A MIRACLE and Bountiful Garlic

This morning Phil said, "I left the water running in Zone 1!"

Bad news. Because the well had been watering 80 trees for 17 hours or so, our well should, by all rights, have been totally dry. It should have run dry after the first 800 gallons, five hours into the marathon watering session, around the time we returned from Bible study last night.

Miraculously, though, although the water pressure was much diminished, our pump was not dry. Our well not ruined. We had water enough for this scorching day.

I thought of the verse that says that the Israelites wandered 40 years, but their garments did not wear out and their shoes did not get holes. The gracious provision of a loving heavenly Father. (Is our well really more than a gallon-a-minute well? Maybe. But I'm not interested in testing it again!)

As I read more about queenless colonies, I think my poor Queen Esther colony was queenless for much longer than I realized, maybe even back to the first week I got her. The capped queen cell won't be able to do much, I'm afraid, but I opened the hive again today to see if the new queen had emerged. Nope.

Interestingly, I put a feeder into the Queen of Sheba hive; just a pint of sugar water. When I opened the hive today, the bees had consumed almost none of it. All those hundreds of pounds of sugar, eaten by the doomed Queen Esther colony. Unbelievable.

In more cheering news, I pulled the rest of the softneck garlic, and both the Elephant and Music hardneck garlics. What a beautiful harvest! I planted, I think, one and a half pounds of elephant garlic, which was only 12 cloves. Today I pulled up 12 large heads. Yes, every one of them grew!

I planted 40 bulbs of the Music garlic, which was a pound. Those didn't have a 100% germination rate, but I still pulled 32 heads (four were quite small). So wonderful!

The little cabbage seedlings are doing okay. I have screened windows over them, and I think all the sprouts are where the screens are; the windows are cooking the seedlings a bit too much, I think. Oh, well. There's nothing I can do this time, but I'll do better next time. (I also think I should have watered the seedlings more often than once a day. That would have improved their germination, too, I bet.)

What a lot we've learned; what a lot we have yet to learn!