Hearts Full of Joy

tips from the temple gardener

remember this photo of tulips in front of the temple?

each spring after the tulips are done blooming at the temple, they dig them up and offer them to the community, those in the community who can get there fast enough to get them before they are gone. in the last week or so i have gathered hundreds of bulbs from three different beds in the temple grounds, planted over 150 of them in our yard (75 in back, 30 on the side, and over 100 more in front), and given at least a hundred away to five different friends. so hopefully what looked like this this year:

will look more like the top picture next year....i can hope can't i?

as i was gathering bulbs one day, the temple gardener stopped to talk with me and told me something about tulip bulbs that i hadn't known before. he is from england, and said this with the most charming british accent, so i know it must be true:
the big tulip bulbs that we buy and plant are grown for 5 years in holland or belgium, and on each of those five years, they cut the flowers off as soon as they bloom, then use the flowers to decorate the streets. if the seed head inside the flower doesn't get to develop, the bulb feels that it hasn't fulfilled its purpose, and tries even harder the next year, so the tulip gets bigger. if the seed head does develop, that bulb may not bloom again. it will probably make new, smaller bulbs, that will take years to get as big. so, to keep your tulips (and i'm going to assume daffodils, which develop their seed head behind the flower, and other bulbs) big and productive, pop off the flower and seed head as soon as the flower is a little past it's prime. but do leave the stem and leaves, of course, because they continue to feed the bulb as they die down. if you don't break off the flower and seed head the stem will feed that before the the bulb.

living out of doors

the weather has been so perfect lately (other than the thunderstorms and tornados last night), it is just like heaven to be outside. we are all outside every chance we get. brock has made big progress on the "fort" for the kids. the slide is attached, and the kids favorite aspect of it now is the sand at the bottom of the slide. of course. we could have saved a lot of time and money if we had known this would be the outcome. but it has entertained gracie for hours and hours.

our baby maple is thriving

we have two baby nashi (asian pears)

and two baby cherries

 

our first lilies are starting to bloom

the hostas we transplanted from our neighbors last fall are beautiful.

 

an in our garden we have planted: beans, popcorn, sweet corn, cucumbers, watermelon, peas, lettuce, spinach, broccoli, cauliflower, bulb onions, green onions, leeks, jack-o-lantern pumpkins, mini pumpkins, giant pumpkins, zucchini, crook neck squash, japanese kabocha squash, many varieties of tomatoes and peppers, cilantro, basil, japanese eggplant, melon, carrrots, beets, rhubarb, and asparagus. we are loving every minute of our yard and garden, and only hope we can keep the critters from eating our produce before we get a chance to.

we are also excited about our four different types of berries: blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, and black berries. we are close to getting strawberries, and should get raspberries this year too. two of our blueberries didn't make it through the winter, so stark brothers (we love to buy from them) sent replacements. one replacement blueberries turned out to be a pink knock-out rose that we get to keep for free - love it! we thought we were keeping our strawberries safe by putting them on second story deck. but the raccoons dig in them every night, and often uproot them. i have to check on them every morning. i have found yummy looking recipes for the mulberries that are growing in the woods behind our fence.

raspberries!

a late mother's day gift arrived yesterday: a food dehydrator to help us preserve the food we hope to grow - can't wait to try it out!

 

lovely

i caught tashi swinging in serenity, caught up in her own thoughts, somewhere between all the busy-ness on saturday.

spring in nauvoo 3

our crabapples are blooming

our maples have leaves
our tulips are lovely.... the temple's tulips are breathtaking...

our new baby redbud isn't doing a thing (yes, those are dandylions in the background, our lawn needs some attention).....

the temple's redbuds are stunning. this is what our redbud hopes to grow up to be someday....

 

redbuds at the temple on our househunting trip one year ago (on a sunny day, which i am still waiting for this year).

spring in nauvoo 2

our first tulip

our asian pear, "nashi" in japanese

our first strawberry buds

our gracie blossom
the red buds are starting to bloom, the crabapples aren't far behind, and the dogwoods are around the corner....much more to come

spring in nauvoo

the woods behind our house our greening up...we are returning to the season when even rainy days are beautiful because the rain just intensifies the green.

the maples are blooming.

more to come....

the easter bunnies

this is what the easter bunnies wore this year. mia & noah recycled and wore what i made them last year. i tend to do that with both halloween and easter - my built-in anscestral thrift...or laziness?. grace had outgrown last year's dress, it is now a shirt, and so i made her a new outfit with the 1838 pattern book i have been enjoying so much.

she is wearing the cap and pantaloons i stitched by hand. the dress was machine sewn, but also a complete joy to make.

oh, and mia & noah really are the true easter bunnies. mia was born on easter, and noah was due on easter, although he kept us holding our breaths and chose to come 6 days late. i found that to be a much harder wait with adoption than it had been with my own pregnancy. gracie, well she's just a bunny.

the rodenbergs joined us for easter dinner and an egg hunt!

gracie wearing last year's easter dress (by pure coincidence) as she helps brock plant a tree. we have planted seven more trees, 4 fruit which brings our orchard to a total of 12 trees (two each of apple, peach, pear, plum apricot, and cherry), a red bud, a dogwood, and a maple. i have planted 22 flowering plants: hollyhocks, peonies, columbine, lillies, and dahlias, 25 strawberries, two grapes, and grass seed in some bald spots. our lettuce has finally come up, and maybe our first pea, and onion bulbs have now been planted. it's so interesting learning the quirks of a new climate. we are in love with not having to water our lawn, garden, and landscaping, and so enjoy the wildlife that regularly visit: deer, cottontails, squirrels, cardinals, etc. but with every up comes a down, and we are fast learning to battle the moles that are tearing up our ENTIRE yard and flower beds, and the raccoons who dig up our grass looking for grubs, while trying to keep our trees, flowers, and garden safe from the deer and rabbits. we can tell you which repellents work the best. we planted a new baby grape yesterday that had leaved out. this morning it was nibbled to a 1/2 inch nub.

 

 

spring is coming slowly, but surely.

spring flings

some of the two hundred & twenty - something bulbs I planted last fall are peeking up and blooming. i have been looking forward to spring, and it is living up to my expectations. magnolias, tulip trees, cherry trees and my daffodils and crocuses are in bloom. everything is turning green, our early garden is planted, and the birds are singing.

a generous friend has taught me how to can chicken and dried beans, which i have been excited to learn. it is a tasty and convenient way to add protein to food storage, and are very handy to have on hand. i know that my dried beans in storage will get too hard to enjoy eating before i get to them unless i can them and use them. i never think far enough ahead to have time to soak and cook them for our meals, and so i always open a can instead of using my dried beans.
i have now canned 50 lbs of chicken, fit into 24 quart jars, and 56 quarts of beans. brock figures i have saved over $250 dollars on the cost of buying that much canned chicken from the store. i got this chicken in bulk at $1 a pound. and it is so useful and convenient to have it canned. the dried beans cost me the equivalent of 20 cents a can from the store, 40 cents for a quart jar (not including the cost of the jars, which i will re-use, and the electricity for the stove top canning). 56 quarts of beans equals 112 15 oz cans of beans from the store. the friend who taught me how to do this canning opened up her bottled beans and we taste tested them against bush brand beans, which are her favorite brand.... and we all agreed, the home bottled beans were much, much better. i am also amazed that the 56 quarts of beans barely made a dent in my 125 lbs of dried bean storage. so dried beans will go a long way, but they do get hard after 5 to 7 years and won't soften with any amount of cooking. so it's important to keep rotating them. beans are such a great source of protein, fiber, and many helpful vitamins. i feel much better after adding these items to my food storage.

my mom & SIL traci came for the nauvoo women's retreat last week, which was wonderful beyond words, both the retreat, and having them here for it.

the keynote speaker was mariama kallon, and to quote from the retreat info:

"The keynote speaker is Mariama Kallon, originally from West Africa, where she endured the horrors of a civil war, watching her parents killed, her brother taken and later killed, and her sister's legs cut off. Mariama will share her amazing story of how finding the gospel of Jesus Christ helped her endure loss and despair and become the happy, outgoing woman she is today."

that little blurb doesn't even begin to explain her story. her talk was truly amazing as were all of the presenters. it was all deeply spiritual and inspiring. i was surprised to find that this little retreat, in my opinion, far surpassed time out for women. i was expecting it to be a great experience, but not as incredible as it was. i'm so impressed by the talent of my friends in our ward who put it together.


lexi & my mom

we are savoring our general conference weekend, and our eyes lit up and exclaimations were made when we heard that katsumi kusume, our stake president in japan, father of lexi's first boyfriend, has been called to be an area authority seventy. so who will be the new tokyo stake president? we wouldn't be surprised if it is the father of our dear friend...

chihiro, (shingo's sister), who was married in the tokyo temple on march 28th. (shingo's face is obscured by the groom's in this photo.)

it's been a wonderful week.

strange but true....and i'm grateful

a random list of strangely true recent happenings.
i can see the had of the Lord in at least the first two, if not all:

thursday night we were startled by a large sonic-type boom that seemed to come from down low, rather than up high. it resonated through the earth and our home. while the details are still sketchy, this is what we have since learned..... a man was building pipe bombs in his home, less than a mile from us, and quite near the temple. one accidentally went off, removing his hand..... how it could make a boom that big, and only take off his hand? we don't know...... why was he building pipe bombs? we don't know that either, but have heard that he is known for his anti-mormon "antics". people in sycamore haven, up the river to the north, said their windows rattled from the explosion. the police reportedly sent robots into the bomber's home to disarm at least 3 more pipe bombs.....we are grateful that it ended as it did.

two weeks ago or so, i was driving along the river road, giving a friend whose car was getting repaired a ride home. she noticed a young boy walking along the road and commented that he was awfully young to be walking alone. it was late afternoon, approaching dusk, and very cold. i didn't think much of it, and passed him by, but then felt that i should pull over and wait for him to approach. i knew that he shouldn't talk to strangers, (or get into a stranger's car!), but felt compelled to ask him a few questions.
me: hi! do you need a ride?
boy: well, yah.
me: where are you going? do you live nearby?
boy: i'm going to keokuk (15 miles away)
me: why are you going to keokuk?
boy: to find my mom
me: where do you live?
boy: nauvoo, but i'm not going back there, i'm mad at my dad.
me: how old are you?
boy: 9
he was an adorable and very sweet little boy. and i wanted to help him, but was unsure how to proceed. so i started offering silent prayers for guidance. and i was able to take him to my home, after taking my friend home, even though he refused to go back to nauvoo, and then track down his grandparents who were most grateful. he goes to school with my little ones, and i know his cousin who is in mia's class. in asking him more questions, it became clear that his father hadn't really done anything wrong, this little guy just felt a sense of injustice in the way his father had handled something, and set out looking for his mom who has been absent for years. i later learned that his mother is only allowed to see him under supervision. i felt how much the Lord loves him to guide us to bring him safely home. if my friend wouldn't have been in the car with me, i don't think i would have noticed him or stopped for him. if she had been driving alone, she wouldn't have known how to find his grandparents. as it was, we each had something to offer in his "rescue". the river road is narrow, winding and very dangerous. it would have soon been dark and very cold. and no one yet realized that he was missing. what if my friend hadn't noticed him or said anything? what if i hadn't stopped? i am so grateful that it ended as it did.

we experienced countless earthquakes during our years in japan, some big enough and long enough to cause quite a bit of anxiety. but now we are experiencing something new: thunder that feels like an earthquake. and it is quite unnerving. we have had thunder that rattles the dishese in the cupboards and makes the whole house shake. wednesday morning brock & i both sat up straight in bed at about 5:40. i thought it sounded like half of our home was being sheared away. brock thought it sounded like we were being hit by hurricane force winds. we were both wrong. it was thunder. and such a storm ensued. each thunder (not clap, not roll...) boom & shake felt like it would last forever. lightning would strike, and the thunder would be immediate and go on and on and on. i have truly never known anything like it. maybe i will get used to it as i did to earthquakes.....we'll see. but the old timers here seemed to be as shocked as we were by the storm. i am so grateful that we were all safe and dry and warm.

random updates & observations

we received the good news, on new year's day, that we were accepted into this summer's nauvoo pageant. my parents will be joining our family in the pageant too. we are excitedly anticipating!

brock's facebook status monday:
"Brock was obliged to help tackle/restrain a violent passenger on a plane over the Pacific, and felt United employees were very professional during the 6-hour ordeal."
yes, it was for real.

alexa announced yesterday that she was double cast as the lead role of "kim" in her high school's performance of "bye-bye birdie". this is of particular interest because she didn't really even audition for the musical. she has just joined the scholastic bowl team and doesn't have time for the musical. her choir teacher asked her to consider being a silly screaming fan girl, which would only need to be at rehearsal once a week or so, and she agreed to consider, did a few readings, and next thing you know....

natasha's comment on the topic when i asked for her thoughts last night:
"i think it will be difficult for all of us."... said simply & matter-of-factly.
i think tashi is right. lexi doesn't handle pressure or restraints on her time well, and tends to take that out on those she loves :)
we love her anyway!

noah's words:
...said in a sweet, plaintive voice yesterday morning at 5:30 as he came frantically rushing in to wake me up:
"my dreams are bad."

...said in a contemplative tone today as we drove to warsaw to pick tashi up at school, drove to keokuk to take her to the orthodontist (to begin the 5 step!!! process of removeing her braces), drove back to warsaw, and back to nauvoo, trying to make it in time for noah's preschool bus:
"when you are far, far, far away, you are somewhere else."

lexi's recent observation:
"the older i get, the more i realize that i am like marianne and tashi is like elinor (in sense & sensibility)."
amen to that!

last week i drove along the mississippi as the ice was breaking up, and there were huge bald eagles sitting on the river at each opening in the ice, watching for fish. today the river is frozen again, except at keokuk where it has deeps lochs and dams. and there were dozens and dozens of bald eagles and various hawks circling over the river there this morning, looking for something to eat. it is amazing & magnificent to see so many large birds of prey in such a small area.

this silk has arrived for me to begin work on reproducing a 1841 national flag presented to joseph smith at the laying of the cornerstone of the nauvoo temple for a michael bedard painting.
wish me luck!