“The RoseBouquet”

We didn’t get a frost after all last Tuesday night, at least, not in my garden. But there have been several later last week, and now all the leaves of my poor morning glories are hanging droopy and black, and even my hardy marigolds, have lost their golden glow and look wet and bedraggled.

I did get the beets out last week Wednesday morning and gave them away, but I still have some carrots and a few small cabbages, plus the ever-perky swiss chard to harvest. I’m planning to get them all cleaned up this week - for I will be away all of next week to a conference in Winnipeg.

It was too wet yesterday, but now the sun is to come out for the rest of the week, so it should be possible to do it over my supper breaks, and on Saturday.

This last Saturday would have been a great day to do it, but I had promised some friends that they could come over and we would have a craft session. My friend Laura’s daughter Rachel, a high school teen, wanted to learn how to make candles and my calendula ointment. My neighbours even came over for a short spell to watch.

Naturally, we gave them some candles. But Rachel and I each kept our own ointments. By the end of the afternoon, I realized that our ointments were too firm. I had not remembered my recipe correctly. The olive oil and bees wax should not be at a 1:1 ratio, but 4:1. So we’ll just melt them down and start over. But we’ll do that on our own.

Meantime, I’m wondering if I have a good idea for a Christmas gift for everyone on my list. I’m thinking I’ll order a big batch of pretty jars…

It took me over-time on Friday to finally get my brother’s computer ready to take back to him. I won’t take you through all the technical saga, but it works for him again now. And he has a secure linux system on it. No more fear of viruses for him.

I had tried something that didn’t work out right, so I’d started over. It didn’t seem fair to charge Tom for those hours, but when he asked what he owed me, I explained that I had spent at least four productive hours in trouble-shooting and installing a new system on it, so he could owe me $20/hour or $80, and that was a good bargain.

Tom recognized it as such. Anywhere else he could have paid $80/hour! However, he said I’d have to wait until the end of the month when his next Disability check arrives.

I asked if he was making any more of those cross necklaces out of horseshoe nails, but he seemed rather discouraged over that.

So yesterday after office hours, when I went to have my watch fixed, and found myself in the area of the store where his previous batch of cross necklaces are sold on consignment, I decided to pop in and see if there was any money to pick up for him. Turned out that the last 11 there had sold, and yes, they would like for him to make some more.

Wanting to encourage Tom, since he had sounded quite depressed on the phone on Sunday night, I hurried over to his apartment to deliver his money. When he saw $79 stretched out in my hand he said, “Oh, so I just owe you one more dollar,” and he went to get his wallet.

It took me a second to register his thinking. Oh yes, what he owed me for the computer! So now we’re squared away again.

I also encouraged him to start another batch of necklaces. I told him the woman had promised to take 15 for sure and maybe even 20. As they buyer for the store, she’s stocking up for Christmas shoppers.

Did I mention that there will be no RoseBouquet issued next week? Priscilla and I are being sent by our mission to a conference in Winnipeg. If I can get some cast-off laptops cobbled together to get one working one, I may be able to check my emails late at night, if not, I’ll be alive and well, but away from my usual lifestyle and pace.

If you can hold off emailing me next week I won’t have to dread the catchup work the week after so much.

You were always expected to look after your younger siblings? Me too!

It wasn’t always fun. Sometimes we felt hard done by because of the extra responsibilities, but have you noticed as well, that we became more mature and able to handle much greater responsibility now in our adult years? So being the oldest sister does have it’s advantages!

I have not read that many books or novels, which feature sisters or siblings, and yet most of us can quickly identify with the special tensions in such relationships. Well, guess what - I made a point of weaving some of that into my novel, Ruthe’s Secret Roses. In fact, the older sisters shine in this book!

This book may be of special interest to you. You ought to check it out.
About Ruthe’s Secret Roses or Read the
sample chapters.

May I ask again; do you know which secrets are good to keep and which ones are wrong? I’ve been doing a Bible search and found some passages about secrets. Here I’ve condensed them into nutshells, that you can sit and ponder. References are included, should you want to do a deeper study.

The better part of discretion is to keep some facts secret. (Esther 2:20)

God will rebuke you for secret favouritism. (Job 13:10)

Evil-doers secretly spy for potential victims of their deeds. (Psalm 10:8)

You can’t keep a secret from God! (Psalm 44:21, Psalm 90:8)

Don’t even think or tell a secret lie about anyone; God will silence you. (Psalm 101:5)

You may delight in delicious secret pleasures - only so long. (Proverbs 9:17)

Trustworthy people can keep a secret. (Proverbs 11:13)

Bribes are secret gifts to pervert justice or to pacify the angry. (Proverbs 17:23, & 21:14)

God’s agenda is not a secret - He’s been announcing it through prophets from the beginning. (Isaiah 48:16)

You can’t hide from God - He is everywhere! (Jeremiah 23:24)

Give so humbly and discretely that one of your hands doesn’t even know the other hand gave. (Matt.6:3-4)

Jesus shares the secrets of the spiritual life only with His followers. (Matt. 13:11)

However, Jesus taught openly; nothing was said in secret. (The spiritual understand the deeper things of God). (John 18:20)

One day God will expose and judge everyone’s secrets openly. (Rom. 2:16)

Christians preach a secret wisdom that God designed for this era in time. (I Cor. 2:7)

Apostles/Believers are entrusted with the secret things of God. (I Cor. 4:1)

When unbelievers observe this (above) they will recognize God is really among us. (I Cor. 14:25)

God’s devoted servants renounce all secret/shameful ways, speaking the truth with a clear conscience. (2 Cor. 4:2)

Don’t even talk about the shameful secrets of the disobedient. (Eph. 5:12)

The secret (key) to contentment is the same satisfied attitude in every situation, no matter how extreme. (Phil. 4:12)

False teachers secretly (subtly) introduce heresies - denying the Lord - but they bring destruction on themselves. (2 Peter 2:1)

False teachers secretly (quietly) infiltrate a group - to take away God’s grace and give license for immorality.(Jude 1-4)

At a minimum, new believers should not learn Satan’s deep secrets or sin-arts. (Rev. 2:24)

It was a sunny Saturday, though rather windy, but I took advantage of that and got at the digging up of my potatoes. When I needed a breather, I went to pick off the last of my zucchini, and the pumpkins and squash, and to pull up the plants and toss them aside to dry up.

When next I can, I will go at them with my weed-eater to chop them up finer. It would be nice if someone offered to rotor till them all into the garden soil too, before winter. I’ll see what happens.

Meantime, here’s a shot of my harvest once I carried all my pails and the laundry tub into the back porch.

There are still root vegetables like beets and carrots in the ground, and the poor cabbages are seeing the light of day now, and struggling to form small heads, so I thought I’d leave them a while longer. The swiss chard - I learned last fall - will thrive and look green and luscious right until a serious frost comes.

I heard yesterday on the radio that a frost was very likely last night, so I made sure to pick all the tomatoes, both red and green before supper.

I also picked one more bouquet of marigolds and made up an arrangement to take to the office. However, this morning they were still fine, so I guess there was not a real frost after all. The temperatures dipped pretty close though.

In a chat over the fence with the neighbours, we were hoping that we would get a good frost, and then - as per usual, enjoy a nice long Indian Summer after that. Last year it lasted right into November.

I’m resolved not to harp on my busyness today. It makes you tired to read of all my work, doesn’t it?

When I got home last night I checked my answering machine and found two messages from my brother Tom. His computer had crashed and it appears he had dialed my number before the dust settled as he was reading the error messages he saw on the screen. I could tell by the changes in his voice that this was very depressing news for him. And then to find that I wasn’t home all evening. Whoa!

So I called him back, late as it was, and he told me about it as I asked questions. How could I say, “Nope. I’m too b….. ” to my brother? The best plan I could suggest was that he be up by 9 am and I would come around to pick it up on my way to the office. Somehow I will work it into my agenda to have a look and see if I can rescue his stuff, or even the Windows XP.

If not, he has given me permission to put a Linux Operating System on it. Ah-ha! Tom has seen the light!

Oh! I must tell you of something else that really tickled and pleased me yesterday. Some time ago I had put a C2 form on one of my aloe vera pages; http://www.aloe-vera-and-handy-herbs.com/aloe-plants.html Well, I got a response on the weekend, and so yesterday I was trying to figure out how to use this C2 system at SBI. Fortunately I had read the ezine, or snatches of it on Friday, so I hunted up the steps to take, and hey, I got it set up, and even got the AdSense ads automated as per the new announcement on Friday. I saw on the SBI forums how some others have already done this, and in no time have gained 80 and hundreds of new pages. Others who were ahead of me on this were chortling at how this was going to increase profits for them.

So here I am, grinning like a satisfied cat, because I’ve got it set up too! Now I’ll try to do this on other places on these two SBI sites as well. Soon’s I can…!

My article today is one I’ve worked on for a couple of weeks now, and the more I do the more I find to learn about knowing when to keep a secret and when to tell it. I hope you find something useful in it too.

Will you let me know if you do?

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How can you tell when it’s right to keep a secret? Sometimes someone will ask you to keep a secret and deep down inside you wonder if it is the right thing to do.

It’s true; some people delight in doing wrong on the sly, and they want you to help them hide that - let’s call it what it is - SIN. You don’t want to aid and abet them in wrong-doing. So how can we discern when to keep a secret?

Let’s look at some likely situations where you need to know whether to keep the secret or refuse.

- a friend tells you juicy gossip, which may or may not be 100%, and it could hurt someone

- you see or hear something, either true or not true, that could ruin another person, or smear a leader

- you discover that a superior or co-worker is breaking the law

- you discover a cure or remedy for a common ailment

- you find lost or stolen property, a mini-windfall for you!

- you find a way to solve a common problem that could make you rich if you develop it right

- you have intimate times between you and your spouse

- someone shares a confidence - nothing illegal or evil - just baring their heart and mind

- you are tempted to sin in an area of sin - embarrassed to death, but can’t cope

Can you tell in which of those situations you should keep it a secret and seal your mouth on that issue? In which situations ought you to be brave and speak up - maybe not to everyone, but to the right people? When should you forget about secrecy and broadcast it widely as far as your sphere of influence goes.

You are still not sure on some of them. They are not all so black and white, are they?

Let’s consider three guidelines to help us discern when to keep a secret.

Do not repeat a secret if;
the information is someone else’s property, or if the information (or gossip) could hurt someone. Another instance would be - sexual intimacy with a spouse - that is for you two alone – don’t expose such secrets either. Unless, of course, there is abuse, and you need help to escape an evil situation.

Tell, or break a secret to only the appropriate, select people if;
someone is plotting to hurt another, a great sin or lawlessness can be averted, or something stolen or broken can be restored. Another instance may be that you need help fighting temptation and sin, and you want to be held accountable by others. Obviously, you must confide in just the right people.

Tell the secret to everyone if;
none of the above apply – and others would benefit from the knowledge in the secret, or if you know of a natural remedy that would save lives, or if you have a solution to a common problem. The guide here is that it will better the lives of others, and will not break the confidence of someone who has greater ownership of the secret knowledge, and it will not create an evil and sinful situation, or cause great danger and peril.

In my novel, Ruthe’s Secret Roses, the main character keeps secret from her family the things she does when she goes to the city of Saskatoon to work. She is afraid her parents would find fault with her new friendships, and is convinced they would prevent her from continuing her time there. in her panic and fear she builds a false scenario of consequences. With time they grow in her mind until her fears are all out of proportion.

Fortunately, she desires to please and obey God, and that gives Him an opening to drop seeds of truth into her mind, and to give her heart courage to do what is right. Ruthe well knew the skill of keeping her mouth shut. She needed to learn to discern when it is right and good to open it up and tell some secrets on herself.

[first published on http://Ruthes-SecretRoses.com/hi/Keep-a-Secret.shtml]

Did you have the kind of Labour Day weekend that you had hoped for?

I had hoped to harvest much of my garden and maybe get some sewing in. (sigh) But several friends asked me for special projects for them, and so I put aside my own personal time margin and crowded them in. Some are still not finished so they are still part of my day today.

Ah, but I did insist on extra prayer time in the mornings, and that gave me a chance to wait and listen for answers to some of my questions of the Lord. One of them was about how sleepy and tired I’ve seemed the last few weeks. I realized it was my short and shorter nights that were the cause. I don’t like to short-change myself on my devotional time in the mornings, nor do I want to short-change my clients when I work on their sites in the evenings, but the only sensible answer seemed to be to try really hard again for a while to just quite about 11 or 11:30 at the latest, and see that I get into bed with the lights out by midnight.

Guess what, I have got into bed on time the last three nights, and whew, what a change in energy and wakefulness I’ve had on Sunday and yesterday. That extra sleep time really does refresh and regenerate me! I hope I can guard that part of my schedule now.

I noticed yesterday that I was beginning to blame others for my crowded agenda, but this morning I realized again that I have the power to choose to say “no.” Or, “only so late.”

You know how 2 year olds practice saying “No!”? Maybe I should practice it again.

I’m not saying we should be cruel and ruthless when we refuse to let people preempt our time. Sometimes it is a true crisis, and we want to be the kind of friends who drop other things to help them. However, if we don’t talk things over each morning with our Dear Confidant and Guide, we are likely to fall into a routine of saying “yes” to everything and losing our autonomy - our ability to decide.

We all have friends whose main activity seems to be watching TV or flitting from one self-indulgence to another, and they can’t understand us when we say, “No, I’m busy. I already have a full agenda today - or this weekend.” They may take offense. That’s their problem.

Just don’t say “No” all the time. Let’s remember we have the power to say “Yes!” to some new challenge too.

Which front or project? I’ve been making incremental progress on a number of things, but some of them are for clients, so I don’t want to share those. Is it enough to say that there is much to be grateful for?

I felt I was beginning to sink into no progress on my own web business, but the weekend prayer sessions have me enthused again, and ready to press forward. I know I’m on the right road, facing the right direction so it is time to persevere.

I did get some of the garden harvest done on Saturday, including digging up three rows of potatoes. I had hoped to get much more done yesterday, the Labour Day holiday, but it rained and misted all day, so I didn’t feel quite so bad about giving up a couple of hours to go see a friend’s computer for trouble-shooting. I see we are to have sunshine again tomorrow, and then rain again the rest of the week.

So yes, we have a garden photo story today, but it is a bedraggled garden, begging to be harvested. As the weather allows I’ll try to get in the veggies in the next week or two. - Because the week after that I expect to be away at a conference.

Again, I realize that I need to be thankful for the garden I’ve had this summer. Many people even here in my province have not been so fortunate. In other parts of the world, like Pakistan, my wee garden would be a wonderful way to feed a family or two, or three!