Planting and The Great Canon

This morning I worked in the garden. I guess, really, it is two gardens. The small one is right outside the front door. It has three grape vines a lemon tree, rosemary, thyme (It started bolting a few days ago. I don't really know what to do about it. I think I'll just let it so I can learn what happens.), two potted tomato plants, and the green houses which still have a lot of seedlings in them. We just ate a lemon off that tree yesterday and it has dozens more growing. It's only 6 feet tall and, maybe 5 feet wide. I think its going to be one of those house-sized lemon trees so we are going to have to keep it pruned back because the growing area is small. The grape vines woke up from their winter nap and are putting out lots and lots of new leaves and starting to grow over the porch again. There is a jasmine growing up the other end of the porch. And there is a pot of strawberries. I didn't think the strawberry plants would survive the winter but they did.

The second garden is the one I usually write about. Yesterday two neighbor kids, Elijah (6) and Zachariah (4) helped me transplant some tomatoes, zucchini, and eggplants from the green house to some of the beds. Their mother died 2 weeks ago so they live with theor grandmother now, six doors down. The socond garden is just crammed withplants now. The plantings are more dense than we've ever tried in previous years: For example, just one 4x8 bed has 3 bush tomato plants, 3 cherry tomato plants, 3 other tomato plants, 1 spaghetti squash vine, 1 eggplant, a zucchini, and radishes planted around the edge of the planter box. And we have three more boxes crammed with tomatoes, squash, poppies, sunflowers, chilis, eggplants, tomatillos, and radishes, And then there are 2 wash tubs growing beens and peas, a trash can with 7 cucumber vines growing out of it, a watering trough full of tomato vines and radishes, and lots of other pots and barrels growing zucchini, musk melons, spaghetti squash, tomatillos, ceyenne peppers, sunflowers (the first one opened up yesterday.). And along the fence are the two apple trees (i love the smell of the blossoms), sunflowers, poppies, ragweed, bee balm, and otherflowers. It's so much fun just to go out there and watch it all grow. Today I transplanted four more spaghetti squash vines from the green house to one of the beds in the big garden.

Tonight, Anselm, Basil and I went to church for the Great Canon of St. Andrew of Crete with the Life of St. Mary of Egypt. Wow! What amazing people those two are. What a beautiful service. Sadly, Basil sprained one of his thumbs during a prostration. After the service the priest prayed for the thumb and Anselm immobilized the thumb with an Ace bandage. We are going to try to visit four other parishes between tonight and Pascha. It is so good to be able to be back in church again.