Book Report x3. On Gardening and Parenting.

I thought I'd share about some wonderful reading recently.


Book #1 is titled "All New Square Foot Gardening: Grow More in Less Space" by Mel Bartholomew


We have had a backyard vegetable garden since almost before I can remember. Over the last few years that I've been doing it either entirely or almost entirely by myself I've been wondering if there are better ways to do it. The whole concept of rototilling a huge area, testing the soil, treating the soil with compost, lyme, or whatever then walking over half of it before planting rows upon rows of produce, then thinning that produce, and weeding huge areas just didn't make sense to me. I had a concept that raised bed gardening must be a more efficient system but I'd never done it and I had far too many questions to try it on my own. Then Tim and I got married and a neighbor has a wonderful raised bed setup in their backyard which is visible from the street. I am impressed with how little I have seen them out there (I've only seen them out working on their garden once a year) and they have such a bountiful harvest every year! Then I stumbled upon this book at a friends' house. I skimmed the entire book in about 20 minutes and knew it had the answers I searched for. I borrowed the book and now I've read it three times through and am almost done setting up our square foot garden at my parents' place. 


Main points of the book:
1. How the author came upon his revolutionary method.
2. Principles of square foot gardening (a lot of unlearning involved here for us experienced gardeners)
3. Specifics on how to build the boxes and plan your space
4. Start with the best soil possible: peat moss, compost, and vermiculite. Over the years you simply replace the compost as the plants use the nutrients. The soil is key since a denser growing space requires more and better nutrients. 
5. Trellising.
6. Extending the growing season (sprouting indoors)
7. Sprouting and growing charts for various produce.


I am really excited to spend less time tilling, weeding, watering, and all-around fussing and more time harvesting and eating!


Book #2: Surprise Child: Finding Hope in Unexpected Pregnancy by Leslie Leyland Fields


Oh, how I wish I found this book while I was still pregnant. For some reason I never thought to look up books on the subject of unintended pregnancies. Maybe it never occurred to me that a Christian author would write on such a subject since I am surrounded by Christians who cannot imagine that a career would be more important than a baby, or that you can't just 'get over' the surprise of a surprise child because they're clearly a "gift from God." Fortunately, when this Christian author and career woman had a surprise pregnancy at an advanced age, she did search for these sorts of books and found a gap in our available literature. Not only did she have one surprise child, she had two. She writes about her own story and the stories of several other women with unintended pregnancies: young and unmarried, young and raped, young and married with other plans, not so young and not married, married with too many children too soon, older and soon to retire, older with older children, etc.


This book is excellent for quelling the loneliness and gaining encouragement for the intense life shift ahead. She even has some questions to meditate on at the back of the book for singles and couples. However, the one gripe I have is that since she is targeting a wide audience, not necessarily Christian, she doesn't say much on how to deal with anger towards God. It is all very practical, but not in a Spiritual direction which is what I need right now. 


I fully intend to read this book several times over. I am sure that I have only absorbed about 30% of the encouragement she has in this book.


Book #3: "Parenting Is Your Highest Calling and 8 Other Myths That Trap Us in Worry and Guilt" by Leslie Leyland Fields


A month or so ago an acquaintance of mine from school asked on her FB something like "how do you hope to do things differently or similar to your parents in raising your own kids and why?" My answer was something like "the more I think about this question in regards to raising my own child the more I realize that this is the wrong question. Especially in this society we focus too much on blame, how people do things wrong and how we would do it differently. I think we need to focus more on what our parents did right and how much they tried to do the best they possibly could."


I don't know about you, but I can let my mind run away with me planning how I'm going to do things, how I should or shouldn't respond in a certain situation, and how things went ALL WRONG when I was a kid. I'm not saying there isn't a balance and an objectivity that is good and healthy when assessing other peoples' parenting skills and determining what you plan to do differently or similarly. I'm saying that as a whole, we should recognize more often than not that every parent (with only very rare exceptions) tries to do the best they can with the cards they were dealt. And that every parent wants their child to do better than they did. 


Because of that answer, this friend mentioned this book. I read an excerpt online and immediately bought it along with Surprise Child. Both of these books were written for me. Do you remember my blog on my birth experience? 

"I was struggling with thoughts of not wanting the baby in the first place, anger with God at giving me a baby while a few of my friends desperately wanted one without success, and fears of inadequacy as I have always held motherhood in high regard which is one of the reasons why I wasn't looking forward to it. So much responsibility! This isn't talking about taking care of someone after surgery who has a complicated health history. You are responsible for raising a person. We're talking about morals, ethics, beliefs, philosophy, education, emotional stability, etc. in addition to physical health! It is a 24/7 job. You can't just sign out of the clock and go to a party with your friends. Sure, my husband was cut out for this sort of thing. Me? No sir-ree!"


"Parenting Is Your Highest Calling" is actually listed as myth #3 but I think the myths I was most sold out to were #2 "Nurturing your child is natural and instinctive" and #6 "You represent Jesus to your children: How we trap ourselves into a role we weren't meant to play." The other myths I had already seen effectively debunked by kids gone wrong in Godly, nurturing families as well as the phenomenon that kids from the same family (like mine) can turn out so differently. 


The basis for writing about these myths doesn't just come from the author's experience with her own six children, but it comes from the outline in Scripture of God as a father. He called himself the father to the nation of Israel and they constantly turned away from him. I love how she brings scripture references of God's own frustrations to illustrate her point that there are no secret formulas, no "superman" parents other than God himself, and far too much guilt to go around.