Snowstorm Freezes My Tomatoes

It's been weeks since I uploaded these pictures of working in our greenhouse in early May. Hannah helped me pot some tomato and pepper plants we bought.

Here are the starts I bought.

A few weeks later, here is what they look like now.

And then some of the tomatoes froze during the snowstorm! But I pruned them down and they are actually still growing! I had planted a few new ones beside the frozen ones in case the old ones didn't survive. But they survived and are thriving!
Their roots and basic stem were strong enough to withstand that cold snap.

And I think a stray chicken ended up pecking most of the leaves off this pepper that I had set on the deck because of the many aphids I found on it.

But look at how it is blooming even after it lost its leaves and even after a bath with water and dishsoap (something I read to get rid of aphids)!

We may go through storms and times of being hen-pecked and demolished and pruned and sloshed with dishsoapy water and covered with annoying and destroying enemy aphids trying to suck the life out of us.
But if our root system is solid, we can survive and even thrive!
As Psalm 1:3 says, the man who meditates in God's law day and night, shall be like a tree, planted by the rivers of water, that brings forth its fruit in its season.
Jesus talked about abiding in the vine, and how the Father prunes the branches--so that they will bring forth fewer leaves and more fruit instead.

He wants us to  not just have a big plant full of lush leaves, but to have blooms and buds and fruit!

He wants lots of peppers to saute with our morning eggs. 

Freezing temperatures, aphids, snippings, peckings--in the end, 

it's the root

and the fruit

that matter most.