I finally got my garden wall finished. This is the way it looks now, from the southeast side. I'm happy to have it finished, though I love having a garden. There's nothing quite like getting out there in the soil and getting your hands dirty. I love going out each morning and plucking the vegetables of my labor. As you can see, the potatoes are growing like weeds and the rest of the garden looks like it's growing, too. I gave it plenty of good decomposing soil, lots of water and as much sun as it can handle. It's all growing quite nicely, thank you.

I hope I grow my kids like I grow my vegetables. Hopefully, I'm giving them enough food, soil, water and sun to help their little roots grow deep and strong. right now we're having a few relatively small problems with our youngest son. He's been playing baseball for six years and has never been one to have to sit on the bench much. Now he's having to ride the pine for several innings per game and it's not sitting well with him AT ALL. He says he doesn't want to play anymore and it's a battle just to get him to the field.

But Kelly and I have tried to teach our kids that we are not quitters. We have never let them quit in the middle of a season and this is no exception. He will continue to play until the end of this season, then we'll reevaluate what's going on. Lessons like that are hard to learn, especially when you're only 11-years old. But going without a lot of water sometimes makes you sink your roots deeper down into the soil to find that life-giving substance. I hope he's having to search for it right now because this can make him so much stronger, if he'll just let it.