Going to Seed, Among Other Things

It is that time of the year where I find that the best approach to gardening is just to slowly back away, hands in the air, saying, “Uncle.” The promise of bounty isn’t shiny and fresh anymore, but hanging down sad, withered, eaten by bugs and surrounded by weeds. I tell myself every year that I won’t let that happen again, and for some reason, every year it does. I still have an interest in a rather large broccoli crop and late green beans, but the rest may slowly rot back into the soil, I am so tired of it.

Still, there are some bright spots. We have three enormous volunteer sunflowers, all different colors. Gabe wanted to pull them out when they started showing up, but I love volunteers. They are so brave and unexpected: random reminders of undeserved graces in obscure places. There is also a gigantic watermelon on a blighted vine that I have no idea how to tell when I should pick it. And we have our first concord grapes this year. We are blessed, indeed. So what about the weeds. ?Right?

I decided this morning that homeschooling and canning at the same time is for the birds. Or maybe for crazy people. No wonder the house goes to seed. And I asked myself honestly, “Are these peaches worth the stickiness and the fuzzy fingers and carpal tunnel? Really, am I just doing this because my line have always canned peaches back to just after the cave days when someone discovered glass? And I daresay none of my ancestors tutored a math lesson and checked quizzes on peach canning day. So why am I doing this again?” Sometimes it is best not to overthink these things, especially in the middle of a mess. I decided to just keep calmly on peeling and eventually we were done, school was done, we cleaned up and we held real still for a while. 🙂

At the book fair a few weeks ago, I picked up a book that was an obvious attempt at a Jan Karon look-alike, just a different author. I thought I would give this one a try. Set in the Midwest, the book opens in springtime with an orchard in bloom, bees humming busily in the blossoms. A few days later the main character takes a drive to the neighbors who happen to have a thriving home business of making fruit sauces. That day they were processing pears. It just irritates me terribly. Maybe they shipped the pears from Chile or China, but still… Also the orchard lady had carried along a few boxes of fruit for the sauce making people, also presumably shipped from far afield. Boo, I say.

If I ever write anything more serious than a blog, I hope to goodness that I remember to stick with what I know. Feel free to tap me on the shoulder anytime and say, “Hey, that doesn’t make sense.”

I Can’t Keep Up!

But that is okay, as long as I sort of keep up, you know… like make sure my people are fed and clean and have fat souls. It’s the date that gives me trouble. Tonight we were writing letters to prison inmates, a ministry our church tries to help with about once a month. I dated my first letter August 19, which I discovered was just a few days wrong.

August 19 was actually the day we started back to school in this household. Just like that, the days are chock-full, the summer “over” in the sense of carefree, go-swimming-any-old-time, sleep-late-if-you-wish, etc. I am actually grateful for the more disciplined schedule. With Gabe’s work schedule being all over the place, days and nights all mixed up from week to week, it felt like we were all just flying by the seat of our collective pants this summer. I can handle that for a while, but I like it better to have some firmly established routines. Nothing like school to sober us all up at bedtime and getting up time.

We always do a party when we start back up in the fall, but this past Monday found me totally unprepared, so I told the children we will shoot for more of a Grand Opening party, like stores do when they have the kinks worked out of a new system. The DVDs are working all right for the boys. I like to hear them doing math drills while I am teaching Olivia. I have never met a homeschool mom who loved doing math drills. It is a bit of a problem when you don’t have the competition of a class to force you into being speedy. Gregory was in tears the first morning because he couldn’t keep up with his class. I still spend the entire morning with the students, monitoring, checking, fielding questions, teaching Livvy, keeping the little girls busy, etc. I won’t be twiddling my thumbs anytime soon! And when I do, I will know what else I could be doing.

Last week was crammed, the chief event a delightful campout at a nearby park with my brother and his family. It was so relaxing, after all the frantic packing lists and hauling of ice chests and setting up campsites, to sit and watch a fire and let the kids get thoroughly acquainted with the local variety of dirt.

Nate and Becca. I made them lean in like teenagers do, but you can see, they aren’t quite young enough to pull it off.

“I can do it myself!” Addy’s favorite phrase these days. Here Gabe is rescuing her from her independent efforts to swim.

Funny title to read when camping, huh? They couldn’t all see, so I was interrupted about seventeen times as they shifted heads and bodies and craned necks, complaining.

Cousins, making a book of baby animals. These two stuck together like cheese and crackers.

Gabe and I attempted a selfie. Something we are, apparently, also a little too old to do well. At least, I don’t think it is particularly flattering. But I like the hilarity of the picture, as it captures the general air of relaxation and togetherness of those camping days.

I did laundry for two days, solid, when we got home again. On Friday I turned 1/2 bushel of tomatoes into sauce and the next day I froze 23 quarts of corn, then the next day I took the children to church without Gabe because he had to work. That afternoon I spent hours catching up with a little girl I used to babysit. Only now she is all grown up and going into nursing school. (Somebody pinch me.) Which brought me to Monday morning, school starting and no party. The children were very understanding. We hope to do our Grand Opening on Friday. Because this… this choice to do school at home is a bit engrossing. Everything changes for 9 months. I think we deserve a party.

Treasure Hunt

I spent a happy hour at a book sale today, a sale benefitting the local hospital. If the books donated are any indication of what the general population is reading, it appears that my taste is rather counter-culture. Or maybe folks donate their Sillouette paperbacks because they are vaguely aware that they are so much junk? At any rate, the hunt is a thrill when I find something like a pristine copy of Andrew Henry’s Meadow. I had briefly considered buying one as a gift for one of my boys a while ago, until I saw that they are all listed at upwards of 20 dollars. Today the price was one dollar for as many books as you could stuff into a plastic bag. Then they made an announcement that the books were free, it being the end of the day and all. Donations accepted. I paid 5 dollars for a big box of books and games, including Andrew Henry’s Meadow, and it makes me happy. By the way, Andrew Henry is exactly like my boys, always making things. 🙂

External Vexations Vs. Eternal Verities

Sorry about the ponderous title. It was fun to extract it word-by-word from the Thesaurus, especially now that it sounds like some sort of article from the 1800’s . 🙂

I wouldn’t really say it was a good day. But it wasn’t a bad day, exactly. I sometimes think I am getting more skilled at rolling with the punches, but occasionally the punches come more fast and furious than usual. It leaves me feeling, at the end of the day, like I have not lived it very well.

I was thinking about this in the shower, and suddenly I just burst out laughing. Gabe has a week of night shift, so I shall tell you about the day.

It started last night with a late iced coffee, and it was so good, so very effective at wiring me that I stayed up until 1 AM catching up with ~~Facebook~~ posting our checking account and credit card data in our budget program. At that hour I even entertained a brief notion of surprising the boys with a day of school today! Haha. We have all our supplies, all our books, shiny new desks that Gabe made. Everything is ready except the teacher. I decided to wait another week or two, make tomato sauce instead.

We all had breakfast together before my hubby needed to go sleep. Then it was daily chores, little girls getting dressed in whatever picturesque outfit tickled their fancy, boys cutting up tomatoes. Everything went just fine, except for the fact that doing food preserving in a small kitchen, where every time you turn around you stumble over a fresh configuration of the chairs and people, becomes a little wearing. Also there was a small matter of literally sticking to the floor when I walked. I am trying hard to break the habit of saying, “That gets on my nerves,” because my children repeat it. But I will just tell you, in confidence, a sticky floor really gets on my nerves.

Lunch was very dry sandwiches lovingly prepared by the little boy who hates mayo. And a bit of chocolate on the sly for me. Then I shooed them all out while I washed up all those dishes and the sauce simmered on the stove and burned slightly on the bottom for lack of stirring. About then the littlest tot complained, “I NEEDS to go to bed!” Me too, tot, me too! Not an option, of course, but a nice thought.

We needed to go pick up milk from our friendly farmer. Even though Gabe was fast asleep, I took just one person with me. The van didn’t start, but the car worked. All but the AC. While we were over in horse and buggy country anyway, I had some kind of lapse and thought we should maybe do some sweet corn for the freezer yet today, the floor being already sticky and all… But God was merciful and the produce stand was sold out of corn. When we got home, I discovered the food coloring/homemade paint project crossed with cleanup involving a new white towel.

The house was hot and reeked of garlic and tomatoes. Unfortunately, our AC unit fried. All the females around here had a bad hair day due to the humidity. I found it mildly depressing to know that I looked exactly the same sort of hoodlum as my girls. 🙂 Then it rained and poured. Somehow there were two carseats out in the lane that got soaked. The little girls listened to the same story CD for the tenth time and I was feeling ready to write a scathing letter to the producers. The kiddos ran in and out, let the flies in. It was just drip, drip, drip. On and on and on my nerves. Oops.

Two hours after lunch everybody was hungry again. The tot bit chunks out of all the plums. The self sufficient little girl found a lunch box, filled it with an apple and pretzels. Then she poured milk and cleaned up her drips with a tea towel.

They were bored. They were housebound. They dragged folding chairs into their bunk beds. So I set them on the couch and they howled mirthfully at Dennis the Menace until a very uninspired supper of spiral pasta and fresh tomato sauce. But the sauce was really good!

I sent my man off again with a lunch packed for his midnight snack. One boy took out the trash and folded the laundry while the other washed the kitchen floor. He missed a few spots, but it was a definite improvement.

Someone emptied a can of shaving cream into the tub. The baby deliberately puddled onto the floor. And they were all hungry again after our bedtime story. The tot got out of her bed five times. The girls were hot with their hair on their necks and giggled while I made them really high pony tails.

Downstairs there were dehumidifiers to empty and reset, some last instructions about the proper placement of dirty clothes, and NO, you may not wear that shirt again tomorrow, even if it is your favorite. And then…

There was the kitten under the blankets. That was the last, the final drip that turned it all from just driving me nuts to hilarious.

What was that I read just this morning? It sounded so ideal, so peaceful… I just found it again in Isaiah 54:13.

“And all thy children shall be taught of the Lord;

and great shall be the peace of thy children…”

I ask myself, in this very ordinary, hilarious, sometimes frustrating life…when at times I am ashamed to hear my voice, provoked to high pitchedness about food coloring on a white towel and chairs in my way… how does He turn my very flawed efforts into children “taught of the Lord…”?

I asked God the same question, and this is what He said, “My grace is sufficient for you… really. Not just sufficient in the middle of a hard place, but sufficient, too, at the end of the day, when you have messed up and been impatient and irritated. My grace is sufficient for you… and your children!”

Here are some more of the verses in Isaiah 54. They make a very fine resting place, even a reason to laugh in the shower!

“No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper;

and every tongue that shall rise against thee in judgment thou shalt condemn.

This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord,

and their righteousness is of me, saith the Lord.”

Joy Wins

Isn’t it sweet that the winner of my book giveaway is a lady who I used to clutch onto my nine year old, not-so-ample hip and carry all over the strawberry patch where her mother and big sister were busily picking? That the person I used to make sit still while I attempted to put wobbly pigtails in her blonde wisps is now a squeaky new mother who won “Keep a Quiet Heart” just tickles me. Congratulations, Joy!

On Being Safe

Some of you heard about this story and have asked me to retell it. I have a difficult time verbalizing it all, mostly because of the recurring nightmares and repeated trips back to trusting a kind, oh, such a Kind Providence for what may happen or what might have been.

I think I have known for a long time that life is a gift, meant to be lived freely, offered back with open palms to the One who gives it. I have said that the surest way to live impoverished is to live with clenched hands, keeping everything for oneself, holding tightly to control.

I have known these things in my head, but I never experienced anything like the raw terror and scrabbling to hold onto life like I did this past week. (edit: I wrote this a month ago.)

Any parent or child care giver knows that sense of responsibility that comes with wanting to keep our beloved little people safe from harm. We don’t want anything bad to happen to them. We would gladly shield them from struggle and heartbreak if we could. And especially, we want to keep them safe.

July 4th… It was the best weather and the best water for a canoe trip with friends, the river just thunderstorm-swollen enough to keep the canoes from scraping constantly on rocks. We arranged for babysitters for the smallest children and took the older ones along to the drop off point. Five children from two families and one mama, waiting with the canoes while the canoe trailer was hauled to the take out point, 12 miles downstream. It took a while. The children got bored, started splashing in the shallows of a small stream that joined the larger river just there. The water was about knee deep, and there was a rope swing on the far bank, where they were having fun swinging over the little creek.

Just as I was heading down the bank to keep a closer eye on their play, I saw the smallest girl, the daughter of our friends, swept off her feet in the current. I yelled for the others to help her up. Her big sister who can swim a bit, grabbed for her, but to my horror, I saw them both sweep out to the dark, still water of the river. The little girl was climbing up onto her big sister in sheer desperation, pushing her under. I tore into that water, swimming as hard as I could. It was deep, much deeper than I expected, and before I got out to them, they had both gone under the surface twice. The little one popped up right in front of me and grabbed me in a strangle hold around my neck.

I am not a strong swimmer, more of a doggy paddler. I have never swum with a dead weight hanging onto me. And I couldn’t find her sister. I yelled and yelled for help, frantically sweeping around me with my arms and legs, trying to decide what to do. Should I take little sister to shore, then try to dive for the other girl? Oh Lord, I can’t dive. Oh, Jesus, these girls are supposed to go camping with all their cousins this weekend. Jesus, help! In those moments, I thought that their parents would come back to find that I had allowed their daughter to drown.

Just then, she slowly floated up beside me, holding perfectly still, eyes wide open, just under the surface. She was too tired or too panicked to make any effort to swim. I grabbed her hand, but I didn’t have the strength to lift her head above the water, so I started the struggle back to shore, towing her under water. My son ran for the life jackets, tossed, missed, ran for another, tossed again, and somehow we caught it and she pulled herself up, gasping the sweet air. When we all staggered out onto the bank, I could hardly believe that the birds were still singing, the river was still sparkling, the children were all still breathing, alive.

We huddled in the brilliant sunlight, wrapped in towels, praising God for life, for breath.

I cannot shake the feeling of that near tragedy. I know my capabilities as a swimmer are not the reason we all got out safely. I don’t understand how that child could hold her breath that long, yet I don’t know how long it was… just long enough to hold all the terrors I ever felt. It was, pure and simple, not the day of death, but of life.

“I won’t die until it is my time to die,” as a teenager I said it glibly to my mom when she was concerned about my safety in traveling to third world countries. I know this in my head, but I have always struggled with the question, “What about tragedies? accidents? freak circumstances?”

Over and over this week I have heard the calm words of David from Psalm 31, when he was running for his life.

Fear is on every side;
While they take counsel together against me,
They scheme to take away my life.

But as for me, I trust in You, O Lord;

I say, “You are my God.”
My times are in Your hand;

I have realized how tight my grip is, how invested I am, maybe not so much in my own safety, but in the safety of my children. I have felt how tightly my fists can clench onto life. I mean, one minute they can be laughing, splashing in shallows and the next they can be drowning. It haunts me. I have beaten myself up again and again for not being more aware of how deep the water was. I have realized, too, that life is full of terrors, of danger, of fearful things. I can live in fear and try endlessly to cover all the bases to make sure my children are okay. Or I can relinquish control and trust God to cover the bases that I am sure to miss.

I wish I could say it was an easy thing to learn, but it was not, and it continues, every day. Join me in giving our babies, all our dear ones, to the safekeeping of the only real safe place, the arms of the Father. And thank God with me, yes?

A Quick Note

Let me just take a minute before my husband gets home from work (yes, he had to work 12 hours in the E.R. today, which stinks, but he is almost done with his shift) to say how excited I am about these book suggestions you are giving me. Many of them I have never read and some I have never even heard of. This is like a treasure hunt for me! Thank you and keep them coming!

Anniversary Giveaway!

WordPress just sent me a congratulatory email saying that I have now been using their blog template for a year. Sure enough, I have. My old archives go back 4 more years but the address I had then was too user surly even for me to remember. Wocket-in-my-pocket has proven to be a much better address.

The thing that makes blogging so much fun is the feed back from readers. It makes all the difference between, “I wonder if what I wrote was just MUD?” to “Wow, how refreshing to find that there are other people out there like me! or not like me! Either way, they read my stuff!”

I really value your comments. 😉

To show you how much I appreciate you, my kind readers, I am hosting a giveaway! Having been an avid reader of Elisabeth Elliot’s books for many years, I decided to give away one of my favorite of all her books, a collection of articles titled “Keep a Quiet Heart”. I pick it up when I feel frustrated, irritated, weary, overwhelmed, etc. You get the idea. 🙂 Her writings have given me courage to carry on when I think I am too tired to “do the next thing”. The most beautiful people I know have this quality… a quiet heart. Isn’t that what we all long for in this very unquiet world?

Here is how you qualify for the giveaway: Simply leave a comment with a book recommendation for me. See, there is something in this for me too. 🙂 It can be anything from children’s literature to historical fiction to classics. I will leave the giveaway open until August 1. Hope to hear from you!

The Most Generous Veg of All

Zucchini. I told you that I have a whole post for it. Isn’t it funny that the veggie I dreaded most awfully when I was a child is now one that I crave all year? I used to gag over it, back when my mom cooked it in rounds dredged in flour and fried in butter. In fact, back then I thought the only palatable way to prepare it was in something baked, like cake or bread. Sure, that is a very delicious preparation, but not the best.

My favorite way to eat it is a simple sauté in olive oil with sweet onion, pepper slices and a dash of Nature’s Seasons. I eat that nearly every day for lunch, because you know, with zucchini you have to eat it every day! Even then, I can’t keep up with the generosity of the plants. So here is what I did with one really large squash:

Yup, that is pizza. I got to thinking one day of a way to replace the crust on traditional pizza, since that is really the worst part of the pizza anyway, health wise. I have made quiche with zucchini in the crust, so it was only an experiment away from this dish. In this photo, you can see rounds of yellow summer squash in the corner, which works just as well. My children struggle to eat squash, but they give this a thumbs up, and you can’t get more picky critics than children.

Here is what you do:

4 cups of zucchini or summer squash, shredded or sliced thin, then gently tossed with
2 eggs
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. garlic powder
pinch of black pepper
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1 cup flour (I use low carb options, such as almond meal or flax meal. You just need something to hold it together when you serve it.)

Butter a large oven proof frying pan or a cookie sheet and spread the zucchini mixture onto it. Sometimes I start the cooking process on the stove top to give the crust more of a crust, if you get what I mean, but you can do this totally in the oven. Just use the bottom rack. Bake at 350 for 20 minutes.

Remove from the oven and layer on just a smear of pizza sauce, cheese, pepperoni… whatever makes you happy on pizza. In the photo I used bacon because I happened to have some already fried. You could use Ranch dressing, chicken and cheddar or tomatoes and fresh mozzarella with basil leaves. I kind of go with whatever happens to be floating in the fridge.

Return to the oven for another 10 minutes until the toppings are all hot and melty. Enjoy your ~~zucchini~~ pizza! If you don’t tell the family, they might not even notice. 😉

The Sound of Summer Whooshing By

I want to post everyday, because there is so much stuff going on, and I am barely scraping out one post a week, because there is so much stuff going on. I can’t really think of any cohesive way to make some observations except all hither and yon. So I will just do that, and you can consider yourself warned.

Red raspberries. Let’s start there. It is just so delicious to go out and casually pick a quart or two to go with breakfast, and then another bowlful for garnish on the cottage cheese, and then some more to make a rich, gourmet sauce. All this from those ugly, prickly sticks we stuck into the ground a few years ago.
Kittens. They are at the most adorable stage of fluffy cuddliness. There are still 10 of them, mostly calicoes and a few cloudy grey ones. We call them our Hutterite cats, because there are 3 mothers who share the care of the kittens. As soon as any of the mothers lies down, there is a scramble of furballs crawling over her to nurse. She automatically starts licking and cleaning any that come within reach of her tongue. They have long forgotten who belongs to who. It is all one happy family. Did I mention that they are incredibly cute? You probably need a kitten or two, yes?
Daily showers of rain and very high temperatures. The result of weeks of this is an overgrown garden. I have been trying to pull it back from the brink, and slowly we are making progress. Today I planted 28 broccolis and cauliflowers. Do you know what that means? Fall crop is growing. Already!
Eleven pound cabbages and five pound zucchini. Yes, really. I think all the rain and heat contributed to those whales of veggies. Today my sister in law Ruby and I sliced up two enormous heads of cabbage, salted them down and put them in buckets to ferment into the best sauerkraut. Last year we only fermented ours two weeks, as opposed to the six weeks that some people do. It tasted so fresh, almost crunchy yet. I gave Ruby a pint last year, and after eating up the whole jarful herself, she was hooked. (You should know that where some people guiltily eat a whole pan of brownies by themselves, the Peights tend toward whole jars of pickles or whole bags of sour patch kids.) If you even sort of like sauerkraut just a little bit, you should try the homemade stuff. It is so very easy to make that everyone should try it! If I were a proper blogger, I would have step by step photos and instructions, but there are lots of people out there who will flood to google when you check it out. As for the zucchini, I do have more to say on that tomorrow.
Bathtub rings. They are unspeakable these days. I am just so grateful for water running from the faucet, even though we pay for every gallon. Summer is so amazing… and so grubby.
Trip to my sister’s in Ohio. It had been over three years since we all went to Ohio to visit my sister. I know, it is like the next state over from PA. But when funds are low, we travel not. So we finally cleared up that bit of neglect and took a few days to spend with Rachel’s family. We showed them how fast 5 children can shred through a box of bandaids printed with cartoon characters (which is why the mother of the 5 children buys Curad strips at discount stores, the number of owies being directly related to the allure of the bandaids.) We spread our stuff all through their little house and made racket and dirt and walked to the corner for ice cream and watched the Apple Creek parade and just had a great time.
A grand rearranging of the house in general. We moved the boys into our former guest room now that Gabe no longer needs it to study. Then we restored the room where the boys were sleeping for the last two years back into the den in the basement where the toys and children’s books live. After that the boys’ bunk beds got cleaned up and painted for the girls’ bedroom and the baby got moved in with them in the toddler bed. Guess what the itty bitty nursery will become? My room!!! Not to sleep, silly. To read, to think, to write. I have grand ideas for that room. The bookshelf in our bedroom will migrate over there, and probably the six foot bookshelf in the living room as well. I will have a teeny room, lined with books, a comfortable chair, two sunny windows, and a lock on the door. Hee heee. It isn’t all shuffled around yet, but we are about half way there. I love moving furniture and changing things around. I do it for fun. Gabe humors me, sometimes a little grudgingly, but he does kindly help me move the heavy stuff. We have this joke that every time we need a new piece of furniture I say, “Not oak. It’s too heavy for me to move it by myself.” Sometimes we switch things up for a while, decide it still isn’t quite right, try something else until I finally hit the feel I am aiming for. All this rearranging is a little busy,(vast understatement there) but it makes me happy that we are utilizing the space we have (900 square feet x 2 with the basement) in a more efficient way for right now. Storing the nursing textbooks that didn’t sell also made me happy. The sociology ones? I kept them out to read in my reading room.
Mold. We discovered it growing in our basement rooms, on the doors, on the overstuffed chair, on the leather covers of the books. I went a little mad, washed everything with germicidal bleach, all the walls, the stores of blankets and pillows, etc. Gabe bought a second dehumidifier and fixed the one that was on the fritz, so now it is feeling much drier down there. Again, we had such prodigious amounts of rain, it is no wonder stuff grew. But I detest mold.
School. The boys’ DVD’s came. The books are here, but their desks aren’t ready. Gabe wants to make them stations of sorts, movable but fairly permanent. Not oak, please. I feel a little detached from their school preparation since we decided to give ABeka DVD’s a try this year. It feels pleasant, in a way, but I passionately love learning with them, so I am not sure how this will be for me in the long run. I am sure you will hear more about it in future. 🙂
Zucchini. Oh, but that is for tomorrow.