It’s a good thing that I can type with my hands and not my legs (probably for many reasons) because I can tell you that after doing a long run today my legs are stiff, sore, and as Tommy says, just plain “weared out.” Aside from the post-run tiredness, in other marathon news I have been truly overwhelmed by the amazing support from so many of you (for the rest, there’s still time…just kidding, I mean, there is still time, but kidding about the pushy salesperson part) and I am happy to say that I have reached the $2500 point! Not only does that mean that the Labrecque Foundation gets that much more money to help research and hopefully cure lung cancer, but it also means I don’t have to take up a side job as a street preacher with a collection jar in front of me.

Speaking of preaching (talk about a segue), I preached to the choir again a few weeks back.  This is the same small, struggling church in Long Beach where I preached this summer and where there were more people in the choir than the congregation. This time the congregation had three times as many people as the choir! But unfortunately that’s just because the choir’s down to 5…  The text was the story of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10: 25-37) and though you can’t listen or read it (they don’t tape and I was practicing my ‘preaching without a manuscript’ skills) the question I posed to them was one of wondering if the priest and the Levite (if you don’t know who I am talking about sorry, you’ll have to read the story) did what was logical, practical and almost to be expected (what I might do?)…and if it was the Samaritan who did the unheard of act.  If he was the good guy in the story, what does that mean for us and our lives?

Speaking of life reminds me of the garden. The good news is that the lettuce is going strong as are what I am affectionately calling “the world’s largest cherry tomato bushes.” The bad news is, apparently the gardeners (the paid kind) thought the pumpkin and Crenshaw melon patches were just a bunch of dead leaves (which they were) and tore them out, leaves, melons, pumpkins and all…the worst was that one of the 3 “Thanksgiving” pumpkins was just starting to turn orange and look like we might actually get our pumpkin pie from our very own garden. Tommy (7) seemed to rebound better than the rest of us from the tragedy, though he also lost his ‘stick pile’ in the destruction.

Speaking of stick piles, actually, that one doesn’t work… Anyway, the other tidbit to share is that I have links to new photos. These are photos from the Ecuador Photo Project that I helped teach this August (you can see pictures of the students themselves, their work, and pictures from our ‘exhibit’ on the concrete soccer field) as well as the LA Photopiece that I helped to teach this summer (you can see pictures of their work). It has been really fun to be involved in both of these opportunities to combine my love of photography with a desire to spend time with students and help them find their ‘voice’ and realize that they have something to say to the world about their world. This Sunday is considered World Communion Sunday and Christian churches around the world will all be sharing in communion (Eucharist, Lord’s Supper, depending on your tradition) together. As part of that, four of the churches that participate in the Ecuador trip will all be displaying exhibits of the Ecuadorian students’ work, hung on clothes lines, with clothes pins. If you are anywhere near Branford or Hartford Connecticut, or Monson or Weymouth Massachusetts, you should go by and see! If you are somewhere else and you know of somewhere to show the work locally, let me know!

Oh, and not to be negligent on my weather reporting, we actually had rain in Southern California a few weeks back! The first of the season, and according to the rain gauge, 1.5 inches overnight!

Greetings from the garden,

I have to say I got many funny responses to my email about ‘manually’ pollinating the squash…

After all that effort with the Q-tip I found out from a community college herbs and vegetables class (definitely an email in its own right) that the problem was likely either too much water or not enough carbohydrates. Though I contemplated pouring some spaghetti in the pot, I tried the ‘less water’ approach first and it seems to have worked like a charm!  My mom did comment that this seemed like a lot more work than simply going to Trader Joe’s…

I’ve also been doing some gardening with Tommy (he’s 7) in his grandparents’ (Martha and Jack) backyard.  So far we’ve got an herb garden, some undocumented succulents (yes, there’s a story there), cherry tomatoes, peppers and even a pumpkin patch! Martha makes the best pumpkin pie in the world, so Tommy figured we should grow her some pumpkins to make it from.  He also wanted to put in a fountain and a fish pond, but I told him that might be out of the scope of our initial gardening phase. In the experimental section of the garden we’ve planted an avocado pit. I think we might have some guacamole in about four years, if we’re lucky.

When I can fit it in amongst all of the gardening I am actually doing quite a bit of freelance work these days…writing, photography, and websites as well as preaching two weeks in a row. The first week I preached to the choir—literally!  I think there were about 8 people in the choir and about 7 in the pews… It was actually wonderful getting to know the 15 of them!  The following week I preached to more of a traditional congregation, size-wise. There was one funny moment when the offering had been collected, the ushers were standing in the back, the organist was playing, and playing, and playing…and all of a sudden I realized that I was supposed to stand up and call the ushers back to the front for the prayer. I wonder how long we would have sat there? If you are interested in the sermon I preached, it is posted (in text form for now) and called “It’s a Crazy Story.” Honestly, it really is a crazy story.

Finally, I am getting ready to head to Ecuador tomorrow for my third “Adopta Una Familia” trip with Erica (seminary roommate) and a team of about 70 gringos. We will all be staying with Ecuadorian families and while they will all be doing hard manual labor (mostly construction) my job will be to photograph them sweating!  Actually, this year I will also be teaching a photography class to 10 teenagers from the barrio. It should be fun, and I can’t wait to share the pictures with you! It is a mini version of something called photopiece that I have been helping my friend Leanna to teach in downtown LA last fall and this summer.

Stay tuned for (hopefully, internet connection willing) photos and updates from Ecuador…

In the past my updates have consisted of reporting on the weather, intramural sports teams named after diseases,  my travels, or the ongoing saga of my ‘call process’ (does the phrase “it’s about the journey, not the destination” come to mind?).

Just when I thought I would have to move to somewhere with ‘weather’ or begin a phd program as a method toward more intramural eligibility,  or, horror of horrors, get a ‘real job’ again, so that I would have something to report on, hope arrived…

Lately I’ve been doing some gardening.  Let’s just say, my thumb really wants to be green, but at times it appears a bit more, well, chartreuse…

At the moment I’ve got eight tomato plants (partly because I love home-grown tomatoes, partly because I am not convinced all eight are going to make it), seven green bean stalks—with more on the way, bell peppers, cucumbers, jalapeno peppers, strawberries (thanks to Wendy and Marty!) and even blueberries this year, a new item in the repertoire. And then there’s the squash. (And I know you aren’t supposed to start sentences with ‘and’ but I have decided that sometimes it is quite helpful.)

Last year I tried to plant squash, not because I love eating it so much as because there are a limited number of vegetables to choose from at the nursery and it was one of them.  My squash last year had beautiful, plentiful flowers…but then nothing. No fruit. Nada.

Not to be dissuaded, this year I once again added squash to the mix. Once again, I have had beautiful, plentiful flowers. But they keep falling off. Worse yet, there is nothing to show for them. No fruit. Not even a hint.

Yesterday, while buying compost at the local nursery (you’d never know I live in the heart of suburbia with a comment like that, now would you?!) I remembered the squash, and presented my issue to the woman ringing up my compost.

“Do you have any moths?” she asked.

Seems like kind of a personal question.  I explained to her that I have bees, hummingbirds, and an occasional butterfly, but as far as I know, no moths.

“You might have to pollinate it yourself,” she responded. Talk about too personal!

I was afraid to ask, but she must have seen the question on my face.
“Just take a Q-tip,” she continued, “and touch the male flower first, then the female, and that should do the trick.”

That’s when I thought that maybe I should just stick with the tomatoes…

Have you ever planted tomatoes?
I am relatively new to the practice, this being my second full season. But I am an avid convert.
There is nothing like the taste of real, home grown, fresh, tomatoes right off the vine (and those overpriced “vine ripe tomatoes” at the grocery store don’t even come close). If you haven’t experienced them, you really must. Seriously.
The season for tomatoes, at least here in the northern hemisphere, is summer. This requires planting in early spring, about March. Depending on the type, March plants start bearing fruit in late June or early July and baring any pest related issues, bear fruit through the summer and into the fall.
For the past two years, as fall approached and the days shortened, I tried my hardest to salvage what I could of the remaining plants, not wanting to relinquish them to the coming ‘winter’ (a word that, when used in the context of Southern California, really has to be put in quotes). I figured that if the plants started to look a bit bleak it must be due to something I was doing or not doing.
Maybe I should have fertlized them.
Should I cut them back?
Are they getting enough water?
No matter what I did, nothing seemed to help. Both of the previous winters I finally gave up, realizing that the half-ripened vestiges of tomato were not exactly what I had in mind when my taste buds pictured ‘fresh from the vine.’
But then I had a life changing experience. Not long ago there was an article in the local paper about fall tomatoes. Was the author peering over the wall into my garden? Because he described my situation to a tomato…

Although the plant looks awful, we think to ourselves, “there’s still a chance it will recover.” A noble thought, but not likely. It’s a downward slide from this point on for a struggling tomato. March-planted tomatoes are only going to get worse, not better. Yes, there is a handful of small green fruit on the plant, so you say to yourself, “I’ll just wait until these turn red, then I’ll start a new plant.”
You know the scenario. A month later you pluck the three or four ripe tomatoes. But now you notice two more little green ones coming along, “Just a little longer, until these are ready?”
By now, it’s October or November and too late to have any success with a fall tomato crop. Sound familiar?

Fall tomatoes? The idea opened up a whole new world to me. Maybe there was hope after all.
But what about the three plants that were, in fact, still producing their noble efforts? One of them even had new flowers and a fresh, healthy looking gree shoot. I can’t uproot that new growth, can I? Maybe I should just leave it alone and see what happens. What if I pull out my existing plants and the new ones don’t take hold? Then I will have nothing. At least if I leave alone what I have I am guaranteed a meager result—meager is better than nothing, right?
But I knew that Ron Vanderhoff was right. I had experienced it myself twice already. Did I really want to persist and confirm my findings a third time? Or did I want to take the risk of trusting that what he said was valid—that the path toward tomatoes actually required that I first pull out the old to make room for the new?
Well, it is too late now. I have taken the plunge. I dug up the tomatoes this afternoon. I am not kidding when I say that it was a difficult endeavor. I knew the benefits. I have even seen them confirmed in my neighbors’ flourishing new fall tomato plants. Even still, it was hard to bring myself to dig up the old. I did take off all the green tomatoes—maybe I can look up a recipe for fried green tomatoes?
I haven’t resolved my questions. I still wonder if the new plants will actually take hold. I still doubt that this decision was a good one. I am still worried that it is too much of a risk. I am afraid that I have let go of the old without having any guarantee that the new will take hold. As a general rule, I don’t like taking risks. Sure, this one is not life or death. But still, my caprese salad is on the line here, and that’s serious business.
At the end of the day I realize that it is not entirely up to me. I mean, I can plant them, make sure the automatic watering system is working, and provide them support on which to grow as they mature. But whether or not they bear fruit? That is out of my control. That is where I have to trust that there is another Gardener who seems to be in the business of new life.
For now, it is time to plant.