Our Bounties

One night when we were having family prayer, Joe thanked Heavenly Father for "our bounties." After the prayer was over, Adam asked Joe what "bounties" meant. Joe explained that bounties were gifts from God that we didn't do anything for and yet were blessings to us, and explained things like the blackberries that we pick on the side of the road or that randomly come up at our property are bounties of the Lord. A few weeks later, we were out at our property and Joe showed Adam some blackberries that had come up on their own and explained to Adam how those were bounties of the Lord. That night, when Adam said the family prayer, he thanked Heavenly Father for our bounties. Since that time, there have been several time that he has mentioned how many bounties we have and how we need to thank Heavenly Father for the bounties we have.

I think I tend to define bounties a little more loosely- to include any of the many blessings that we receive on almost a daily basis. We have definitely had a lot of bounties out of our garden this year:

We have gotten a ton of green beans, some lettuce, tomatoes, onions, zucchini and yellow squash out of our garden. We have been busy with cooking the vegetables, but we have also had fried zucchini and fried green tomatoes, and pico de gallo. I am planning to try zucchini bread and squash casserole this week...doesn't that sound yummy? Nate will eat the tomatoes like they are candy...they really do taste great!

Here is our garden as it currently is: The plants are HUGE! The wheelbarrow got left next to the garden one day, and then one of the tomato plants grew so large it knocked over its cage and came to rest on the wheelbarrow. Its now too big to stake with a tomato cage so the wheelbarrow is semi-permanent.

This year, we tried the upside down tomato plants. We planted plants that were the same size as the ones in the ground. They haven't done as well...so if you see the infomercial, don't buy it!