What do you do when your heart tells you one thing but your brain says something else? A case in point are the gardens this year.
I keep telling people it is too early to plant your summer crops as the frost date for this area is the beginning of May-actually more like May 10th. It is even in print on my website. Do not plant your tomatoes, peppers, limas, cantelope, watermelon until after the first of May! The ground needs to be warm-at least 55 degrees. But this year it got hot early. We even had one week with temperatures in the upper 80’s. It begin to mess with our brains, making us feel like it was time to plant. People started buying and setting out tomatoes plants the beginning of April.
I even succumbed to the urge to plant against my better judgement. I kept listening to others planting, knowing it was too early. I looked at the extended forecast on the weather channel and there was NO day when night temperatures were below the mid 40’s. I listened to my heart.
But guess what? It frosted last evening and they are calling for frost again tonight. It was cold all day today! Yesterday afternoon I covered my tomatoes with plastic jugs and some of my flowers with sheets to protect them.
I put others inside the greenhouse and closed the door securely.
I think tonight I am covering a few more plants.
A number of customers today were bemoaning the lost of their plants last night. Guess what…they listened to their hearts and not their heads. This time they lost.
There is also a spiritual application to this point. God warns us that the heart is deceitful and desperately wicked (Jeremiah 17:9). Our heart feels emotions; pity, compassion, love, anger, loneliness, greed, pride, etc. Sometimes we act from the desires and longings of our heart rather than the rational thinking of our head. Our brains plan, rationalize, evaluate, remember. Our hearts can trick us, fool us into making unwise decisions. Sometimes we are torn between feeling and logic. When in doubt, it is usually wise to listen to the brain.
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