does include Algebra. They make these wonderful things called "Teacher's Editions."

16. No, I don't care if they miss their prom.

17. I agree that Christians should be an example to the outside world. But I also think that kids should have a strong foundation to know what they believe and why.

18. Yes, we do socialize them. Some weeks, they are out more than they are home.

19. No, I don't know if I'm done having kids. But thank you for asking such a personal question.

20. Yes, I do have times where I want a moment's peace, but those are few and far between (and that's when I go hide in the bathroom for 10 minutes). I genuinely LIKE my kids. This is my job, my heart and what God has in His will for me.

21. No, you're right. You probably couldn't do it then.

I cantabelieve it's not squash!!!!

The three older kids are involved in 4 H this year. First rule: NO ANIMAL PROJECTS. Second rule: Must be something mom can do. Third rule: Only two per kid. Being the wonderful mom that I am, I decided to let them have some say in what they picked. By "some say" I mean that I gently directed their interest toward certain projects that I thought were cool. For example, I would say, "You want to do Fishing? Hmmm....I don't think you would like that one very much. I think you would enjoy Photography!"

So Mike is doing Quick Breads and Gardening, Rach is doing Photography and Cake Decorating, and Dave is doing Photography and Gardening. Like how they overlap? This way, I'm only doing 4 projects instead of 6. I mean, THEY are only doing 4 projects instead of 6.

Let's focus on Gardening.

For the boys' projects, they needed to do 4 plants each. Mike chose pumpkins, cucumbers, corn, and green beans. Dave chose orange peppers (he loves everything orange, you will see that theme often), cucumbers, Big Max pumpkins, and peas. We thought the orange peppers were goners so we replaced it with a chili pepper plant. After we did that his orange pepper started to flower. Who knew?

So since we had to plant the garden anyway, I decided to grow some stuff for myself. Obviously, I wanted to grow things that we liked. No sense having a garden full of asparagus. It started off as a small garden, 10 feet by 20 feet. Then I got hooked. Three rototilling sessions later and the garden is now over twice as big as when it first started. One of the plants we wanted to grow was cantaloupes. We all love cantaloupe. Can't go wrong with the melon. I bought some seeds. Hybrid, big sweet melons. I planted them, watered them, sang Kumbaya to them.

They didn't come up. Nothing.

I figured I planted them too deep and didn't water them enough. So I did what any self respecting gardener would do. I got myself to Home Depot and bought me some plants! I checked the labels on all three plants carefully. "Cantaloupes." Yup. That's what I want. I planted them in the garden. I lovingly coddled them and spoke sweet nothings into their ears. To my surprise they actually grew! And grew and grew and grew. I have three very big, healthy and happy cantaloupe plants! Success! I can almost taste them.

I noticed something a bit alarming the other day. Since I've never grown cantaloupes, I don't know what they look like before they mature. Looking at the fruit, I am thinking that they look more like squash than melons. Hmmm. That's not good. Yesterday, I recognized the yellow things hanging off the plants.

Summer squash.

You've got to be kidding me!!! ALL THREE PLANTS. Not a melon among them. I took a picture, which I will attempt to attach to this blog of my "cantaloupe." So now, instead of enjoy sweet melons this summer, we are looking forward to a bumper crop of squash. The kids are so disappointed.

Next year, I'm starting everything from seed so I know what we are planting (of course, I say that now, let's see what happens when spring gets here and I forget all about it). Can you put summer squash in a fruit salad?