I truly admire some of my friends who plant enormous gardens and manage to “put up” a sizable cache of jar upon pretty jar of garden fare to last their families through the long winter months. Here is just a small sample of what a few friends have posted on Facebook.
Jean M’s potatoes, green beans and lots of chili! 
Jo’s Green Beans 
Peggy W’s Strawberry-Rhubarb Preserves 
Peggy J’s ‘Michigan August Sunshine’ 
Wendy B’s Sauerkraut 
Wendy H’s Salsa 
Sherry P’s Fresh Maple Syrup 
Melinda Y’s Pickled Peaches
While I love to plant flowers, I’m not the greatest at growing veggies. Aside from occasionally freezing enough rhubarb to bake a mid-winter pie or two, I do very little in the way of setting aside food for later.
In God’s world of creation there is a bird known as the Acorn Woodpecker, who has a unique way of creating caches of food for future sustenance. Take a few minutes to give this YouTube video a watch and you’ll see that his caching habits are a fascinating demonstration of one of God’s most creative bankers.
The creatures God made often teach me a lesson about life. The Acorn Woodpecker got me to thinking about time, of all things. I’m envisioning my day as my own personal tree trunk with little tiny pockets, each meant to contain one of 1,440 minute-shaped bits of time. While many of those pockets are already filled with the necessary things of life like sleep, meal preparation, laundry and such, I still have plenty of empty spaces. My investments of time go into those little pockets, and the quality of each investment I choose to deposit in my time bank is almost entirely up to me.
The difference is that I can’t cache time and save it for later. It’s only given to me one moment at a time. Sometimes I think about the fact that I’ve already lived almost 64 years of my life and that those years seemed to have flown by. I have no guarantee of tomorrow (or the next breath), but should God grant me another 20 years (or just a day) of life, I pray that my minutes will be spent doing what matters. There is a song that plays on my Christian radio station quite often on my way to or from work. It’s called “Keep Me in the Moment.” Tucked somewhere toward the middle of the song is this verse which challenges me as I contemplate my use of time in my one go around in this beautiful life.
When I wake up in the morning, Lord touch my heart
Jeremy Camp in “Keep Me in the Moment”
Don’t let me stray, I just wanna stay where You are
All I got is one shot, one try, one go around in this beautiful life
Nothing is wasted when everything’s placed in Your hands
Barefoot Lily Lady 
Such a beautiful post! Love your idea about pockets of Time. Thanks for sharing.
The only thing I have preserved is peas. Shell, put in Tupperware and into the freezer. We get good peas only in winter. Your friends’ preserves are so tempting. I’d only read about all these!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Such a lovely post! I bet you could grow vegetables if you really wanted to. I’m actually turning half of my veg space into flowers next year because they don’t have to be canned or frozen! My freezers are full, my jars are all filled. Next year, no preserving and all that time can be used for some other less frenzied activity. And maybe by year’s end, I’ll have empty jars and will go back to veg…or not! Who knows?
LikeLiked by 1 person