Insanity

Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and shew thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not. Jeremiah 33:3

People who see our land and hear our plans always tell us about how much grass we will have to cut. Personally, I think lawns are a waste of space. If the dirt will grow a lawn, think how much better life would be if I grew food in it instead? And since we don't have neighbors who can see us, why not grow food instead of grass? Who will really care? I read articles almost daily of different city governments that fine people who grow food over lawns, and even governments that send machinery into the "farms" to destroy the produce or milk, and I have to say I find that sickening! We live in the greatest nation on Earth, and yet people are starving here. Why? There are many reasons I am sure, but one of the reasons HAS to be bureaucrats wanting to micromanage every detail of every life inside it. Has that ever worked before? No. So why do they think it will work now? I read once that repeating an action over and over expecting different results may be a key component of insanity, so that is what I think Americans going hungry is....Insanity. Our governments trying to decide what we can grow, how much we can grow and where we can grow (heaven forbid that a pepper plant be in the front yard, how horrible is that?) and that is insanity.....the people don't roll over and say ummm duhhh okay I will just till it all under, all the hours of hard work, all the money saved, and any money spent, tilled under with no questions asked, so it HAS to be insanity that makes anyone in the government think it's okay to tell a free citizen their yard cannot feed them, ever. Anyways I went off on a tangent a bit, I want to take about grass not governments.
This week after working all day, and working at the new land a few hours each evening, my husband noticed that all our current neighbors are cutting their lawns. I HATE this time of year. He and our youngest girl tend to take care of cutting the grass. I have a spinal disease and the tractor jostles me around so much that I can barely walk for days after(and the last time I drove that beast I almost fell over going down a hill and said nope not doing that again!). They take care of it for me, and they do a wonderful job. It just seems like this time of year, he has so much going on that it really stresses him to get it all done. I really don't like him stressing...it makes him grumpy, which makes me grumpy and well you know what they say about things rolling downhill....it's a bad deal all around. This year he hasn't been grumpy with the start of the grass cutting season. I don't really think he cares anymore, because he knows that we won't be here for most of the season after all. I think he cuts it too short anyways, but it's his thing, so I let him do it as he wants. He says if he leaves it longer, then he has to cut it more often. I wonder if that is the difference between people who enjoy the job and those who feel it's a necessary evil.
 Yesterday, as I was walking through the woods, I noticed a dogwood flower that appeared to be lying on the ground. I had noticed other flowers earlier that appeared to be floating in the air. I could see the flowers but I couldn't see the branches holding the flower. It was truly magical to me that a flower could just float like that. I have to admit I was a little bummed to learn they weren't floating and were in fact attached to a tree. I like looking for magical type things....they are here if you look for them. The photo I took of the floating flowers didn't turn out. My cell phone has no flash, and part of my spinal disease makes my hands shake, and that makes for blurry photos without a flash. A photographer told me that when I use a flash, the flash of light is faster than the shake of my hands so it helps. Whatever the reason, when I use a flash I get beautiful photos, and when I don't, I get blurry photos.
 I went into the woods and had to play with the dirt a bit. the ground is so dark and rich for about the first 2 or 3 inches, and then it turns into the standard Carolina red clay. All the years of leaves dropping and trees or branches falling and decaying has made the forest floor this amazing growing medium that even the trees use to continue. I moved the leaves away and saw the soil, but what amazed me even more was this amazing tapestry of roots from tree to tree. The young sucker trees are attached to the parent trees through this amazing tapestry. I am sure this fertile soil on top of the clay would have been fine for the young roots, and they do extend down into that soil, but the bulk of the root system is on top of the soil under the leaves and rotten wood droppings. This told me why my garden last year did so well, even though I didn't "ammend" the soil in any ways other than by adding mulches of leaves and pine needles and barks. SOund familiar to what I saw yesterday? I literally grew an eden garden and I didn't know that's what I was doing. I even named it after eden. Tell me God doesn't prepare us and keep us while we are being prepared. He gave me His blueprint for gardening, and I never even had to ask for it. All I asked was to have a beautiful garden. I prayed in my garden daily....it was my refuge, and God made it grow like nothing I had ever seen. I had to yank the tomato plants before they were truly done, because my body said it had enough for the year, and we needed to ready the bed for the next season. I ended what God began and this year my seedlings look horrible in comparison. I went back to last year's ways and they are doing MUCH better now. The Miracle Grow is in the trash now too. my fish give and the mulches (along with some coffee and Epsom salt) gives my plants all the health they need to grow. I am going back to My Garden of Weeden to provide all the nutrients my food needs.
and my God shall supply all your need, according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus; Phillipians 4:19  ylt
What I learned was God provides for ALL my needs. He even gave my body the strength to grow the garden, and He continued strengthening my body as I grew my garden. Our new house will not have a lawn. It's shady and beautiful, just the way it is, and I don't care to ruin it with grass. I may give in to a little lawn if that's what he wants, but otherwise, the dirt in my yard will feed me, and since I am not a cow, I won't be eating grass. I hope not anyways? I have been trying to watch Back to Eden, which is a movie about a man's chase to become a farmer and fails until he goes back to what God gave us. That's what God told me yesterday in prayer: Go into the woods and see how I grow the trees. These trees have never had fertilizer, never been pruned or even touched by a human. It's all in the soil those trees had created over the generations.
Chemicals and altered soils is NOT the way to grow a perfect vegetable. It takes natural love, natural solutions and God. We can recreate all the food we want in labs, and it may feed us, today. What will tomorrow hold for us, though? The future of a chemical filled world is just that, more chemicals, and one day man will run out of chemicals. Then what? Eventually science will run out of "The Next Greatest Drug to hit the Markets", and we are left with a world full of sick dying people who cannot function any longer. If I were the creator of all things I would let us die that way, but no; our Creator is more loving than this. He sits in the shadows waiting for us to cry out to Him to save us. And I believe that all know eventually who is God and who He isn't. 
Eden's garden will be filled with beautiful flowers to attract bees and other pollinators and the fruits and veggies produce beautiful flowers too in spring, and then summer will be filled with yummy fresh foods, fall will continue the harvests and putting food up for winter, in winter it can still grow greens under shelter (through most of the South Carolina winter anyways), and I will still enjoy my bounty year after year.
And he said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” Matthew 4:19 esv
If I encourage only one person to grow one kind of food this year, I have made a fisherman of that person. He or she will never go hungry, and I think of it like ripples in a pond. One stone thrown into the pond makes a ripple. That ripple makes another ripple and so on until the ripple hits the edge of the pond covering the entire surface with ripples that can glisten in the sun. Teaching one person to live self sufficiently can teach entire nations to do the same.
But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin. 1 John 1:7
It's a world of connections. We're all connected somehow, by someone to each other. So go be nice to each other. Love one another as we love ourselves. Show one another the peace and joy we've been given. Then continue showing that love in helping one another in our times of need as well. Love builds bridges, hate tears them down. Let's all be bridge builders today.
Next week I will start with a few gardening tips, such as what can Epsom salt do for my garden. I am hoping to have more photos of actual work being done on the land then too, unfortunately the rain has kept us from doing much to the land lately, so I have no new photos. Of course I took a photos of the bugs and other scenery, though.
Until next time, our journey continues....Peace!!
P.S. sorry I rambled a bit today. Y'all will get used to my tangents, it's just how I am sometimes........