Whiteley Creek Homestead

If you have been visiting my blog recently and I have appeared not to be "home", it is so. My 93 year old mother has been ill. On Good Friday, April 22, she departed her earthly world to be in the presence of her Heavenly Father. It is a home she has prepared herself for all of her life. As a child, our family would kneel on the living room floor each evening as she read a passage from the Bible then, in unison, we would pray the rosary. We each chose a section of the couch, a cushioned arm chair, or a chair brought in from the kitchen to lean against as our support while we knelt. Now, I see that chair as symbolically representing the support that our God in Heaven provides each of us as we walk through happy, difficult, confusing… and sad times. My mother taught me well. Today, as we celebrate Easter… a commemoration of the Resurrection of our Saviour Lord Jesus Christ, my mother is reaping the reward of the sacrifice Jesus made on Good Friday… as he took upon himself all of our sins then died on the cross so that we might live eternally with him in Heaven.

My mother got to feel her first great great grandchild before she died, as my niece Buffie's oldest daughter, Whitney, is in her second trimester of pregnancy. She proudly beamed when she shared the news of the pending arrival of a new generation with visitors who stopped by. Her legacy will continue to thrive despite her absence. There is a life cycle in plants, too. It is wondrously healing to witness. I recently allowed a sweet potato to sprout while sitting on my kitchen counter.

 
Some sources instruct you to suspend the sweet potato over a glass of water to encourage it to sprout. I learned in a recent gardening workshop that it's not necessary. It'll send out shoots unaided. Once the shoots grow to a length that will allow them some height above the soil when planted in a pot or in the ground, twist them off close to the sweet potato's surface. Insert them into a container with a bit of water and watch them rapidly send out roots in 3 or 4 days. (A friend of mine said that she used a grocery store sweet potato and it didn't sprout. My suggestion is to use an organic variety because I have read that nonorganic potatoes sold in a grocery's produce section are sprayed with a chemical to prevent sprouting.)