Author Archives: Aaron

Gardening notes for myself

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– Aaron

These are just some notes for myself, for next year’s garden. I’m just writing them here, so I can find them later, and I suppose they could be helpful to someone else – but only if they have some of the same habits, plants, and climate as me.

  • You don’t have to plant every single seed in the seed packet. Yes, some might not make it another year. But guess what: You only paid like $3 for that seed packet. Let it go man, let it go.
  • When your onions fall over, give ‘em a week, and dig them up. They’re done.
  • Water is very important. Try and give your plants some.
  • Plant LOTS of quinoa seeds if you want more than two plants, and you could probably start them indoors.
  • Peppers need buddies.
  • Spinach and lettuce really don’t like the heat.
  • Start your seedlings earlier!
  • Keep trimming those herbs (basil and mint, I’m lookin’ at you especially).
  • Thin your carrots, unless you want gnarly disgusting carrot root-balls.
  • Grow your corn in multiple rows.
  • Climbing beans will climb corn, but you need to plant them in the proper sequence for that to happen (hint: core before beans).
  • Turnip greens can get enormous before the bulb is ready to harvest.
  • Give your plants more room!
  • Blueberries can be blue before they are sweet. Taste, evaluate, wait, repeat.
  • Don’t let the raspberries get purple.
  • Grapes need lots of water. Especially if the spring isn’t as wet as it could be.
  • Strawberries need plenty of nutrients, and not as much water as you have been giving them.
  • Nasturtiums like more sun than you have given them!
  • Good idea planting the various Cucurbiteae around the edges of your beds so the vines can trail off onto the ground. That works. Next time, give them more space between one another in the bed, so the leaves don’t overshadow each other so much.
  • Soaking your beans overnight before planting them seems to have worked nicely.
  • The (east facing) front porch (with southern cover from the chestnut tree) isn’t a great place for a lot of plants. Make sure they don’t need full sun when you put them there.
  • Turn your compost every day, whether it needs it or not.
  • Plant those potatoes deeper.

How Voting Works (update)

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— Aaron

“Bad officials are elected by good citizens who do not vote.” -George Jean Nathan

I think this should be amended to “Bad officials are elected by good citizens who have no choice but to elect one of the bad candidates who are running”

An update of this post.

Sandwiches DO taste better when someone else makes them! (Repost)

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–Aaron 

I’ve always thought this was true, and now I have science to back it up:

When you make your own sandwich, you anticipate its taste as you’re working on it. And when you think of a particular food for a while, you become less hungry for it later. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, for example, found that imagining eating M&Ms makes you eat fewer of them. It’s a kind of specific satiation, just as most people find room for dessert when they couldn’t have another bite of their steak. The sandwich that another person prepares is not “preconsumed” in the same way.

A reposted article by Daniel Kahneman

Thirsting for God in Daily Work (repost)

–Aaron

We must drink. Or die.

Yet, dare I confess? Too often, miserably too often, I don’t want to drink from His cup.

I thirst for God’s goodnesses. I pant for his blessings. But to drink from his cup? I crave days laced with comfort. Fulfilling marriage with little self-sacrifice. Thoughtful children with meager investment.

Successful work with quick shortcuts. That cup of salvation seems too heavy to lift to dry lips.

And I wonder: is it true too of the body of the Christ? “Many are eager to be happy with him; few wish to suffer anything for him,” writes Thomas á Kempis. “Many will follow him as far as the breaking of bread, but few will remain to drink from his passion. Many love Christ as long as they encounter no hardship…”

But is that love?

Anxious to molt free of the tightening burden of annoying coworkers, aging parents, demanding children, the responsibilities relentlessly mounting, we plead, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me.” I make normal everyday problems into a Garden of Gethsemane. I writhe at the thought of daily dying. I pray, “Give us our daily bread, my expected luxuries, but no, I’ll pass on the cup.”

If I pray for no hardship, do I really love?

Aren’t I the one who daily collects God’s blessings like manna? Words from his Word, nourishment cupped in a bowl, lilt of birds lighting, sunlight pooling on floor, splash of sunset at day’s end. Redemption. Mercy. Abundant life. I gather his gifts.

There are times, not frequent enough, when I rouse to it all and ask with the Psalmist, “How can I repay the Lord for all his goodness to me?” (Ps. 116:12).

But the answer the Psalmist offers is the one that I too often choke on, can’t quite get down. “I will lift up the cup of salvation” (Ps. 116:13). Is that why the cup is heavy, too painful to lift? Because in salvation, there is a dying to our wants. And an embracing of his.

So I let him spoon the words in deliberately. So I don’t die. (And yet do.) I sit for hours, waiting for an appointment. A computer rebels before a deadline. A project unravels. He asks me to accept, lift, sip deeply, “How can I repay the Lord for all his goodness to me? I will lift up the cup.” Perhaps, in small, unremarkable ways, I too can enter into the communion joy of dying to self? A child wails and clings, and I’m late and the oatmeal burns. Again to open dry lips: “Give thanks for his torrent of good. Lift up the cup. Drink it all down.” Perhaps, in this high calling to humble living, it is possible to remember daily his far greater sacrifice, his innumerable unmerited kindnesses, and choose to give thanks for whatever he gives in the moment—all of it.

Yes, to drink of his passion. In choosing to drink down the moments simply as they come, without chaffing, is this the wholesale gratitude he entreats of us?

Amid the busyness, how do you remember to surrender and drink deeply of the cup of salvation?
I found this here, on Q, a blog I follow.

Are Any of us Really Independent (repost)

— Aaron

This is yet another re-post from Donald Miller. He’s got a way of making me think, lately.

How many of your theological positions did you arrive at through independent observation and objective thinking?

Not long ago, a psychology class played a trick on their professor. Every time he walked to the left side of the room, the class would tune out, look away or just look down at their notes. When he walked to the right side of the room the class would look at him, pay attention and nod their heads to affirm his ideas. By the end of the class, the professor was literally standing so far to the right of the class he was teaching from the doorway.

No kidding.

So it makes me wonder how much of the things we believe are “us” are really just a subconscious reaction to validation. Do we engage our theological positions because we’ve come upon them objectively, or did we find ourselves in a community that embraced those positions and rewarded us with affirmation when we came to the conclusions of the community?

I’m willing to bet the concept of Total Depravity is much more total than we understand. I bet we are so depraved that we can’t even understand why we do what we do, and that much of our religious motivations are simply attempts to have a religious community validate our personalities.

What about you? Are your views about God objective? Or are they arrived at through a communal experience of affirmation and validation? And how confident are you that you are an objective person?

That’s from here: http://donmilleris.com/2011/05/13/are-any-of-us-really-independent/

Perception (repost)

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— Aaron

This was originally posted here, and I thought it was just so good, I’d post it here, so I could come back to it.

. . . Something To Think About. . .

Washington, DC Metro Station on a cold January morning in 2007. The man with a violin played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time approx. 2 thousand people went through the station, most of them on their way to work. After 3 minutes a middle aged man noticed there was a musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds and then hurried to meet his schedule.

4 minutes later:

The violinist received his first dollar: a woman threw the money in the hat and, without stopping, continued to walk.

6 minutes:

A young man leaned against the wall to listen to him, then looked at his watch and started to walk again.

10 minutes:

A 3-year old boy stopped but his mother tugged him along hurriedly. The kid stopped to look at the violinist again, but the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk, turning his head all the time. This action was repeated by several other children.. Every parent, without exception, forced their children to move on quickly..

45 minutes:

The musician played continuously. Only 6 people stopped and listened for a short while. About 20 gave money but continued to walk at their normal pace. The man collected a total of $32.

1 hour:

He finished playing and silence took over. No one noticed. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition.

No one knew this, but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the greatest musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written, with a violin worth $3.5 million dollars. Two days before Joshua Bell sold out a theater in Boston where the seats averaged $100.

This is a true story. Joshua Bell playing incognito in the metro station was organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, taste and people’s priorities.

The questions raised:

*In a common place environment at an inappropriate hour, do we perceive beauty?

*Do we stop to appreciate it?

*Do we recognize talent in an unexpected context?

One possible conclusion reached from this experiment could be this:

If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world, playing some of the finest music ever written, with one of the most beautiful instruments ever made.

How many other things are we missing?

A Bad Night’s Sleep

—Aaron

After staying up an hour past when I normally go to bed the other night, Dana and I talked for a good while. (I love these talks. They are some of the best time that we share and really communicate.) Because I get up at 5:00 normally, this means I went to bed at 10:30 and we probably talked until 11:00.

Some time around 3:30 in the morning, Naomi decides she’s awake and is happily chattering away in her crib. Three Thirty in the Morning. The baby monitor makes it pretty hard to not know that she’s awake, so I lie there, listening to her talk to all her stuffed animals in her bed.

Then, I realize that my ear itches. Normally, this would not be a big deal; Step 1) scratch ear without thinking much about it, Step 2) forget. However, around this time last year, Dana had an ant crawl into her ear (you can read more about that here and here). And we’ve been seeing ants around the house a little bit again this year. So in my tired, but awake state, I pretty much convinced myself that there could be an ant trying to get in my ear, and I kept thinking about it, and trying to block/clean out/scratch my ear. Which only tickled it more, which made me think even more that there could be an ant trying to get into my ear… (repeat until insanity ensues).

When I had turned down the monitor so that I could only hear Naomi if she yelled, and fully convinced myself of the complete lack of insects anywhere near my ear, I almost got back to sleep. Except I realized I had to pee. I hesitated, because I didn’t want Naomi to hear the toilet flush, and think I was up and coming to get her. But eventually I had to do what I had to do. After I did, the cat (who does NOT sleep in our room, because he likes to lick us and sleep on our heads) thought it was time for me to get up and he started meowing, expecting me to feed him and give him access to our bedroom (which is what happens every morning after I wake up).

After a while, Naomi’s happy chatter woke up Dana and she went and turned off the monitor. At which point, I noticed it was about 5 minutes until the alarm would go off.

Fun.

Ten Characteristics of a Disciple (repost)

—Aaron

 This is a repost of a blog by Donald Miller. I liked this one a lot so I thought I’d share it on here. 

I remember being in a Bible study once when the teacher pulled out a book about discipleship and read ten or so characteristics of a disciple. They were things like being holy and devoted and knowledgeable and all that. They sounded nothing like the characteristics of the disciples in the Bible. The author was well meaning, of course, but it’s no doubt tempting to hang a carrot in front of people telling them they have to “become” in order to be used by God rather than admitting they actually “become” while they are in the process of being used by God. It’s an important paradigm shift for all of us because otherwise we’d be too intimidated to take the first step.

Here are some actual characteristics of the disciples I think we can safely trust. If you resonate with any of these, you’re in a good spot and likely following Jesus:

1. You think Jesus wants to take over the government so you cut off a soldiers ear in order to get the fighting started. (The neo cons are definitely disciples!)

2. You keep pestering Jesus about who he will give more power to in heaven.

3. You have no theological training but own a small fishing business which somehow makes you qualified because you “get it.”

4. The Holy Spirit crashes into one of your mini sermons so everybody can speak different languages and outsiders think you’re drunk.

5. People ask you if you know Jesus and you freak out and say no and run away.

6. You hear they killed Jesus on a cross and you figure the whole thing was a wash and you got duped.

7. You choose other disciples by playing rock, paper scissors.

8. You teach bad theology and have to have somebody else come over and correct you.

So there you go. My guess is there’s a place in there for you. So if you’re confused about theology or power hungry or just an average idiot, take the first step. You’ll get sorted out along the way. The disciples “became” some pretty great guys in the end.

Ten Characteristics of a Disciple is a post from: Donald Miller’s Blog

Chocolate Or Celery?

— Aaron

The other day Dana, Naomi and I were eating chips and some guacamole I made. I left the avocado seed in the guacamole (because I’ve heard that it helps the guacamole from getting all weird and discolored if you need to store the it in the fridge*). Naomi thought the seed was chocolate and wanted to eat it. I tried to explain to her that it wasn’t chocolate, and that it would be nearly impossible to bite and she probably wouldn’t like the taste at all. But she would have none of it. So I rinsed it off and gave it to her to play with. It took her nearly 4 seconds to realize it wasn’t chocolate and then she just asked for “more chocolate”.

Later that evening, we went to Costco. We got a big package of pre-cut celery sticks. Naomi called them carrots. When we corrected her, she changed her mind and wanted celery. She kept asking every few minutes for celery. We got the rest of our groceries and bought some chocolate clusters and jelly beans (not for her). She was more insistent about eating celery at the checkout. Just after we paid, I gave her a stick of celery. She ate half of it by the time we got to the exit. The lady checking our receipt said, “Celery? Somebody’s doing something right.” When we got to the car, Naomi was on her second stick of celery.

How is it that she will ignore perfectly good guacamole (which she likes), for imaginary “chocolate”? And yet she will later ignore actual chocolate and brightly colored candy for celery? I guess she’s two years old. And that’s probably all the explanation there can be.


* However, this particular guacamole didn’t have a chance to get weird colors, because we ate it all at that sitting — I had grossly underestimated our hunger, or overestimated the amount of guacamole.