Ten o'clock and 102 degrees

June 4, 2016

We knew our unusually long and cool spring was too good to last. Summer's here, and with a vengeance. Yesterday our backyard thermometer sensor, which is in the shade in a protected area on our back porch, hit 109 degrees. I spent the afternoon moving around the hose to provide additional water to our newest trees. Other than trying to keep things alive and harvest what's already set fruit, I mostly abandon gardening in summer and let zinnias take over. They are pretty and don't mind the heat.

Protecting peaches

Our Mid-Pride tree is full of nearly-ripe peaches. We neglected to thin this one as much as we did for the Desert Gold tree, but the peaches are actually larger. Go figure. This year, we're trying something new:using tulle bags (the kind used for wedding favors)  in an attempt to protect the ripening peaches from the birds. This was a suggestion from someone in a gardening Facebook group.which I've found to be very helpful.

Plumeria

There are still a few blooms on this yellow plumeria, which lives in a large pot on our side patio and is partially shaded by a pergola. The other one hasn't bloomed yet, and may not. These two are the only survivors of an unexpected early frost a few years ago that arrived while we were out of town and unable to move them into the garage as we usually do when there are frost warnings.

Petunias and sweet potatoes

Portulaca and sweet potatoes

I put together a second stacked-pot planter on the other side of the patio doors, this time using heat-loving portulaca rather than petunias. Sweet potatoes also love the heat, and are easy to propagate. I just use cuttings taken from vines, strip off the bottom couple of leaves, and stick the stem in the soil. As long as the soil is kept moist, they have no trouble rooting and taking off on their own. Mike created a drip irrigation system for them by drilling holes in each pot, and putting a circle of drip tubing in the planting area of each one.

Yard long beans and a volunteer tomato

Zinnias

Chop, drop, and grow

April 27, 2016

One of my favorite permaculture gardening techniques is "chop and drop". Instead of digging spent plants out by the roots, cut them off at ground level. Leave the roots to compost in place, and chop up the leaves and stems and drop them wherever you like.

This has several advantages, not the least of which is I am a rather lazy gardener and it doesn't take a lot of time or effort. It doesn't disturb the layers of beneficial microbes, bugs, and worms; you're less likely to damage the roots of desirable plants; it recycles nutrients back into the soil so that less fertilizer is needed; and it provides a cooling, moisture-conserving barrier that is very helpful in our summer heat.

Sometimes I chop-and-drop in place, but often I take plants I've allowed to go to seed from one place, and chop and drop them somewhere else in the garden. For example, here is some assorted lettuces that I allowed to go to seed...

Lettuce and larkspur

 ....and here is one of the places I decided to chop-and-drop them, at the edge of the side patio. I think that would be a nice place to find lettuce growing once it cools off in the fall.

Chopped-and-dropped lettuce

Part of the fun of gardening for me is finding surprises, and letting things go to seed, followed by chopping, dropping, and scattering usually creates the conditions for many future surprises. Rather like the proverbial box of chocolates, you never know what you're going to get.

Today's harvest: tomatoes, zucchini, beans

It's beginning to look a lot like spring

March 1, 2016

"As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease."

As blossoms on peach and apricot trees fade and begin to (hopefully) set fruit, the pear tree behind the gazebo is white with blossoms, and the surviving cherry tree is also flowering.  Citrus blossoms should follow within a few days; I can smell them already. A freesia, which I planted several years ago pondside and comes back year after year, is blooming, as are many of the nasturtiums and the first larkspur.

It's fun to stroll through the garden this time of year and see what new surprises it has for me. I picked enough asparagus for tonight's dinner today, which we'll have with the peas I picked earlier this week. Bush beans are beginning to poke their way to the surface, along with squash, melon, and cucumber seedlings. New leaves are appearing on the fig trees and grapevines.

Today is "Super Tuesday" and the news on TV and social media is full of opinions and predictions, I think I'd rather spend time in our backyard. Gardening keeps me grounded.

Asparagus

Royal Lee Cherry blossoms

Freesia

Green Bush Beans

Nasturtium

Larkspur

Artichoke

Pear blossoms

Fruitfulness

Zinnias (and beans, tomatoes, squash, eggplant, even if they aren't obvious)

"The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, gentleness, and self-control"

I've been thinking about this verse as I watch beautiful and delicious things grow in my garden. It's always been one of my favorites, but my understanding of it has changed over the years. I used to think of it as a checklist of qualities I was supposed to have, and berate myself when I felt depressed, anxious, or otherwise lacking in any of them.

But as I've watched my garden grow, and as I've grown older, I've come to the realization that I can no more will myself to bear spiritual fruit than the flowers, fruits, and vegetables in my garden can will themselves into being. A tomato plant creates tomatoes because it is a tomato plant, not because it decides to do so. Given the right amount of sunlight, warmth, water, and nutrients from the soil, it has no choice but to produce tomatoes. It is true that I planted some of the things growing in our backyard, but others have come up entirely on their own, from seeds scattered by the wind or birds, or from vegetable scraps I threw out for compost.

I think "the fruit of the Spirit" manifests itself in us like the fruits in a garden. It's not something we strive to achieve, but something that grows out of our relationship with God. As we nurture that relationship in whatever ways we've found work best, the "fruits of the Spirit" can't help but grow in our lives.

Tomatoes

Artichoke

Fig

Green beans

Strawberrie

Yellow squast

Peaches

Red potatoes

August overview

We've spent most of July clearing out the raised beds for fall planting. Summers here are like winters elsewhere...not much fun and not much success in the garden. Serious gardeners extend the growing season by putting up shadescreen over their vegetable beds, but we usually don't; we just give everything a rest.

An unexpected consequence of our conversion of the grass pathways to gravel was the loss of several more trees in the summer heat. In addition to the apple tree, a plum and a fig tree started showing signs of severe decline. My theory is that the tree roots were shallow and spread out because of the grass watering pattern, and couldn't adapt to a drip irrigation system.

If you're wondering what to plant in August, here's a list: We planted beans, carrots, lettuce, and summer squash in the smaller bed nearest the house and are going to try corn (again) in the larger bed by the streambed.

Today's pickings

Yellow squash, several kinds of tomatoes, peppers, green beans, peaches, and grapes. The Roma tomatoes are volunteers that are growing in the zinnia jungle.

Today's harvest

This morning's pickings included a bowlful of yellow pear tomatoes, three Early Girls, one Purple Cherokee, one mystery tomato, the first two cherry tomatoes from the volunteer plants that are sprouting like weeds everywhere, and a nice batch of green beans. Not shown are the yellow squash and Japanese eggplant we picked and ate last night in an adaptation of this Julia Child recipe.

 I also found four strawberries and two blackberries which actually ripened instead of drying up. They were eaten before I could get them to pose for a picture.

May 1 Overview

As the peak gardening season begins in other parts of the country, it's winding down here. I removed the last of the broccoli and cilantro yesterday, and planted another melon in their place. I've stopped harvesting asparagus and let the ferns grow to provide food to sustain the plant for next year's crop. Very few lemons remain on the tree, the first flush of rose blooms have come and gone, and nasturtiums and petunias are pretty scraggly looking. In their place, zinnias, marigolds, alyssum, coreopsis, and galliardia are appearing. Hollyhocks are still going strong, and sweet potato vines are spreading into the streambed and the floor of the gazebo,

I harvested the first of the green beans, tomatoes, and eggplant this week, and should be picking yellow squash in another week. I've picked the half-dozen apricots our young tree produced, along with about two dozen smallish peaches. The remaining ones are even smaller, so I think I'll let the birds enjoy them. There are about a half-dozen green plums on our Santa Rosa plum, which is somewhat of an improvement over most years, and dozens of developing Asian pears. The apple tree is, surprisingly, still alive, but unlikely to produce any fruit.

The black metal structure in the upper left is the framework for one of our two portable gazebos that we use to shade the side patio in summer. We have to take down the canopy when the wind kicks up, as it has been doing for the past week. One of our future projects will be to replace these with a permanent pergola, which should be more functional, attractive, and stable.

More baby vegetables

There are a couple of small yellow squash on the plant in the foreground, and I believe a zucchini on the upper plant. It's hard to tell when they're at this stage, because what looks like a fruit at the base of the female squash flower will wither away if it isn't pollinated. I haven't seen any male flowers open, but they must have at some point because the yellow squash at least are definitely past the embryonic stage, not only on this plant, but also on one I transplanted to another area. No sign of fruit yet on the acorn or flying saucer squash plants.

I picked enough green beans for a meal and about five small Japanese eggplant. This is the first time I've tried to get a second crop from a plant that came back from the roots after winter cold seemingly destroyed it. I'm not sure if they are so small because of that, or because it's not really hot yet. Eggplant really like the heat. When everything else suffers, eggplant, okra, and sweet potato vines keep going.

Baby vegetables

We're seeing the beginnings of green beans and yellow squash from our February plantings, as well as several Japanese eggplants on a plant that lived through the winter. Zinnias are coming up everywhere in this bed. I regret having to pull healthy, attractive plants up, but if I don't they will take over and crowd out the beans and squash. I once heard it said that the definition of a weed is a plant growing where you don't want it, but I still hate to pull up zinnias.

Bee-utiful borders

I like to plant flower borders around the perimeter of our raised beds, an idea I picked up from a Phoenix Permaculture Guild class we took a few years ago. Not only do they look nice, they attract bees which is helpful if you're trying to grow anything that requires an insect pollinator. And even if you aren't trying to grow food in your backyard, you're doing the environment a favor by providing for the bees.

There's a lot of speculation about why bee populations are declining, but one problem we have in large cities is the "urban desert" effect...buildings, parking lots, roads, and gravelscapes don't provide much in the way of livable habitat for them. The Maricopa County Cooperative Extension ran into this problem when they attempted a community garden project in an area of downtown Phoenix where there is a large homeless population. It was hoped that the garden would not only provide nutritious food to supplement the diets of people living in the area, but that the gardening skills they would learn might help some of them find work. But the Master Gardeners volunteering with the program found that many of the fruits and vegetables they planted never produced anything, because there were no bees living in the area to pollinate them. It would be a very serious problem if bees died out, so I'm happy to help them out any way I can, especially when what makes them happy makes me happy too.

The permaculture class suggested edible flowers, so I use a lot of nasturtiums, but they don't like really hot or cold weather. I usually plant petunias in late fall for winter color and in the spring, sweet alyssum and dwarf marigolds which will take the summer heat. I don't think you can see them, but there are dozens of bees on the alyssum in this photo. It has a sweet, honey-like scent that I think I enjoy as much as the bees do.

This bed contains bush snapbeans, tomatoes, and three kinds of squash. I didn't plant any of the tomatoes; one plant survived the winter and all the others are volunteers. I just put the cages around healthy-looking plants that came up in areas where I didn't have anything else planted. I'm not sure what kind of tomatoes they are as I had several kinds planted here last year. It will be interesting to see what they turn out to be.

Doing what I can

God, give me grace to accept with serenity

the things that cannot be changed,

Courage to change the things

which should be changed,

and the Wisdom to distinguish

the one from the other.

Living one day at a time,

Enjoying one moment at a time,

Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace,

Taking, as Jesus did,

This sinful world as it is,

Not as I would have it,

Trusting that You will make all things right,

If I surrender to Your will,

So that I may be reasonably happy in this life,

And supremely happy with You forever in the next.

-Reinhold Niebuhr

I was too obsessed yesterday with trying to figure out what might be wrong with the apple tree to either enjoy or do anything constructive in the garden. Today I think I will make better use of my time by digging out the Bermuda grass that is threatening to infest this raised bed and choke out these snapbeans.

I've done what I can about the apple tree. I've gone through three separate disease keys from the Cooperative Extension services in several Western states, and although I'm not 100% certain, I think it is likely some kind of crown or root rot brought on by our archenemy of poorly draining clay soil, and there's not much I can do about that. Mike reminded me that before we planted the apple tree, we dug down about three feet in an attempt to improve the drainage, and amended the native soil with compost. That was the general wisdom ten years ago, but since then recommendations have changed. One of the results of backfilling with heavily amended soil is that the area will sink over time as the compost decays, resulting in a sunken area. The sunken area is really obvious now that the grass is gone, meaning that when we water, it pools right next to the trunk and stays there, opening the roots up to various infections.

The first lines of the "Serenity Prayer" above are well known, probably because of their adaptation by Alcoholics Anonymous and other 12-step programs, but the last part isn't as familiar to most people. For some reason, I was reminded of the thoughts behind this prayer today. If I'm going to be a successful gardener, I have to work with my backyard as it is, heavy clay soil, extreme heat and all. I'd rather have better soil and more moderate temperatures, but this is what I have to work with. Trees may die, but there are other things in our garden to enjoy, and perhaps the difficulty of coaxing beauty from a less-than-ideal situation adds to its appreciation.

A few changes and surprises

This bed has shown a lot of changes in the past couple of weeks. All three of the tomato plants that I thought were dead (see March 5 picture here) are flourishing, and the Early Girl has begun to set fruit. My second planting of green beans (behind the tomato cages) was more successful than the first, with plants now about two inches high. In the midst of the bean planting, there are a few surprises: lots of zinnias and one tomato that I didn't plant. And in the rear of the bed, the asparagus roots I planted on Valentines Day have sent up ferny shoots that are about six inches high now.

The marigold seeds I planted around the edges of this bed never came up, so I took advantage of discounted  pony packs at Lowe's to remedy that. As I deadhead the spent blossoms, I take the seeds and toss them in other places, mostly where petunias and nasturtiums are currently growing. Those won't make it through the summer in any kind of attractive format, but the marigolds and zinnias will.

Growth. Change. Adaptation. Surprises. That's gardening, and that's life.

What a difference a week makes!

I've been gone for a week visiting my family in Alabama, and there have been quite a few changes in just a week. Things are finally waking up! There are blossoms on the apricot, apple, nectarine, almond, pear, and plum trees, and leaves on the crape myrtle. The roses have leafed out and should begin blooming in a couple of weeks. The three tomato plants I thought were dead have put out new growth, nasturtiums are blooming and some of the other annuals won't be far behind. Hollyhock plants are about two feet high. Even the grass is beginning to green up somewhat.

No beans or squash yet; I think that last cold snap hit at the wrong time for successful germination so I'll need to replant. The potato bush has come back nicely from the frost and the plumbago and snail vine are showing growth at the roots. The thevetia hedge hasn't really come back yet, although it's beginning to show signs of life. We pruned back the hibiscus and bougainvillea even further and never did find green wood, so it will be a long time before they come back.

We had Paul from The Pond Gnome over yesterday for a consultation and got some good ideas for projects to improve our ponds and streambed. We used flagstones to line the pond banks and streambed, and a lot of them have deteriorated. He suggested replacing them with rip rap, which will give us the same red rocks look and be more stable, and also replacing some of our pond plants with less invasive species.

February overview

Here's an overview of several of the raised beds in late February. A couple of  (yum!) asparagus shoots have come up, and there are now blossoms on the nectarine and apricot trees as well as the peach. The apple tree is beginning to leaf out, there are buds on the fig tree, and I even spotted a couple of buds on the two new bare-root peach trees we planted earlier this month.

Today's gardening tasks included planting more strawberries and spreading several bags of mulch over new plantings of tomato transplants, asparagus, beans, and squash. We are still harvesting several kinds of lettuce, Swiss chard, and snow peas.

Planting, interrupted

We've completed clearing out the raised beds, for the most part and for now. The grass may fade and the flower wither, but Mexican primrose is forever. Once it warms up, we will also be battling Bermuda grass invasions. We got some of our spring plantings completed before we were interrupted by rain, which is always nice, but it would have been nicer if it had waited until we'd finished planting and mulching. Some areas of the Valley actually got a light dusting of snow and/or hail, but not here. It really didn't get that cold, which is also a good thing.

The bed in the foreground, which adjoins a pavestone patio, will contain mostly flowers. Coreopsis, larkspur, and snapdragon seedlings are already coming up, and I added petunia transplants as a border on the patio side. I also planted one hill of yellow squash and one hill of zucchini in this bed.

I planted tomato transplants and bush beans in the left rear bed, and plan to border it with marigolds. In addition to my favorite Early Girl, Roma and Yellow Pear tomatoes, we're trying some new varieties that are supposed to be more heat tolerant- Phoenix, Solar Fire, and Summer Set. The new asparagus trench is in the rear of this bed. The right rear bed contains strawberries and a small fig tree.

For now, I'm waiting for things to dry out a little bit so that I can get back to planting!

New Year's Resolutions

I think I read somewhere that most New Year's resolutions have to do with (a) losing weight (b) exercising more (c) giving up unhealthful habits. Most people find that they are spectacularly unsuccessful in keeping them beyond a short period of time. So instead of making resolutions for our Arizona Backyard Eden, I'll submit a few observations about what went wrong and what went right this year.

1. Attempting to spend at least 15 minutes a day doing something outside...even if it is making a circuit of the yard- good idea. Even if it is insanely hot, I usually find that I will pull a few weeds or notice a problem with the drip irrigation. I've been a fan of the Flylady approach for inside-the-house tasks for several years, and she really is correct in saying "you can do anything for 15 minutes" and that "15 minutes a day over time will make a difference". It works in the garden as well as it does in the house.

2. Mulching with semi-composted ground-up hollyhock stalks- bad idea. Two years later, I'm still pulling up baby hollyhock plants from what is supposed to be a vegetable bed.

3. Following master gardener mentors Pam Perry's advice to pull vegetable and flower plants up when they are past their prime and "just let them die"...good idea. I've gotten more edible yield this year by following this suggestion. Tomato plants rarely "come back" after the hot weather, but I got a nice crop of bush beans in the same space after I yanked the struggling tomatoes out. Oh, and though you may have read that some annual plants can be perennials in this area, you won't get a second crop of broccoli from the same plants.

4. Fall planting of tomatoes- less than successful two years in a row. In our area, you're supposed to be able to plant tomatoes in late summer, provide shade through the hot months, and pick tomatoes in late fall.  The first time I tried this idea, the plants were loaded with dozens of beautiful green tomatoes just in time to be hit by unseasonably cold weather in December. Green tomatoes will ripen on the kitchen counter, but they do not taste as good as the ones ripened on the vine. This year we put a couple of plants in large pots and wheeled them into the garage when frost was predicted. The plants lived...barely....but green tomatoes take forever to ripen in the short days of winter.

5. Revamped drip irrigation system- so far, good idea. It is less prone to clogging than microsprayers and waters the intended area more evenly.

6. Planting cattails in the upper pond...bad idea. They have escaped their intended confinement to the perimeter shelf and are crowding out the water lilies, as well as blocking the view of the waterfall. And they are very difficult to remove from the center of the pond, which is about three feet deep.

7. Planting sweet potato vine around the lower pond next to the gazebo...good idea. I planted two and they spread prolifically in spite of the summer heat, through the fall, and well into the winter. It was only today I noticed any signs of frost damage. They are easy to propagate, too.

8. Planting blackberry vine, roses, and asparagus in the same bed...not a good idea. It was nice the first season or two, but now the plants have grown to be too much for the area.In all fairness, I hadn't taken the Master Gardener class when we started on this adventure, and wasn't aware of the mantra "Right plant in the right place". We're going to attempt to transplant the blackberry plant to a more appropriate location where its spreading habits will not be such a thorny issue.

One of the nice things about gardening is that it doesn't lend itself well to New Year's resolutions. It's an organic, ongoing process. Trying new things and seeing what works and what doesn't, planning and dreaming and making improvements...that goes on all year long!

Green beans

I went out today to pick green beans for tomorrow's Thanksgiving dinner, and found more than I expected...and a few more eggplant I'd forgotten to bring in when I pulled out the plants.

While I was picking beans, I noticed quite a few larkspur seedlings coming up. I'll leave them alone and see what happens. They aren't getting much sun hidden away beneath the beans, but the beans won't last forever and it will be nice to have something else to take their place.

A long overdue gardening update

I've neglected posting updates here for several months, primarily because I've essentially been working as a long-term sub for most of this school year. Where time constraints force me to choose between writing about my garden, and actually working in my garden, I usually choose to work in my garden. But I'm inspired to start posting again, because I just submitted our garden as a possibility for a future Master Gardener Real Gardens for Real People tour. If our garden is selected for the tour, I think it would be fun to do a kind of "Julie and Julia" blog and try to write something nearly every day for the next year (or two...they plan these things quite a ways in advance!) There is a science and an art to gardening, but there is also a lot of trial and error and experiments that don't work. I think people might be entertained and informed by reading about those- not just seeing the finished product, and thinking "I could never do that!".
So here's the several-months-overdue update: Yellow squash was a smashing success, producing a continuous and abundant crop until this year's December frost, as did our one Japanese eggplant. The six summer-planted tomato plants that I coddled with shade screen until late September were loaded with green tomatoes at the time of the frost, which was earlier than usual this year. We experimented with various suggestions as to how to save the tomatoes. We attempted to protect two of the plants with frost cloth and left them in the ground, we pulled up two of them by the roots and hung them upside down in the garage, and we picked all the green tomatoes off two of them and put them in baskets on the kitchen counter to ripen. The counter and garage tomatoes ripened gradually over a period of weeks; we still have of some of those left. The frost-protected plants were still hit pretty hard, and the tomatoes never ripened. I finally gave up on them so I would have room to plant another crop of lettuce as the first one went to seed in January. (I almost never have to buy grocery-store lettuce, except in the summer.)

We planted broccoli, cauliflower, and bush sugar snap peas in place of the tomatoes, eggplant, and squash. The broccoli did really well....we enjoyed fresh roasted broccoli, broccoli cheese soup, and wound up freezing 23 quarts to enjoy later. (Here's a link to my favorite roasted broccoli recipe. If you haven't tried it that way, it's amazing!) The cauliflower didn't do as well, although we did up with a bit fuller heads than we did last year. Because I was working, I didn't have sufficient time to address the never-ending Mexican primrose invasion into the place we'd planted the sugar snap peas, so the number of surviving plants was limited. However, the half-dozen plants that weren't choked out produced a surprising number of pea pods.

What didn't work? The picture above shows where I planted several varieties of lettuce and spinach, along with the vining variety of sugar snap peas. Note to self for next year: If you are going to put ground-up spent hollyhock plants in the compost bin, make sure all is well-composted before using it as mulch. There are actually a few lettuce and pea plants among the fine crop of hollyhocks you see growing here. Not exactly what I had planned, but then a garden seldom is.

Good Mulch

If you miss two weeks in the garden, you miss a lot, and that's how long I've been away from it. Larkspur, hollyhock, bachelor's button, sweet alyssum, black-eyed susans, yarrow, and Gloriosa daisies have faded and gone to seed, which the birds are enjoying. Surprisingly there are a few petunias and snapdragons still blooming. Without my daily walks through the garden to pull up the tall dandelion-like weeds, they have multiplied exponentially. Some things are wilted because of malfunctioning drip irrigation emitters-checking the moisture status of plants and giving supplemental water when needed is another daily responsibility. However, nectarines, blackberries, and tomatoes are ripening, pole beans have started to produce, and the apple tree is bowed over by an abundance of fruit. Squash, melon, and cucumber plants look anemic and spindly...the spring flowers grew faster than the spring vegetables, and probably shaded them too much. The corn plants are producing tassels, and soon we will see if our hand-pollination efforts produce any edible ears.

We spent the morning pulling up flowers that were past their prime, and removing weeds and grass from the raised beds. This involved separating the dead flowers from the weeds as their remains will make a good mulch that also contains the seeds of next year's flowers. The weeds and grass have to go into the trash as we don't want their seeds spread around. (Unfortunately, quite a few of the ones that sprouted in my absence have already done that) There were a few surprises that were hidden until we removed the taller plants- tiny zinnia and snapdragon plants that sprouted from last year's seeds. After a run to Home Depot, I planted a few six-packs of vinca and portulaca in the most barren raised bed, scattered more zinnia and cosmos seeds, and topped it all off with two bags of mulch.

As I was pulling up plants and separating them into usable and nonusable piles, I was reminded of the parable Jesus told of the wheat and the tares:

Jesus told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared. The owner’s servants came to him and said, ‘Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from? ‘An enemy did this,’ he replied. The servants asked him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’‘No,’ he answered, ‘because while you are pulling the weeds, you may uproot the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn.’”

This story probably came to my mind as I was working today because two recent events that occurred in close proximity have caused me to think about "the end of the age", or at least human mortality. In practical terms for the individual, I think the two are synonymous. First, there was a great deal of publicity about the May 21 Rapture prediction by Harold Camping, which of course, did not happen. Second, my younger sister suddenly and unexpectedly died due to a complication from a medication she took that was supposed to prolong her life, not take it. As "no man knows the day or the hour" of Jesus's return, so also no one knows when his or her life may end. I hope and I pray that my life will be the kind of "good mulch" that enriches the soil and contains the seeds that will one day grow into next spring's beautiful flowers.