I decided to finally plant my sunflower seeds!

For the reception, we gave out favors for the adults and the kids. Adults could pick out seed packets of either tall or short sunflower varieties. I had several packs leftover, but I couldn’t decide where to put them. I picked a spot right behind my tickseed to plant some of the short varieties. I only planted them on Saturday and look!

Only 4 days old! Already at least half an inch tall. And I know these aren’t weeds. They’re looking good.

For the tall ones, I’m going to become a living parable of the sower. If you don’t know the parable, it’s found in Mark 4:3-20 in the Bible. It could also be called The Parable of the Seed or The Parable of the Soils, since it’s really about the same sower, same seed, but different types of soils. Anyway, with the tall sunflower seeds, I opted to let them run wild along the fencing between ours and our neighbor’s home. There are lots of weeds there, it can be very dry, but sunflowers were “wild” once and I’m sure can hold their own. Here’s hoping that we can get at least some flowers coming up and be braced along the fence…and that Matt doesn’t weed-whack them to oblivion.

And here are some other grand residents of our garden.

I love the resilience of plants. Rose #1 has clearly been attacked by some sort of creature (and its several brothers, sisters and third cousins twice removed) but there is new growth! She is still kickin! I hammered a fertilizer spike near the plant We’ll see how that goes.

We’ve had a couple new visitors at our seed bag at the kitchen window. We’ve had a family of goldfinches that loooooove hanging around. They have got desensitized to Matt and I standing at the window and watching them. The new guests have not, but I was finally able to snap a photo of the pretty male house finch.

Sorry they’re not more clear. My camera would not focus properly for me. But those guys are so handsome!

We also pulled in the one bookcase that’s all painted. Took a while, and there’s another matching one, but I’ve unloaded some books on to it. Ok, a lot of books. We’re talking about stringing up some Christmas lights around the inside of the sides/tops to add some light. I am very pleased with how it’s all looking. Love it!

I’m in a Bible Study/accountability group with some pretty great ladies. I have known each of them for a range of time and in a range of ways, but we all are newly married (within the last 6 years…I believe) with me being the newest married. We decided at our last meeting that we would take part in a 30 Day Challenge to read Scripture each day. The idea is that you can start a habit in 30 days and so we’ll each be challenged to set a specific time aside each day to read our Bibles. I have been across the globe working as a missionary and yet I feel like I am one of the most undisciplined people out there when it comes to Scripture reading. I tend to gravitate towards making something, playing Farmville (yes, I’m one of those), or reading a classic novel. Those aren’t bad in themselves, but they do take my attention from learning more.

I looked up 30 day reading plans and found a few that looked pretty good. I decided to make up a flash card for each day of the 30 and write the different reading plans on them. Here is what I have for Day 7. I’m only reading the top two plans of each day, but I am really enjoying it.

If you would like to find a good reading plan, here are two great websites to check out.

23 Bible Reading Plans that will Satisfy Anyone

30 Days Through the New Testament

Toodles!