Garden Space of Grace

We just celebrated 12 years! Tons of produce!

Couple “sows the word” with their service and garden - Global Ministries Mission volunteers Lyn and Gene Saltzman are putting their deep knowledge of farming to use in Tennessee, planting and harvesting produce for four counties served by Reelfoot Rural Ministries.

We can learn a lot from bees!

How sweet it is: United Methodists and bees | The United Methodist Church United Methodists find beekeeping is a way to care for God's world and deepen their faith.

Any current photos of the garden? How about the produce?

Garden Space of Grace updated their info in the about section.

Garden Space of Grace updated their business hours.

How can you tell a chili bean from a regular bean? The chilly one wears a shawl.

Sowe Carrets in you Gardens, and humbly praise God for them, as for a singular and great blessing.
- Richard Gardiner

Profitable Instructions for the Manuring, Sowing and Planting of Kitchen Gardens (1599)

As for vegetables, I do not consider a plot of ground devoted to them worthy of the honorable name of garden. Vegetables are, of course, a part of gardening, but the least, the last, --for those who do not have to raise them, the most dishonorable part.
- H. G. Dwight, Gardens and Gardens

What do you get if you divide the circumference of a pumpkin by its diameter? Pumpkin pi.

It's difficult to think anything but pleasant thoughts while eating a homegrown tomato.
- Lewis Grizzard

In the night the cabbages catch at the moon, the leaves drip silver, the rows of cabbages are a series of little silver waterfalls in the moon.

- Carl Sandburg

S R Mats May 2015
Summer Love
A bright sun heated this ground and we richly sowed in fertile soil.

Spring was full of possibilities, which we now enjoy in summer produce, so luscious.

Ah, as tasty as sweet melon and as fresh as scent of cucumber love is.

And we have seen that the bounty we receive is equal to the worth of our toil.

Garden Space of Grace updated their address.

Today's harvest! We are thankful that we have abundance to share!!

Gardening for wildlife

http://www.nwf.org/Garden-For-Wildlife/Create/Places-of-Worship.aspx

Places of Worship Since 1973, hundreds of congregations of all denominations have certified their grounds as a Certified Wildlife Habitat®. Wildlife and environmental stewardship are often the motivating factors for

We will have a professional landscape artist giving us advice on the garden this year!

Watch for info in 2017

Our garden is getting ready to be tucked in for the winter. In order to fight the weeds on the walkways, we needed landscaping fabric.

Last year for drainage, we were able to reuse the stones and rocks from the roof. This year the walkway was improved in the form of Nylon carpet for the weeds!

These improvements will certainly help our volunteers!!!

http://www.coolharvest.org/

Cool Harvest Making the food, faith and climate connection

Today, people eat locally for a variety of reasons: to support local growers, to choose healthier options, or to reduce their impact on the environment. These are all lifestyle choices, but it used to be simply the way things worked. People had to eat local, because there was no alternative! Now, eating locally takes effort.

It’s getting easier to eat local food all the time. In my own city, we have several local farmers’ markets, which means that we can meet the people who grow our food face-to-face. They often have good ideas for how to prepare the things they grow. More and more restaurants proudly advertise that they buy their food locally. Because the food doesn’t have to travel as far, when we buy locally, we reduce our energy consumption. We can buy food in season, at its most flavorful. And we can support local businesses, which are often run by families who in turn give back to their local communities.

In Bible times, people’s lives were intimately connected to the rhythms of planting and harvesting. Jesus often used metaphors of plants and growing things (Matthew 13), and he often tells his disciples to “be fruitful.” He tells his followers that they can judge a plant by its fruit: grapes are not gathered from thorns, nor figs from thistles (Matthew 7:16).

Jesus’ words cause me to reflect on my own relationship with food and with spiritual disciplines.

In the spring, my attention often turns toward getting outside and getting my hands dirty in an effort to grow more of my own food. Several Saturdays ago, I joined the throngs at a local home improvement store who were drawn out of their homes by the warming weather. I loaded my car with bags of mulch and soil and a few more garden tools. My palate remembered the goodness of home-grown tomatoes. I could imagine the juicy ones that taste like liquid sunshine. My wife and I made plans to hit the farmers’ market the next weekend. This summer, we resolved, we will eat better.

I did all this knowing, though, that my gardening and local-buying efforts are sporadic and half-hearted. It’s easy to dream of being a master gardener when the spring sun is at an angle that makes being outside pleasant. But eventually the sun will be directly overhead in the summer, and the mosquitos will bite, and something will burrow into the stems of my cucumbers, shriveling them on the vine, and multiple weekend church events mean I won’t go to the market or even see my garden until it is covered with weeds and the okra pods are a foot long and tough as leather. This is when I throw in the towel and go to the grocery store and buy something shipped from California or Chile.

There are two lessons for spiritual life that I have learned from my own gardening efforts:

First, in my own spiritual life as in my gardening life, it’s important to remember that the real work is not completed in a single growing season, but over years of practice—including multiple failures. This year we moved our raised beds, because we realized that last season, our sun exposure wasn’t optimal. We let our compost cure longer before we mixed it in with our soil. We learned that some things just aren’t worth the effort of growing this year, but maybe we’ll try them again next year. The same sorts of things are true in my spiritual life: certain spiritual practices (like journaling) didn’t really work for me until I was in a different stage of life. Rather than beating myself up because I couldn’t pray and journal regularly, I left it alone—and came back to it when I was ready. Learning to extend a measure of grace to myself about my discipline is, itself, a lesson in spiritual discipline.

Second, it is a process made easier by a community of shared values, of people who are also working at home-grown spirituality. We’ve learned a lot about gardening from people who have done it much longer than we have. We’ve also learned to appreciate different strategies for achieving the same results, like using worm bins to accelerate composting, or using beer to bait slugs. In the Christian faith, we have millennia-old traditions of spiritual practice from which to draw, but we also have living mentors and allies in the faith who can give advice, and who let us know it’s all going to be okay.

Whether you are just growing a bean in a cup on your windowsill, or whether you are a master gardener, remember that things grow naturally when they are given what they need. Be generous to yourself, and give yourself the space, the sunshine, and the soil you need to be fruitful.

Dave Barnhart is the pastor of Saint Junia UMC in Birmingham, Ala. He blogs at DaveBarnhart.net.

Amazing similarities!!

Food from the Earth As a gardener myself I have been doing a little research on how local churches are participating in community gardening projects. I found out about Erin McKenzie who is the Garden …

Pam Davis and Anise Hayes have combined to oversee the garden. We welcome ALL helpers!

The garden is coming back to life!! Easter is the perfect season for Resurrection!

We are looking to borrow a roto-tiller (we would not turn down a donation of a used roto tiller). If you can help, please call the church: 248 349 2652

Planting start soon!

Today I tucked the garden in for the winter. Rain barrels were drained and unhooked, tomato cages were stored, dead plants pulled, onions and horseradish harvested, watering cans put away to become squirrel homes for the winter.

Thank you for a productive year, I believe we donated between 300 and 400 pounds of fresh vegetables!

Brad and Kim are harvesting tomorrow. Is there anyone willing to take the harvest to The Novi Food Bank after worship on Sunday?

where is that promised rain?

Today we harvested an entire grocery bag of peppers, half a bag of tomatoes, 2 bags full of Zuchinni and squash, some beans and a few eggplants. Overall it was a great harvest. Forgot the camera though so sorry but no pictures this time.

We need HELP harvesting! Weekend of August 25-27 AND September 8-10 ***** Without help there will be no harvest or donation those weeks. Please consider helping. Harvesting takes ~ 1 hour and drop off can be done right before service on Sunday or Monday mornings.

Holy harvest! Harvested 30 pounds to donate this week! 5 kinds of peppers, sweet corn, green beans, white and red onions, zucchini, eggplant, cucumbers and rainbow chard.

Have you seen our Garden Grow?