July Garden Report - Procrastination and powdery mildew

Yesterday I worked very hard in the garden. I had to.

There were two problems. One was that I had a lot of weeds. Without having done careful measurements, it seems like I should not go more than two weeks without weeding. Let a few things come up unexpectedly though, and I do. There were a lot of weeds and they needed to be rooted out.

That is backbreaking work. Bending over to pull at them is physically hard, but getting down in the dirt is hard in a different way, and there is really no getting around that. I have thought maybe the answer is to pull a weed every time I am over there, but I want to get the roots, and it is easier to do that with some sort of tool, even if that is just a small spade. Since I am currently not gardening on my own land, I don't store tools there, but need to bring them. Also, it is helpful for me that most of my trips there are not lengthy. So for now, having times when I go to weed seems to be correct.

That was dirty and sweaty and physically straining, but I got it done before breakfast and that would have been a pretty good deal if not for the other problem. I also had powdery mildew.

If the weeding was worse because it was overdue, being on the ball with other things would have been even more important here. There have been three things I have been planning on doing and putting off. One is planting the new lettuce seeds and the rest of the pea seeds. For the peas it said late July, so I was not feeling too worried there, and with the lettuce I just wanted to be a bit past the summer solstice.

Those aren't really late, but I wanted to do another application of plant food before I planted them, and I have been meaning to do that for about a month. It is more of a thing that you can do than that you have to do, but I am starting to think that the tomatoes are showing some signs of needing more nourishment, and maybe if I had gotten to that earlier they would look perkier.

The other thing I wanted to do was to spray the plants with milk. This is a purely preventive thing, to hold off powdery mildew. Much like blossom end rot, powdery mildew is something that we can get in this area and that we treat with calcium. Instead of crushed egg shells, you spray a mixture of milk and water. I did not have a spray bottle, and I had been meaning to get one but just hadn't. Suddenly, there were white spots on my leaves everywhere. It is particularly an issue for squash.  Crookneck, zucchini, and pumpkins may be only three of my plants, but they are all the most prolific. It was everywhere.

Still like blossom end rot, powdery mildew is not necessarily fatal. You can still eat the plants, but they may not taste as good, and if you are gardening and not getting vegetables that taste good, why are you doing it? Also, I blame myself.

Also, it would be a bad idea to apply more plant food now because that will make the powdery mildew stronger, and holding back the feeding holds back the additional planting. This makes me blame myself even more.

Therefore I was not done with the garden after weeding. I went shopping because I needed to anyway, but I could not find a spray bottle. My sisters got one on their errands. I was quite tired already, but it needed to be done. I also could not find the small trimmers, so I went with scissors.

I mixed up a solution that was 2/3 milk and 1/3 water and loaded it in the spray bottle. Taking it and the scissors to the garden, I began trimming the infected leaves. It took a look time.

It was like the weeding with additional bending, stooping, sweating, and the crookneck squash leaves are a bit prickly. There was more to do than with the weeding. The sign that they talk about is white powdery residue on the leaves, but I think I saw green powdery residue on the stems, and you can't uproot the stems and still have your plants. After lots and lots of trimming, I sprayed.

I don't know if that will help. The spray is for prevention, not cure. However, I feel like it won't hurt. Getting rid of the diseased leaves is what you are supposed to do, and that will allow more sunlight at the stems anyway. The next days are supposed to be pretty warm and dry, so that may help. I am going to do a second application of the milk spray tomorrow night.

I don't know how it will come out. I would like to see my plants flourishing, but again, this should not kill them. If nothing else, I have learned how to do some things, along with a better understanding of why to do them, and when.

This was supposed to be a learning year.

Preparing your storage

This past week has been more obviously end times than some. Both the shooting down of the Malaysian Airlines jet and the bombing in Gaza seem like things that could lead to conflicts involving multiple countries, and the stream of refugees fleeing Central America reminds us how bad living conditions can get, and how badly people can react.

If some of you are thinking more about food storage and evacuation plans, that is completely reasonable. There are many previous posts on preparedness topics, but there can be new things to say too. My thoughts today come from a conversation with a friend about people she knew and some of the things she stored. She was pretty clear that these were good people, but these are bad ideas.

The one man, along with more traditional items, stored coffee, alcohol, and cigarettes. His reasoning was that these would be good items to barter, because people with addictions could be desperate for it, and then he could get what he wanted from them. There are several problems with this reasoning.

I admit that I would just not feel right buying them in the first place, but the really fun part is that eventually he would have to rotate them, and since he couldn't just use these items up he would have to find something to do with them. If that seems impractical, it might also be worth remembering that over a prolonged period of deprivation people would get over their addictions, so the window of opportunity for using them might be small.

Now, there are people who like alcohol without being addicted to it, and and people who made it through the caffeine and the nicotine withdrawal might still want it again, those habits being very powerful, but it feels wrong to exploit that. Accepting other people's needs is good, and accepting that if they do not believe in the Word of Wisdom they are not going to follow it is good and reasonable. However, facilitating their use of items that we believe is harmful is questionable at best, and specifically planning on exploiting it seems really wrong. Plus, back to the practical side, what makes you so sure they will have anything useful?

One thing I frequently notice about provident living is that it seems to bless in multiple ways. Yes, we have some preparation for a famine, or a snow storm that keeps us from the store, but also it allows us to wait until things are on sale, and we have more flexibility with what we can cook; maybe you suddenly get a craving for something you didn't shop for last week, but the ingredients are still there. It works on multiple levels. I don't think that works for the contraband storage.

The other persons unusual stockpile was of guns and ammunition. That was not for barter purposes, but it was planned with other people in mind because she felt that she would need to defend her food storage from other people who didn't have it.

I'm sure there are a lot of people who will find this very sensible, but I'm pretty sure we are supposed to share. We are commanded over and over again to love our neighbors and told that without charity we are nothing. Food storage is a counsel that is valuable, but I know it doesn't preempt charity. Loving your neighbor is going to look more like feeding your neighbors than shooting them.

Does that mean there won't be enough? Maybe, but there are promises involved in laying down your life for your friend that are not associated with shooting your friend. We have also read about manna, and meal and oil that never ran out, and multitudes being fed with a few loaves and fishes. Isn't part of knowing the Gospel that we can feel more faith than fear.

I do worry about a case where my life or the lives of those I care about are in danger. Guns have never felt like the answer though. I have kind of decided that I will throw knives if it comes up, because we have a lot of knives, but I suspect I am not really committed to that, because I never practice. I do hit really hard, so there's that.

Ultimately, I don't know what will happen, but I believe in inspiration. I know warnings can come. I know we can be helped. I know that a lot of the problems that society has come from us fracturing apart instead of pulling together, and I don't want to contribute to that.

Having food storage is good. Being willing to share it is better. And maybe sharing that knowledge, and inspiring those around you to get in their own food storage, and share things we know with them, is best of all.

Everybody talks

I nearly didn't write up my talk last week. Writing about preparing the talk got me thinking.

Part of it was what I wrote about not going on and on about trying to avoid the talk, and some of it was a conversation I had with another friend, but I am not sure that we fully realize how valuable it is. After all, I often tune out of talks, or something really irritates me and I write a whole post on it, like that Mother's Day one.

Let me get back to that first talk I gave on repentance. I was a week away from leaving on my mission, and it was my mission farewell, something that we don't really do anymore.

We controlled the program. In that case it meant that my mother and I spoke, and my sisters and the other young women sang "Have You Seen His Image In Your Countenance", and one of their fathers sang "Oh That I Were An Angel", and I believe I chose the hymns, which were "I'll Go Where You Want Me To Go" and "Called To Serve". We might have chosen the prayers too. The next week I spoke in the singles ward, and my older sister sang a song, but it was on a smaller scale.

At the time we did not think anything of it. I wanted people to feel the spirit and be missionary-minded, so that's how I was making those decisions, and every member of the family who was going to church at the time was involved. Those who were not active or members still came, and part of it for me was really hoping they would feel something.

There was nothing wrong with that, but my understanding is that there was the potential, and it did happen, that some people would get carried away, and make it too much about the missionary, and I suppose even if everyone was fairly grounded, in a year when a lot of missionaries went out that would be a lot of singing of "Called to Serve", which, incidentally, they will be singing a lot while they are in the Missionary Training Center.

When they started moving away from big farewells and big returns, I thought of it as something to reign in excess, that was perhaps natural for people who were really proud of their children. Putting it together with another change made me think a little differently though.

Once upon a time when a new couple would move into the ward the husband and wife would usually speak on the same day. The end result of that was that the wife would usually talk about their background and how they met and what children they had, and then the husband would give a talk with some doctrine and spirituality.

That doesn't happen anymore. In one way it is quite practical because you don't have a bench full of unattended children, but even better, clearly no one is up there just to do an introduction while the other person gives the real talk. We all give real talks.

So let's think about that. That means we believe everyone has something to say. Everyone has a right to a testimony that they can bear. Everyone gets responsibilities in the church that provide lessons and growth. We have adult Sunday School because we believe that we need to keep studying and learning the scriptures.

In a church with a preacher speaking every week, he is going to have a lot of influence on how that congregation feels and thinks. We pull from each other.

We do hear from the Bishop sometimes. He bears his testimony every three months, and we may hear from him every fifth Sunday, or it may be someone else. We may hear from him in ward conference, or if one speaker runs short, but he does not control the message, and in a few years it will be a different bishop anyway.

Yes, someone will ask you to speak and give you a topic, but consider testimony meeting where anyone can get up, and we do that once a month! In some respects that seems crazy, and we have all heard testimonies that weren't really testimonies so much as someone wanting to brag or complain or something, but great things happen to.

That may be the things that makes it most obvious that we are not a cult. There is no charismatic leader molding our thoughts - we all share what we have. At our best times we nourish and inspire each other, and if we do not always succeed at that, there is always that possibility as we become more humble, more pure, and more full of the Spirit.

I have been irritated lately with how a lot of conservative leaders are focusing on how important it is for good women to be quiet ones, and how so many minorities are being shouted down by purported progressives in the interest of not rocking the boat. That would be more frustrating, except it is put in some context by seeing that when you really get down to it those groups don't have a high opinion of white men either; that really they look down on humanity in general.

There are reasons to look down on humanity - I see them all the time - but that is not what we do. We believe in the potential for good as well, and we are constantly encouraged to share and uplift and teach. I won't try and avoid that, or make a joke of it. It is something good.

Repentance as a gift

This is an attempt to reconstruct my talk from last week, and should at least give the gist.

While I did not open with a joke about trying to avoid speaking, I did mention some things about my callings, and pointed out that while there are sometimes difficulties with our responsibilities, they lead to insight and learning and relationships. There are gifts.

I was asked to speak about the gift of repentance, and it was that specifically. With forgiveness it is easy to see the gift in receiving it, but it may be less obvious that repentance, which is often uncomfortable, can also be a gift.

It's something we are commanded to do, and it is one of the earliest commandments. Adam and Eve were commanded to offer sacrifice, and as they did so an angel came and asked them if they knew why they did it, and they did not.

"And then the angel spake, saying: This thing is a similitude of the sacrifice of the Only Begotten of the Father, which is full of grace and truth.

Wherefore, thou shalt do all that thou doest in the name of the Son, and thou shalt repent and call upon God in the name of the Son forevermore." (Moses 5:7-8)

They performed sacrifices to look forward to the time when Christ would come, we take the sacrament and remember that He has come, but always the common thread is repenting and calling upon God. We need to remember that we need Him.

Things work better when we are repenting on a regular basis. A few weeks ago we had some plumbing problems, and in addition to resolving what we called him for, he also cleaned out the aerator on our bathroom faucet. There is sand in water, and so there is a filter to trap the sand, but it builds up and can get clogged. Cleaning it is fairly simple - I went and cleaned the aerators on the other two faucets later - and it made an amazing difference. There was all that buildup suddenly gone, and water was flowing freely and powerfully.

It reminded me of Doctrine and Covenants 121:45-46

"Let thy bowels also be full of charity towards all men, and to the household of faith, and let virtue garnish thy thoughts unceasingly; then shall thy confidence wax strong in the presence of God; and the doctrine of the priesthood shall distil upon thy soul as the dews from heaven.

The Holy Ghost shall be thy constant companion, and thy scepter an unchanging scepter of righteousness and truth; and thy dominion shall be an everlasting dominion, and without compulsory means it shall flow unto thee forever and ever."


That sounds wonderful. It requires repentance. I think there are a couple of things that can get in the way.

One is that we forget that we need to. Most of us, here in church on Sunday, aren't knocking over banks. We may forget that we need repentance, that we are still imperfect. Often it may be more a matter of what we are like than what we do. Someone needed me to listen, and I was listening, but not as patiently as I should have, or someone had good intentions but they irritated me and I did not care about their good intentions - that was just last week. Things happen where we have too little love or too much judgment. When they are always telling us that we need charity, that's why - it's what will keep us from things like that, but until then there is still repentance, which we are commanded to do.

I think the other obstacle is at the opposite end, where instead of thinking we don't need repentance we think we don't deserve it. I find this with many people that they can believe in the worth and merits of anyone else, except they are all like that, so they don't believe each other when they are encouraging each other. But again, we are commanded to repent, so it gets us past the debate over whether we should or not, and takes us there.

I know there can be fear because of our own feelings of unworthiness, but my experience is that God is only really harsh with us when we avoid repenting, and He is trying to get our attention. When we come to Him on our own He is kind and gentle.

I have spoken on repentance once before, when I was getting ready to leave on my mission. My first thought was that I had no idea what to say about repentance, but you find things because that's what we do, but my biggest repentance came a few months later.

After being out a few months I got a companion who started having some problems. She had been sexually abused when she was younger, and she had done some therapy and dealt with it then, but one of our investigators reminded her a little of her abuser, and it started bringing things back up.

She did some more counseling and got a blessing, but the big turning point happened one morning when she prayed and it was just lifted off of her. Suddenly she was lighter and happier and she could move on.

I was happy for her, but I was also really disturbed. It looked so much like repentance, and I knew she hadn't sinned, so it bothered me that it looked that way.

I don't remember how long it took me to figure it out, but it did eventually come to me that it was because her healing had come through the Atonement.  When Christ suffered in Gethsemane He took all of our sins and all of our pains. That's why it works and how it balances. He doesn't just take the punishment for the wrongdoer, but also the pain of the wronged.

We know that the Atonement doesn't leave much out, and that is an amazing thing. I cannot think of many things lower than abusing a child, but repentance is open to them. He wants them too.

It is amazing how scriptures can mean different things. There is one phrase that comes up three times in Isaiah, and all three are repeated in Second Nephi:

"For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still."

It generally comes after a description of destruction, and I have taken it to mean that tribulations have come but they are not over, which is a perfectly reasonable way of reading it, but one day I saw another possible interpretation.

I am still angry. This is still sin. But I am still reaching out to you. I still want you.

And we can still come to him.

"And in that day thou shalt say: O Lord, I will praise thee; though thou wast angry with me thine anger is turned away, and thou comfortedst me.

Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust, and not be afraid; for the Lord Jehovah is my strength and my song; he also has become my salvation.

Therefore, with joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of salvation."
(2 Nephi 22:1-3)