Paul Long's Ramblings

Had decent weather today so I did some weeding of my vegetable patch ... and some harvesting. Messy garden, over crowded and a bit of a pain (the weeds) but some nice tasty and fresh produce. Quite an apt analogy of the Christian life. :-) Some of my taro. I look forward to harvesting the leaves next week (huge) and cook some lupulu. My dwarf apple tree - with fruits. I like it because the tree "died " but returned to life My kafir lime tree now has fruits. Still small but getting bigger Going to be so good when I cook :-)  Long bean plant that is doing very well Due to over crowding the carrot leaves are extra long (to fight for the sun) but the carrot is quite small. Left the others in the ground and see whether next month, they get any bigger Long beans from just one plant - and onions potatoes mingling with my carrots and taro. potatoes ... but from another area. They spread everywhere one of my salad plants my cucumber plant....

Took these photos a couple of weeks ago. Got a few spare moments so uploading them. My blueberry bush. I bought one a 2.5 years ago but the ground  I planted in  was too harsh for it, so it died (at least that is my excuse :-)) but someone else who is a good gardener had a similar problem so I think this is the reason .... This one is about 1 year old now and I decided to plant it in a pot for better control and it is already fruiting. Did not expect berries so fast! Better cover with some netting soon or the birds will eat them all up I am so happy that my dwarf apple tree is "rebudding"(?) ... It is almost 2 years old and all the leaves died and fell off before winter! The leaves were attacked by insects and were rotting and I made a big error of putting in the wrong fertilizer (same ones I use for my feijoa trees). I checked with the nursery and they told me that that fertilizer was NOT meant for trees in pots at it would be too strong. Leaves fell off ...

Time for a break. Downloaded the photos on my camera ... Andrew's car ... when I first picked it up View from the rear Front seats Back seats Al Ronberg of PSSM and 2nd city Bec Little leading worship - nice touch with a special song and  lesson for the younger ones With us older ones too joining in ... learning the actions And singing along. ... Took this yesterday ... happy that my coriander and galangal made it through winter and thrived too My "dwarf" lemon tree I bought a month ago George Booth - ex OM NZ director and a regular speaker at our church Jin Wan's commissioning service (as a deacon) Did a quick turnover cum weeding of my planter box in preparation for new planting season. No matter what I do, some potato plants will still pop up from a couple of potatoes I planted 2 years ago. Hardy plants so thought I might as well replant them. And my taro plants. Lookin...

Not been blogging much as I have been very busy. Christmas is around the corner and lots of exciting extra church activities to work on. There's church games day (Youngies versus Oldies) followed by our annual church, family friends and neighbours bbq, and then carolling and the Christmas service.... all on top of my regular duties. And this Sunday I start a back to back 10 week stretch of Sunday preaching. And first week of January I hope to start a series on .... LEVITICUS! It's a tough book to want to preach a series on but I think it will be worth it. It will be challenging! Busyness is also due to preparing to do a gospel magic show - mix of familiar tricks, updated familiar tricks as well as some new tricks. Tricky as I will be doing this show at a retirement village ... but just prior to the show I have caroling duties (the guitarist)! So it will be hard to set up and acts along the lines of McBride's Commando Act, while excellent in theory is way beyond my skill l...

Don't want to blog on the earthquake and the many after shocks.. Grateful for the miracle that no one was killed though there is going to be a lot of long term hardship for thousands of people. My planter box has been built. A good 6 hours of hard work but also fun work by SAM the BUILDER, assisted by my son Andrew and myself. Of course most of the time I kept out of the way and did weeding and smaller stuff as I am a bit of a klutz and did not want to mess things up. God was really nice to us and stayed the rain till we were done (weather report was for rain) It's done but not ready for planting as I now have the headache of getting soil. Headache as my back yard is not easily accessible to a truck that brings in dirt. Dread the prospect of having to manually carry many dozen trips with a wheel barrow. Already I have mild aches in my thighs from a lot of squatting yesterday! :-) Sam with one of his many tools, especially important as he had to make my planter box  oc...

When the weather is good and time permits, I have been doing gardening over the last couple of weeks. It's been fun and therapeutic. So much to learn. Salad plants that survived winter. These grew from seeds that came out of one my original salad plants and I transferred them over a month ago to this container. The seeds were not planned :-) Bonus from God! Reorganized this planter box as the plants planted last year all over in different places have grown new shoots and I have sufficient to replant and reorganize. The various flax plants were removed last year. The scrawny looking plant near the middle is a blueberry bush.Hope it makes it and I get to at least see lots of green in summer. Reorganized and replanted too Planted flower seeds for this planter box. Some I planted about 10 days back so I hope to see some green shoots next week. Over a year ago I bought just ONE strawberry plant. I have been looking after this o...