Fifth Sunday of Lent

April is spring; the yellows and violets of March explode into all the amazing colors of the rainbow: orange tulips, pink azaleas, red-flowering currant, fresh green, and the blue true dream of sky - that rich blue of patience, peace, and understanding.

During this middle month of spring, I celebrate the limitless energy of the maiden and the crazy wisdom of the fool. I turn everything upside down and inside out - anything is possible! April offers me happiness and wonder; maybe now I can say YES with vigor, enjoy the surprises, confusion, and chaos that life brings, and feel comfortable in the depths of my life.

Agenda:

1. Read "Everyday Simplicity"

2. Lent review and simple food plan

3. Early April planting

1. Read "Everyday Simplicity":

I bought myself this little book, by Robert J. Wicks (2000), as a birthday treat. The subtitle is: A Practical Guide to Spiritual Growth.

Chapter 9 is Freshness, the 7th of 8 themes that will help us to "soften our souls and allow us to experience and share the gift of God in simple ways during the day". 

Here he is talking about living in the Now, realizing that every moment is spiritual and we only need to be present to it. He suggests that we stop excluding God from our everyday life, invite Spirit to join us, and feel the loving presence in everything we do. Also, that we spend less time planning out how things should go, and more time living.

"...once the "now" is transformed by God's love for us we experience a new freshness to life. ... we are fully in the moment, experiencing it, enjoying it, neither trying to capture nor reject it."

Practice for this section: Vow to spend less time planning and preparing and more time fully living in the present, with beginner eyes, open to fresh, new understanding.

2. Lent review and simple food plan

At Lent I allow myself to be slow, simple, and thoughtful. I spend time each day in focused study and prayer, and then take action to bring my vision to fruition.

My theme this year for Lent is Active Hope and Resilience: 

Active Hope requires that I maintain a clear view of reality; identify what I hope for - the direction I’d like things to move in and the values I'd like to express; and take steps to move in that direction.

Resilience is a set of practical skills that allow me to be strong, flexible, creative, hopeful, and positive, and to successfully adapt to stressors, and bounce back from difficult experiences.

I'm also fasting from anything processed (packaged cookies, crackers, pasta, candy, canned goods, frozen dinners) as much as possible, and that means I need to cook and bake my own snacks. This week my snack-making plan is:

• Sunday: Make a green smoothie
• Monday: Make crackers and hummus
• Tuesday: Make granola bars
• Wednesday: Buy nuts and fruits and make nut mix
• Thursday: Make yogurt
• Friday: Make cookies
• Saturday: Hard-boiled duck eggs

3. Early April planting:

The Buttercrunch lettuce I planted 4 weeks ago is very ready to go outside, so today I will begin the hardening off process, which takes 7 days. 

Hardening off instructions: Check the weather forecast and aim to begin on an overcast day. A good rule of thumb is to increase the time a plant spends outside by one or two hours each day, working up to overnight exposure. If you have the luxury of time or nighttime temps aren’t quite warm enough, spend twice as many days in each phase and transplant on Day 14. Set seedlings outside in a sheltered area, off the ground (to protect from snails), that receives indirect sunlight - use an umbrella or shade cloth.

• Days 1 & 2: Leave the plants outside for a few hours of morning sunlight, but bring them in before noon.
• Days 3 & 4: Set seedlings outside midmorning in a less protected area so they are exposed to a gentle breeze. Leave the plants outside until early afternoon to build up their tolerance to direct sunlight. 
• Days 5 & 6: Set seedlings outside in the early morning and leave the seedlings out all day and overnight – they’ll be just fine! 
• Day 7: Weather permitting, it’s time to plant those properly hardened off seedlings! If possible, plan to transplant on an overcast day with rain in the forecast, and cover the transplants with frost cloth or cloches for extra protection, though not required.  

When I plant my lettuce out on Saturday, I will put a little Sluggo around it, and watch it closely, because it's a delicacy for snails!

And I will plant a small row of lettuce seeds outside as well, and every three weeks after this. Lettuce is one of the easiest vegetables to grow; the seeds are quick to germinate, and the leaves grow fast. Plant it near:

• Beets and onions, which are root crops, and utilize underground space to grow their produce, while lettuce plants have very shallow roots and grow their crop above the soil. This means that they can be planted very close together to maximize your garden space.
• Chervil is a great slug repellant and will keep lettuce-eating slugs away from your crop.
• Chives can act as a “barrier plant” against aphids. Plant chives between the rows of your lettuce crop to deter aphids from getting to your lettuce leaves.