Gardens Then and Now - Lyn Kublick

My special interest is history and I love to consider how things have changed over the last 100 years, or so. My own blog has sat idle for the last month while my energy has been focused on the garden, so let's consider gardens then and now.

The young lady in this picture is my mother's sister Hazel Erma Reager, born July 16, 1891. During my early life I delved into collecting family treasures and learning about our roots. By some stroke of foresight I wrote to my aunt in 1961 asking her to tell me memories of her childhood. My request reached her when she was living in a retirement trailer park in Arizona and had time on her hands. she replied with a long and fascinating letter. One paragraph of which described the Reager family garden circa 1900.

"Dad had one of the finest orchards and gardens in the area. I suppose most of the trees were planted by Grandfather as they were in full bearing when I remember. There were all kinds of trees: apples, pears, peaches, plums, nectarines, persimmons and also an orange and a pummelo. Mother canned and dried enough for the year's supply, besides making jams and jellies. Most of this was done in the washhouse so as not to interfere with the cook. Dad had a wonderful garden also, growing all sorts of vegetables and melons. I'll never forget the casabas. They were very large. He would store them in the cooler house and we'd enjoy them at Christmas. There was also a large rose garden grown in the old bed of Stony Creek."

I can't help but wonder how they obtained the great variety of fruit trees and various seeds in a era when transport was difficult. The family used real "horse power" to travel from place to place and do all of the farm work.

Times have certainly changed. However the Master Gardener remains the same. We can plant, but only God can put life into seeds and cause them to grow. Some seeds are so tiny they look like dust scattered on your hand, but He has placed a tiny plant inside each one. This is a beautiful picture of how He is able to renew us, placing new life in our hearts, when we seek Him.

A Bad Father Is Better Than None - Bruce Atchison

Father's Day can be a lonely time for children deprived of their dads through divorce or death. While their peers are happily making cards and buying presents, these unfortunate children feel unfairly excluded.

My dad was far from perfect but he occasionally demonstrated his fondness for me. In my Deliverance From Jericho (Six Years in a Blind School) memoir, I wrote of one sublime moment when I felt that rarely-experienced parental bond strongly. In the following vignette, I had just been flown home for the summer holidays after six months at Jericho Hill School for the Deaf and Blind in Vancouver, B.C.

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I felt glad when I met Dad at the airport but my joy turned to disgust when he insisted on stopping at a bar on the way home. He had left me many times before in the Volkswagen with nothing to do, occasionally for hours, while he had fun with his friends. Now Dad kept me waiting once more, delaying my arrival. As my father drove through Fort Saskatchewan, the Volkswagen stalled and refused to start. After he tried to revive the engine and only succeeded in wearing down the battery, he slammed his fist in disgust on the dashboard.

It was fortunate that the breakdown happened by Ray's Auto Body Shop, a place where I often played. The old cars were extremely entertaining to sit in. I spent many happy hours in the yard, driving to many wonderful places in my imaginary world, whenever the adults weren't watching.

"Well, I guess that's it for the car. Let's walk the rest of the way home," Dad suggested. "I'll phone the shop and they can fix it." I agreed and Dad unloaded my suitcases.

"Is that too heavy for you?" he asked as I picked up a case with each hand.

"It's alright, Dad. I'm a big boy now."

The walk home in the warm sunlight was one of those sublime moments in my life. I felt that father-son bond as we talked and strolled through the familiar streets of my home town. "I wish Dad was like this all the time," I thought. I heartily longed for a real dad and not an alcoholic who occasionally hit Mom.

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Deliverance from Jericho contains many more vignettes of what life was like in that government-run institution. These range from poignant experiences of homesickness to hilarious incidents of mischief. This 196-page paperback, containing 6 black and white photos, is available through the PayPal-equipped InScribe website.

What's The Priority? - Karen Toews

Priority on my agenda was to get camping gear and other related stuff like food and clothes packed into the car - plus there were some other must-do’s for the day. Certain that being ready to pull out of the driveway by suppertime would be quite manageable, I planned to link 'town' errands with a bike ride - a birthday gift to myself.

I didn’t think this goal would be out of reach as the basics of tent, sleeping bags and cooking utensils were all pretty much heaped together. I was to discover, however, the mix of the unexpected and the fact we'd recently moved into a travel trailer parked on our new building site, would significantly affect how the day would actually play out. In real time:

- transport load of laundry to neighbour (Laurie) and hang out on my outdoor drying racks

- stow boxes currently stored on trailer upper bunk bed to storage area under our bed

- find bedding for empty bunk bed in anticipation of grandson’s upcoming visit (yahoo!)

- walk .25km to another neighbour (Malcolm) who is kindly housing our down-sized office and has internet connections (our phone-internet-cable provider will not have us connected anytime soon)

- Malcolm's not home, no access to paperwork needed before ride to town

- plant some Swiss chard seeds in pot sitting on the trailer deck

- walk by waiting bike and gear, still hoping...

-check again at Malcolm’s: great, he’s out in the yard – stop to chat and help him connect lengths of 4-inch PVC pipe for his house renovation project, which produces a bloodied, pinched finger on my part and regrets on his

- get necessary paperwork from the office and connect my PC which I had fetched the day earlier from Computer Patch repair shop… happy to see it now connects to Malcolm’s internet network

- after viewing emails, I realize fast-track phone calls (on Malcolm’s phone) with follow-up action is required

- drive car to my husband’s work (location out of cell phone coverage) to discuss necessary action; we drive together to Bridgewater for urgent business deadlines, also take care of other errands

- back home at the trailer – I scoop dry clothes off the rack, heap camping stuff into car, have short shower

- put bike gear away

- we pull out of the driveway; it’s 7:30, stop for supper at a familiar pub, overlooking the Mahone Bay marina

The day was totally unmanageable from the original plan but the necessary was accomplished and the only way to close its page was to remember:

“This is the day the Lord has made, I will rejoice and be glad in it.” Psalm 118:24

Horse Sense 101 - Lynda Schultz

If you watch horse racing you may have observed that some of the horses wear blinkers or blinders. These leather screens are attached to the horse's bridle to prevent the animal from seeing sideways or behind. The idea is to keep a horse that is easily distracted from seeing what is going on around him and to prevent him from losing his primary focus—full steam straight ahead to the finish line.

"I will walk in my house with a blameless heart," writes David in Psalm 101 (NIV). We nod our heads knowingly; David was no saint at home. Remember Bathsheba? Then again, if I point a finger at someone else, there are always several pointing right back at me. What I do I do in the privacy of my own home that would disgrace me were it revealed in public, and bring shame on the name of the Lord?

Reading the psalm got me thinking about what I fill my idle spaces with when I am at home. David writes: "I will set before my eyes no vile thing" (verse 3). What do I read? What do I watch on television? What kinds of DVDs do I entertain myself with? What sites do I visit on the Internet?

The songwriter then determines not to "hang" with anyone in his home who is faithless, perverse, a slanderer, proud, deceitful, or a liar. He wants to keep company with those who are faithful and to be mentored by those who are what he wants to become—blameless. Clearly we can't disassociate ourselves from everyone who doesn't conform to Biblical standards. How would we witness to them or be of influence in their lives if we had nothing to do with those who most need to discover new life through faith in Christ Jesus? I think the psalmist is talking about those who are his closest friends. Who is within my intimate circle of relationships? They should be those who pull me up spiritually, not those who tempt me toward that downward spiral away from the Lord.

Just as blinders keep horses focused so that they can win the race, we need to consciously choose to keep our private spaces as free from evil as possible, and "hang" with those who build us up spiritually so that we can keep focused on being, in private and in public, the witnesses to truth to which God has called us.