Lil's Garden

      Tomato seedlings are everywhere! I think my compost pile didn't get hot enough to kill the tomato seeds that were deposited there this summer from our abundant harvest of tomatoes, and tomato seedlings are coming up in every little pot that has compost in it. I gave some jalapenos to a neighbor, and some tomato seedlings also. The tomatoes that I intentionally grew from seeds are doing well, and the vines are loaded with tomatoes that we will begin harvesting pretty soon.  A couple of years ago I read a fascinating book, The Triumph of Seeds , by Thor Hanson. It's an amazing story of the fortitude, strength, resiliency, adaptability, and persistence of seeds. I'm learning about that fact in the garden. Hardly any of the seeds I planted in the fall garden have germinated. I still have a lot to learn about fall gardening.   The tiniest of the seeds, however, did germinate, and I harvested a pretty little handful of radishes yesterday, which ended up in our Easy Thai-S

House Sparrow -- Courtesy of Dr. Vijay Anand Ismavel's iNaturalist page Recently in my internet ramblings I came across The Sparrow's Nest , a blog of Vijay Anand Ismavel. Vijay and his wife Ann are missionary doctors who have been serving in Assam, India, since 1992. They have done an amazing work of raising Makunda Leprosy and General Hospital from dilapidated ruins  to a high-quality, accessible healthcare in low-resource settings facility. Their story is an amazing account of personal sacrifice and God's abundant care. Dr. Vijay is also very interested in bio-diversity and has a beautiful collection of images he has taken around the area of the Makunda Hospital. Here is the point at which I intersect with Dr. Vijay's story. Dr. Vijay in his blog recounts his story of the beginning of the Makunda Leprosy Colony. In 1935, Dr. Crozier, a Christian medical missionary from the Baptist Mid-Missions in USA had started the Alipur Mission Hospital near Silchar (later na