I'm so thankful for rain

      And cooler temperatures! God has blessed us with much needed rain these past few days. It is very muggy, however, so that just pulling weeds, you get sweat in your eyes! The bug bites are not fun, either, but I'm just glad it's not in the nineties now. I planted eggplant in the new bed today and I hope we get the wire around it before the ducks eat the leaves, like they did on my other one! They even ate the zucchini down to the stalk! Needless to say, we have chicken wire around it now.
      Since I've been reading about preparedness and even participating in the Homestead Revival's Preparedness Challenge a few times, I think about things more. Like the recent earthquake and tsunami in Japan, tornadoes in Al and other states, flooding, droughts, fires. What do these things mean to you? Every person has their own opinion about these things, but I believe God is trying to wake up America, especially the sleeping giant, the church. I don't necessarily mean people inside a church building, but ALL believers! My heart is aching right now and has been this week because I feel God is so, NOT pleased with us. His heart is aching because we've grown lukewarm and lost our first love for Him! He's tired of our unconfessed sins! We think that because we are Christians, we don't have anything to worry about. We can not play on the devil's playground and not expect to get hurt! We must turn our hearts back wholly and completely to God! I have gone around all week with this aching and disturbedness that I can't think about anything else! What are we going to do? I can't act like everything is alright when it's not! People are going to hell everyday but they won't listen to anybody! I have people in my own life that I know aren't saved, but they act like it's no big deal. Some serve another god, and are deceived. Pray for the people you know that are not saved, like you've never prayed before. Pray for me that God will show me what He wants me to do.
      WE must continue to prepare for times to come, even if it means just buying or doing one thing a week. Our difficult time, may only be the electricity out for a day or it could be something worse, much worse.
      If you have elderly parents, can you take care of them if you need too? That could be your 'hard time'. It never hurts to think about, and maybe even take steps toward something you know you are eventually going to have to face.
      I'm sorry for going on like this but I had to get this off my chest. God is giving us warnings that we can't ignore. How can people keep on sinning and ignore the warnings? God is so merciful and His grace is everlasting, but at some point.... well, I hope you know what I mean. I'm signing off now. Enjoy these photos.

Delicious strawberry smoothie I made using Tammy's Recipe's.

Wall cloud that did not drop a tornado here, just straight line winds.

What the winds turned over, again!

The canopy was over the grill.

Trying to capture a photo of the wind.

More wind.

Planting eggplants.

I planted four eggplants in this bed.