Building a garden

When I was a kid--maybe between the ages of 10 and 15--I remember going out to help pick vegetables from Grandma Ives' big garden on her farm in Iowa.  She would grow green beans, sweet corn, strawberries, rhubarb, and other "strange Grandma foods".  I thought rhubarb was really gross until I had rhubarb pie for the first time.  But the green beans were my favorite. You could eat them straight off the plant!  So what if they were a little dirty?  You can eat as many as you want, there's like a million of them out here!  This is a fun memory.

This post is just a fun story about me building a mini garden in the back yard of my new house.

The back yard in our rented house has mostly clover and weeds covering the ground, so I didn't feel bad digging up a 4 foot by 8 foot area.  A few days ago my friend Jason came over and helped me to get this going.  First we picked out some lumber for the border and some soil to supplement the garden.

We started by nailing together a 4'x8' wooden frame out of some lumber, and then marking the outline of that frame with some stones, to guide our digging. Then we began to dig up the "grass" within that area.

Next we took a break and ate some delicious toasted tuna salad sandwiches for lunch.  This project took about 5 hours to complete in all.  After lunch, we dug down about a foot into the ground, to loosen up the soil and get some oxygen in there.

 

Finally we put down the wooden frame, and filled back in the dirt we had piled off to the side, mixing in a nutrient-rich bag of store-bought soil.

This project has only costed about $25 so far, but we haven't planted anything yet.  Jason is the expert on gardens, and so I'm relying on his expertise to know how to do this next phase.  We want to grow exotic tomatoes, zucchini, okra, basil, and, of course, green beans! :)

Welcome to Reaching Students

Welcome to "Reaching Students," a journal of stories from my work with students, my relationship with God, and fun moments from my life in general.  I hope you are encouraged and challenged here.

Who am I?
I am Solomon Ives, son of the creator of this universe.  I live in Bakersfield, California, but most of my extended family is in the Midwest, and I would describe my family culture as "Midwest American-German-English Farmers".  My primary aim in life is simply to enjoy God to the fullest.  Recently I've fallen in love with the music of Sufjan Stevens and Explosions in the Sky.

What do I do?
I am a Campus Minister with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship at two schools in Bakersfield: Cal State Bakersfield and Bakersfield College.  I work to advance witnessing communities on these campuses that call students and faculty to Christ and develop them as spiritual leaders.  You'll hear more about what this looks like as we go.  You can click on the "Jesus on Campus Letters" tab and peruse a history of letters that have stories, pictures, and prayer requests from my work.