Well, it has been a long year. A hard year. A sad year. But God is good and His mercies are new every morning. This land, this property, brings us so much joy. So this Spring we are spending our mornings, afternoons and evenings in the garden. Burying our burdens in the soil and watching new life sprout from our grief. While a tree falling on our shed might not seem like a tragedy to some and while we have dear friends who have experienced far more tragic situations, the limbs that crushed our shed changed our life in many ways. It was the iceberg that ripped open areas where we had been suffering through for many years. But as Romans 5:3-5 says “…but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”
We recently finished reading How to Grow a Florida Food Forest (David the Good) and have been browsing Great Garden Companions (Sally Jean Cunningham). Not only are we growing food this year, we are sprinkling flowers throughout the vegetables and fruits for beauty and pest control. Adam added outdoor string lights and some dear friends gave us a very unique burn pit for the garden. The garden is our happy place; we sit and talk here; we eat our meals here; we start our mornings here around a fire; we observe the insects here; we love each other here.
We recently returned from the Keepers of the Old Ways Festival and brought home many unique plants for our growing food forest, thanks to David the Good, Blue Springs Forest Garden, Mayim Farm and Flomaton Famous. We added Cuban oregano, cassava, tobacco (for the goats of course), loose leaf tea, Chaya spinach, pineapple guava, pomegranate, mysore raspberry, galangal ginger, African blue basil, yams, spoon tomatoes, ranch elderberry, Goji berry, lacos spinach, sweet bay magnolia, shell apple and Katuk.
Growing Milligan Hill 