Easter and Collecting Seeds

We had a wonderful Easter.  After going to church and seeing a small drama which included brief sketches with appropriate songs sang by singers who gave me goose bumps, and the Pastor finishing up with an artfully told story of the crucifixtion...I must say the story of the sacrifice Christ made for mankind never ceases to pierce my heart and bring tears to my eyes...it makes me examine myself and vow to weed the garden of my heart of self will, jealousy, hatred, selfishness....I do want to be more like Christ daily....the family goes to my Sister's house.

.....I love our Easter tradition of going to my Sister's house and having a potluck lunch and an Easter egg hunt with all the adorable eggs my nieces and nephews decorated and dyed...crack, crunched, perfect or not....they all are embodiments of the dyers' personalities!

Here is a pic of the teen and not so teen girls posing....Leanne (my red headed step sister's kiddo), Fragile (niece), Liver' (niece), Tear Tear (daughter), Tina Fish (I wouldn't mind if she was my daughter.), and Auntie Nita trying to sneak in the pic.

...cameras were everywhere....I'm scared of the angles they're taking these photos at...me and my sisters are on the other side...we can just imagine how this makes our thighs look!....

...Vangie (niece) discussing the prettiest and coolest eggs with Ave (nephew)...

...my brother in law Mike in an adorable moment with his two youngest children...I wonder what they are telling him...

....Tally and her eggs....she's lamenting the fact that she only has one more year before she's too old to hunt and will have to hide....

....Jake (nephew)...holding up his friends and cousins with his amazing mental strength...

....collapsing pyramid...

....Big Bro....I think he went this far off for privacy....not possible in this family...there's always someone (like me hee hee) who will go out of their way to bug you....

....It's very important to me to be able to save my own seed....I want my garden to be able to support itself and feed my family whether I can buy seed or not.  Regardless, being able to save my own seed makes good money sense too.  My garden shouldn't cost more than purchasing food, and It doesn't.

I allow many of my plants to bolt or go to seed.  I know it takes up space where other things could be growing, but I plan to plant heat loving plants immediately into their spots after the seed matures and I remove the plant.  I find bolting and seeding plants are beautiful in their own right and the flowers provide nectar for bees and encourage pollinators to visit the garden. 

This is dill producing seed.  The seed can be planted and used in recipes as well.

...the kale seed pods are finally starting to dry.

...onion going to seed.

Curly Mustard seed.  I love this variety of mustard...spicy and yummy.

Some of the flowers blooming in the garden.

The sunflowers volunteered from the seed dropped last year.  I have them all over the garden.  This is the first one to bloom.  Another benefit of allowing plants to seed are all the volunteers around the garden and yard.

...see the bee up close.  The bee is actually checking out a beetle that was on the sunflower.  I keep an eye on the different insects that visit my garden.  Very few require any action.  The garden just seems to do a good job on it's own of balancing out the insect population.

So far this year I have saved seed from:  broccoli, curly mustard, dill, and arugula.