June 8, 2017
Hello Dear Friends!
We hope you enjoyed your first basket. We are trying to add items of interest while our produce is ripening. Let us know which items you like best and also feel free to make a suggestion. It is available, substitu-tions are possible. The cherries are a little sweeter this week. Last week was the first cherry “thinning” harvest so they were a bit small and tart but hopefully tasty :).
Call for Recipes
Did you do something with your basket ingredient that you would like to share with others? I would love to include your recipes in our weekly update! Just email me your recipe.
Hand Crafted Lavender Hydrosol with Essential Oil
So I had a blast learning how to make hand crafted es-sential oils. It involved building my own still (I know, some you think this is a cover for moonshine!). It is amazing how much lavender it takes to make less than an ounce of essential oil. Thus the high prices we all pay. But the real treasure is the hydrosol that is basi-cally distilled lavender water left over from the oil dis-tillation process. If you find the authentic lavender fragrance overpowering (even a bit putrid smelling), dilute it with even more distilled water and some va-nilla extract. Pure and natural fragrances at times smell different than the chemicals that pass for the real thing.
Insights Gleaned from the Garden
Written by Cindi J. Martin on June 8, 2017
Has anyone ever told you that you were a well-grounded person? Or have you been told like me, that you need to be more down to earth and less spiritual? I do want to be down to earth but also heavenly mind-ed. I want to be well grounded but for the purpose of delighting my Heavenly Father and loving others.
Jesus certainly was the most well grounded person that ever walked the earth. His parables in the Gos-pels give us the perfect balance of heaven and earth. In fact the very definition of a parable is, “..an earth-ly story illustrating a heavenly truth.”
Metaphors, similes, allegories and parables are amazing teachers. So please bear with me as I share with you some of my favorite gardening insights. Please feel free to send in your insights as well!! I always feel as if I have come across a hidden treasure in a field when God or a friend somehow lets me in on a life les-son from the process of cultivating soil and tending plants.
This week I want to share something I am learning from beautiful rose buds in my garden. I contemplat-ed what would happen if I tried to force a rose bud open into a flower at that very moment. I could try to force the petals apart, but I would destroy the flower in the process. Several things in my life came to mind immediately that I am trying to “force open.”
Waiting on God’s timing is like the beauty of a rose bud unfolding.
I am tempted to rush things and make things happen in my own strength. Gardening grounds me in the reality that God’s patient process of slow development over time far exceeds anything I can do in my own strength.
