Saturday’s warm weather made it a good day to do some yard work. Because of the layout of my house and property, I don’t have to worry about raking leaves too much, but some do collect in the flower beds on one side of the house.

We started composting a couple of years ago and I like to get as much leaf-matter on the pile as I can. I built two side-by-side compost bins so I can keep compost at different stages separate. In the photo, in the left bin is the fully composted black gold. It’s very satisfying to turn over the compost on a cold day and see lots of hot steam coming off of it.

1 Thessalonians 5:9-11
9For God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. 10He died for us so that, whether we are awake or asleep, we may live together with him. 11Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing.
NKJV

Back to work after a four-day weekend. It gets harder every time.

I needed to put my tractor in the driveway so it could be picked up for yearly maintenance. When I was trying to get it started in the barn, it was absolutely frigid. It got me excited to get to the mountain to do some snowboarding.

Behold! My faithful steed!

Colossians 3:12-14
12Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering; 13bearing with one another, and forgiving one another, if anyone has a complaint against another; even as Christ forgave you, so you also must do. 14But above all these things put on love, which is the bond of perfection.
NKJV

Every December, we get several catalogs from seed companies… actually, the word “several” doesn’t really capture it. I am sure our mailman hates us. We have a select few from which we order and the rest we toss. Some of them are amusing to look through with their outrageous claims of a plentiful bounty of gargantuan sized and strangely colored vegetables.

I gave Kari Four-Season Harvest: Organic Vegetables from Your Home Garden All Year Long for Christmas (I wanted to read it too). It has me interested in doing some Winter gardening next season, so I was looking through the catalogs again this evening with an eye out for vegetables that would be suitable.

Kari told me about a website called Dave’s Garden. Particularly the section of the site that has user reviews of gardening sources called The Garden Watchdog. There are thousands of reviews, and most of them are very thorough and helpful. The mail-order companies that are being reviewed occasionally respond to bad reviews.

Mark 12:17
17And Jesus answered and said to them, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”
And they marveled at Him.
NKJV