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| Ranger Bob's watch-kitty took up her station on the front porch, staying there all day for several days. She kept a sprig of cat mint for her meditations there. |
Most people are slowing down for autumn, often doing the wrong things for the next season. So much can be done in cool, wet weather to make next year more interesting and productive. It rained buckets, and filled my barrels and buckets with rainwater.
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| Most herbs grow tenaciously and provide all kinds of benefits. Joe Pye. |
Many herbs and unusal plants can be ordered, planted, or moved during this time. Our artist-in-residence loves butterflies, so I sent Norma A. Boeckler the ultimate butterfly plants - Joe Pye - from Growers Exchange.
Any plant - and that includes fall bulbs - will spread its roots during the fall and winter. Ranger Bob, our lawn crew, and the Creation Garden will dig in daffodils. The bulbs are not tasty to critters, and they multiply in the ground rather than shrinking.
We moved the Summersweet (Cinnabon aroma) up front and Ranger Bob noticed it right away. I would do that just for the 24/7 fragrance, but it is also a beneficial bug and butterfly plant.
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| Wild Ginger is a big, leafy fun plant. Everyone says, "What is THAT?" |
We will move the Big Leafy Weeds around, because they spread through their "roots" and provide an impressive, tall fence. They produce eerie elvish flowers on stalks in the spring. Serious gardeners call them Wild Ginger Hidden Lily.
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| "The Chaste Tree has died. The only way to move one is to buy a new one." Oh, look what happened to the dead tree. |
The Chaste Tree seemed to die during a hot, dry move, but it is now leafed out and poised to nurture bees in the spring, when they nestle in the pure blue flowers and collect its pollen.
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| My Elephant Ears are the size of mouse ears. |
Treasure the Garden Trash
Let me be blunt, for once. Garden trash is good for the spring garden. Neatniks want to cut down stalks, rake up leaves, and engage in all kinds of devilment. The Creation Garden should not be confused with the living room of a house, which cannot clean itself.
Zillions of beneficial creatures use that decaying trash for food and housing. Acres of grass are rather boring and comparitively boring. Carbon in leaves feed fungi, which feed all plants. Bacteria are the bread of life.
Our dental hygienist was carrying on about bacteria. I said, "They are really the foundation of all life." I was going to add that she made her living from bacteria and should bless them. If we go to the depts of Creation, we find microbes (bacteria, protozoa, fungi, nematodes) storing and swapping water and nutrition. They are the bottom of the food pyramid, so why donate their work to big lawn bags, hauled away, replaced by toxic man-made chemicals?
There is no creature so vile that it cannot feed on another one, whether in life or death. It is not the Disney circle of life, but God's Creation - perfect design, perfect engineering, perfect management.
Jessica Walliser hypnotized me with her beneficial bugs, and Sharon Lovejoy filled me in about many creatures. I used their wonderful books to fill in the gaps between rose monoculture and roses protected by squadrons of fascinating beneficial bugs - plus spiders galore.
This year I had a definite improvement over June Bug destruction (using milky spore added to the soil) and almost total victory over aphids. I once tolerated an initial influx of aphids, destroying white roses especially, then aphids losing out to beneficial bugs - which used them for baby food. But this year I saw almost no aphid damage at all, but a constant buzz of various insects and the chatter of birds enjoying their feasts. To borrow a phrase, this is a cloud of witnesses about God's Creation, design, and purpose.
Many of the new books show gardeners how garden trash is a shelter for such creatures as rove beetles, how webless spiders patrol the yard for food. Those who use pesticides outside are like the sharpshooters who video themselves pulling out a gun and shooting themselves in the foot. That is not something to boast about.
So if the lowlilest and least known creatures can have a very special and important purpose - like springtails reducing garden trash to food for others - then we must have even more to do.
Some ask, "Springtails? What are springtails?" That is my point. They are among the most abundant creatures on earth, yet most people do not know the first thing about them.
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| Hybels made a living telling all the denominations how great he was.He retired early in the midst of scandals. No problem - WELS loves adulterous false teachers. He could work there. |
The Willow Creek Splash - Shallow Waters Make a Lot of Noise
I have grown old reading reports about Willow Creek Community Church's brilliant plans - most of them emanating from WCCC.
Remember the oafish guy who could not attract attention so he would do a cannonball into the pool? Yes, that is Willow Creek, always making a lot of noise about themselves. I had a member who was a pioneering chemist. He said, "If still waters run deep, shallow waters make a lot of noise."
WC (which also means water closet in Britain) was the exemplar of the church that grew from nothing. An informant says that WC really began with wealthy Dutch Calvinists who wanted a church where Masonic Lodge membership was welcome, which was not true in the strictly Calvinist churches. The Great Bill Hybels started in an ordinary church when the Masonic offer was made. The first parish was forgotten, like the Lutheran Confessional Synod. Ex nihilo - WC was born from the marketing skills of brilliant Bill.
No wonder WELS trooped over to WC and gave scholarships so their mission pastors could be just as misled and anti-Sacrament as their leaders.
So WC has a legalistic answer for every problem, and everyone else should too. And yet the staff was Anti-Law (Antinomian) as legalists often are. No wonder WELS loved their WC - so close to the Love Shack, so close in philosophy.
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| LCMS and WELS churches became members of the Willow Creek franchise, yet bragged about their opposition to unionism - (fellowship with false teachers). |
Are You Attritional?
Behind the Church Shrinkage Movement (now Missional, but really Attritional) - is this toxic thought - "If we get everybody busy, everyone will want to come here and be friends with all the other busy people. We will give them a purpose to come here and support our vast architecture and glittering reputation."However, this is just like gardening. Provide the nutrition, and everything will happen according to God's plan. The nutrition in the congregation is the Gospel, invisible in teaching and preaching, visible in the Sacraments.
Jesus clearly taught this in John 15. Remaining on the true Vine makes us fruitful. Through faith in Him - forgiveness - we become even more fruitful. We have so few gardeners now that nobody thinks of picking peas and seeing them flower to produce more peas, cutting roses and seeing more grow.
The congregation that trusts the efficacy of the Gospel will see divine results over time.
