I Saw

a pile of papers and stuff I need to do at my desk, so I unplugged the laptop and took it somewhere with less urgency.

my husband come quietly into our room, back early from men’s camping because his glasses broke and he needed his contacts so he can make breakfast. I stayed in bed.

a picture of a garden with only white flowers planted in it, and it was beautiful. I looked out the window at my splashy portulaca row and the purple coneflowers and yellow day lilies, and I knew I would never be able to manage a monochrome garden.

a box of glazed mini donuts on the counter that my daughter brought back from the store where she works, and I snagged one to go with my decaf coffee.

two people at Walmart, both quite grown up, hugging dirty, much-loved stuffed animals while they shopped. Then I drove away, and I saw a man walking his dog, who was carrying a big teddy bear in his mouth.

a little green truck that was so cute, I wanted to pet it.

a garter snake sunning itself, in that split-second before I mowed over it, and I did not stop to assess the damage. Then I saw a large pile of dog poo and casually mowed over that too. The next thing I saw was a roll of green garden tape for tying up plants and I couldn’t stop in time, so I mowed that, then I had to extract it from the same spot that had just splattered the poo.

that the locust trees beside our driveway are already scattering yellow leaves, and I gripped a little more tightly to the summer magic.

a fawn kicking up its heels beside the road, “bound and leap, like a zephyr set free,” just like in Milo and Otis.

a large crayfish and a small catfish that my daughter caught with her bare hands.

Addy’s kitten practicing a stalking movement as it hunted in its imagination, and I thought about how I would be moving on if I were one of the chipmunks stealing the chicken food.

the raspberry canes so loaded with fruit that they hang completely onto the ground, breaking down their support wires, and form a tunnel where it is rich picking, but not fun picking.

the first ripe cherry tomatoes, yellow and so sweet they completely obliterate from our memory the ones in plastic boxes. Hallelujah!

hot sunshine wilting the world, and cool rain restoring it in a cycle of breathtaking beauty that is almost heaven, but not yet.

the ground venison that tastes gamey in my freezer. I decided to treat the chickens with a little every day. Just like that, the slumping egg production picked up, because deep in their hearts, chickens are greedy little carnivores who need protein.

an old Subaru Outback beside the shop, waiting for someone to buy it for parts so it can be moved on and continue some sort of useful life now that it no longer performs for grocery hauls and milk runs.

my daughter, who is a small person, driving a Suburban with the seat set all the way up and forward so she can see over the dash.

a small Kia for sale beside the road, whose owner was selling it because she didn’t want to pay to get the brakes fixed, which were terribly bad. It was cheap, and we needed a little car for the daughter who can drive, but who cannot drive a manual transmission and is a bit undersized for running errands in a Suburban.

when my husband put it up on the lift, and it was really bad around the wheels, no grease ever apparently, and so he has been working on it in all his spare time.

my son pack his car to the gills, “off on a new adventure,” he said. And I felt my heart lurch and settle down again as I committed him to God and let him go.

my baby turn thirteen, and we celebrated her with the things she loves: art supplies, books, and a snorkeling mask.

my Greg, who struggled to eat anything except pale carbs when he was a youngster, chopping and mixing up a chimichurri with fresh onions, garlic, and herbs. Without a recipe. I saw it with my own eyes, and then I ate it. It was good.

my parents, who are needing courage to face my dad’s liver cancer diagnosis. I saw the aerating fountain he just bought for the pond, and the planters full of flowers on the deck, and the hummingbird feeders abuzz with activity. I saw how much they are surrounded and supported with loving friends.

my doctor, and then I didn’t see her for four hours as she performed a skilled surgery, and then there I was, done! It was astonishing, really, and I am so grateful to have that over. By faith I see normal life and health again, just around the bend.

a brilliant sunset, purple glow instead of orange, spread over the whole sky.

I saw the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.

Every Spring

There are a few days each spring that are so glittery green that you feel as though the air itself is tinged with color, and you feel that if you blink, it might disappear. It’s the same time that the bleeding hearts and pansies show off their best, all the tiny crinkled leaves are unfolding by the minute like origami in a massive installation, and the birds are totally uninhibited in their courtship songs and rituals. I marvel, hold my breath, try to take in the miracle, and then my eyes can’t stay open anymore. When I wake up, it looks like summer. It is my favorite, favorite thing, what I long for every winter. And it always comes, as promised.

This year was astonishingly early here. No frost for the whole month of May? Yes, please! I know it’s not over yet, but there is no freeze in the forecast and with no full moon for another week, we boldly planted out tomatoes and peppers last week. I have covers and sheets ready for any hint of chill, because I also listen to old-timers, but I cannot quite hold myself back.

Gabriel gave me a wonderful gift in the form of an act of service that took a few days: he edged and placed borders of rocks/logs around my gardens to keep the grass from constantly growing into the planting areas. It all needed to be squared up with the patio and driveway, since my initial method of unrolling old hay bales was pretty much seat-of-the-pants, eye-it-to-look-good. The driveway got changed and fixed last year, so we now have a curb and a solid reference to go by. Every day I look out the windows and rejoice!

Big things have been happening. There is a post and beam pavilion being set up, also designed and built by my husband, who can do pretty much anything he sets his mind to. (Given enough time…let’s be realistic.)

Alex has been here for a few weeks, and he took on the task of edging and mulching all the fruit trees and other landscaping. He also tilled the garden for me, and helped spread horse “by-products” onto it. Half of the garden is planted, and the other half will be quite soon. It has been so wonderful to have him here, available to help when he doesn’t have part-time work.

Normally I revel in these springtime tasks, but this year found me so anemic that I had to sit and rest after digging a hole in the garden. “Looks like the beef liver isn’t cutting it,” said my nurse husband when he saw my labs. He also said,” This is the level where people get transfusions and we should probably just go to the ER and take care of it.” So we did, and it helped a lot, but it will be a while before I get back to normal. I hadn’t realized how much I was compensating for my low hemoglobin until I started feeling better. I hadn’t noticed how much energy was going into staying upright, and how little was actually getting to my brain. Ha. (Very mirthless ha.)

This is too public a forum for details, but I can assure you that I am under good medical care and there is a plan to get to the root of the problem. Should be fun. Sarcasm aside, I am so very grateful for options and help. How often I have thought of the woman who stooped to touch the hem of Jesus’ robe, and that moment when she felt His strength coursing through her! A friend recently told me she thinks that lady touched the bottom of His robe because she was so weak that she was down on the ground. I agree with her. It is a great comfort that He is accessible to those who are completely flattened by life.

I moved all the houseplants onto the back deck this week, so the house feels more open. We don’t need green therapy inside for some months, hallelujah! We have also been clearing out some holes with shamefully large deposits of things that don’t have a home. Springtime is the time to let it go, dig down through the strata in the closets, and assign the stuff a place or a donation box. “The thing is,” Olivia said, “we like stuff,” and she hit the nail on the head with that observation. We like making stuff and having it, thrifting for it and restoring it. I don’t see a problem as long as we share our stuff and don’t let it take over our lives, do you?

We have been to homes where there is no clutter, no rugs to catch dust, nothing slightly imperfect or mismatched or chipped, no real flowers or plants, and the minimalism is impressive indeed. It would be so easy to clean this place, I think. “That’s like an Air B and B,” the kids said, “it’s too sterile.” So in the interest of coziness, we embrace having stuff around and taking care of it. We even embrace dust and strata in closets, up to a point. I have limits, and I am sure you do too. I’d love to hear where you draw the line in your home. Do you keep things that you haven’t used for a year, for example? How do you figure out what to store, in case you need it? What makes something a keepsake?

Every spring there is my birthday and Mother’s Day, which are only a week apart (unfortunately, because I love celebrations and I wish my family weren’t still tired from figuring out one before another one shows up, to be honest). Gabriel surprised me by inviting friends for a cookout on my birthday, and it cheered me right out of a funk of surprising ickiness where I was feeling like my birthday was lame and not fun. I told you that my brain has not been getting enough blood flow, right? Sometimes I remind myself of what my older friend Ellen says, “When you feel down and depressed, you have to know you aren’t thinking right. You have to get your head straight about how good God is, and start thanking Him, and that takes care of it.” It’s very good advice, and she lives it. Maybe by the time I am seventy-five, I will have learned this lesson.

Anyway, Mother’s Day was special in a different way. Gabriel was at work three hours away, and the rest of us woke not feeling great. Addy and I both had swollen eyes and I think I sneezed a hundred times that morning. Olivia and Greg had no voices. Only Rita was fit to go to church, so Greg dropped her off. I was going to listen to the sermon online, but the website was down, so that didn’t work. I sat like a bump in my chair and napped when I wasn’t busy sneezing. Olivia had assembled a lasagna for lunch and was fixing some side dishes to go with it when Greg left to pick Rita up again after church. He told Rita that there isn’t any lunch at home (because obviously, Mom was sitting in her chair and nothing happens that way) and they were hungry, so they went to KFC for chicken nuggets. Meanwhile the girls at home finished the meal and set the table pretty and we waited and waited. At last we called, and they were finishing up their nuggets, oblivious to the awful faux pas of having missed lunch with their mom on Mother’s Day. They felt really bad about it, but I bet it will make the family archives of funny stories.

I have been thinking a lot about parenting, about the long-term proposition it is, about the way we are asked to give up ourselves and give lavishly and never give up, either. So much giving. This spring I found myself fresh out of oomph, feeling like a hoarder. I need to save my strength. I don’t want to be inconvenienced. I don’t feel like sharing. Could you all just leave me alone and not need anything for awhile? What do I think I am saving my strength for in those moments? What is a hoarded power bank going to do for me in ten years if now is the time that my child needs my love and attention? What good will it do me in a lonely world of the future if I have kept myself well-preserved but inaccessible? I know, there are boundaries, but many times “boundaries” are just a way to make me feel good about being selfish. It’s a buzzword in the current therapy speak, and I don’t see it in Jesus’ life anywhere at all. I think of the Kingdom principle in Matthew 10:8, “Freely you have received, freely give.”

That’s plenty for me to chew on today, for sure. I truly believe God does not waste anything we give to Him, but I no longer expect to see short term rewards. Not to say that that wouldn’t be gratifying sometimes, but it seems as if it is more like planting trees. You shovel and fertilize and stake and prune and water and hope. It’s a very long-term situation. And here’s the thing: the end result is all grace. It is all out of our hands anyway. It is His business, what He does with what we give Him.

I remind myself of this again and again, because being human means feeling like I deserve things or don’t deserve things. Sometimes I just need to shut up my feelings and get my head straight about how good God is.

Every spring the miracle happens, just as He promised. I have seen forty-seven of them now, so I know. He is good.

Now that April’s here…

…and almost gone, I thought it might be appropriate to send out a bit of an update. It’s a little silly. I pay for this web domain, and I don’t even use it much anymore. I find myself at a loss as to how to close up this sort of chapter, but I do feel like the world has moved along since I started blogging and I am hopelessly out of touch. I asked a computer nerd recently if he has any advice for monetizing a blog, outside of plastering it with ads, and he said no, he doesn’t know any other way. I am thinking about moving to Sub-stack, but that is all. Thinking is a far cry from doing.

Mondays are my days to catch up with the stuff I pushed off for a week. I had to spend some time to find an actual person to cancel my monthly Chat-books subscription today, since the app literally did not have a button to finalize the cancellation. I know this, because I tried to cancel in the end of March and didn’t follow through with the last step, which is one option only, “A team member will credit your account $10 and give you any assistance. Stay subscribed.” That’s a little shifty, I think. Anyway. I wanted to see what the minis are like, and they are cute, but I hardly take 60 photos in a month, and certainly not all worthy of printing into a booklet. I should have done these while the children were little. My best advice is this: if you try Chat-books, don’t bother with captions. They are very time consuming to put into the app, and the photos are much smaller. You can easily use a fine point Sharpie and write your captions on the white margins after you get the booklet.

I had to handle 20 mugs that have been waiting over the weekend, and then I mowed the yard until I got a flat tire. I know how to run an air compressor, but taking out a tube and fixing a leak… not so much. The grass got out of hand with the recent rain, so Olivia finished with the push mower. The girls ate leftovers from the weekend, and I did a bunch of messaging that I have been neglecting. I have caught up with my clerical duties, even posting receipts in the budget. Hallelujah!

So here I am, thinking about April and that Gabe will get back from work tomorrow, after five days, and then we will feast and be merry because he will be home for a week.

I kept feeling an urge to pinch myself while I was mowing. “We made it,” I thought, “all the way through winter. I am actually smelling cut grass and feeling hot sunshine on my face and my feet and my arms where I rolled up my sleeves. We are pale as potato sprouts, but we made it!” Speaking of potato sprouts, we planted our wrinkly leftover potatoes last week. There was a bit of smugness in the air, because for the first time ever I grew a potato crop that lasted longer than the winter. I also planted pea seeds that I saved, and lettuces. I have a lot to learn yet in the seed saving department, but it is a start.

The ornamental trees we planted two years ago are blooming, and so are the tiny fruit trees we set out last spring. (It’s a thing Peights do: plant trees. We planted over 50 at our first property over the course of 18 years. We’re at 25 here, in 4 years, but we also cut down about 10 or 12 trees, so it’s all going to even out.)

I drove past our former orchard a few weeks ago, and was astonished at how big the trees were, how prolific the blooms. The year we moved (2020) was the first that there were going to be apples. So someone else gets to harvest what we planted. That’s the thing about planting a tree. It is very possible that you are planting for others, and that is a compelling reason to plant them, I think.

Who does more tree planting for the next generation than parents? Metaphorically speaking, I have entire food forests that have been planted for me, and I am so grateful.

Last weekend my parents came up and we got to celebrate my dad’s 71st birthday on Sunday. Rachel’s family sneaked in while he was napping that afternoon and surprised him mid-snore. Good times!

The girls are finishing up their last school projects. Rita is earnestly wishing she had not chosen Ghengis Khan and the Mongol Empire for her history report, but here we are, too deep into the research to about-face now. “It’s character building to push through hard things,” I say. She wants character, so what can she say? Addy did final exams today, and we are so close to packing away the textbooks and just rounding out the portfolios with projects. I don’t recall ever getting done in April, but they did not take many holidays, and now it feels really great!

Sometimes I wake at night and can’t fall back asleep. Anybody else have that happen to them? Weird, isn’t it? It seems such an unnecessary problem to have. I keep earbuds on my nightstand, and I set my audiobook timer to 30 minutes. I usually fall asleep before the time is up, unless it is a very riveting listen. Then the next time, I go back about ten minutes and find the spot where I lost consciousness. It’s a two steps forward, one step back situation, but it works. Currently I am listening to Surprised by Joy, (It happens to be an Audible free listen if you have prime membership. You’re welcome.) and have gotten to the teen years of my friend Clive Staples, the era where he lost his faith. I store in my heart these testaments to the grace of God pursuing and wooing his children, and I know that He is still the same God today, full of love and kindness; full of pity, like a father, ready to help every one of us.

Occasionally listening to the audiobook doesn’t appeal to me. I have another prop. I lie in bed and put on the whole armor of God, from the helmet to the shoes, piece by piece. By the time I get to the end, I find that there isn’t much of a crack for the intrusive thoughts of the enemy to get inside my mind.

If the armor feels cumbersome at 3 AM, which is prime time for worst-case-scenarios, have you noticed?.. I visualize the secret place of the Most High, and I creep in and lay my head down in that quiet safety. Jesus never did get to be middle-aged, but I am sure He understands sleeplessness and 3 o’clock in the morning messes that we cannot carry anyway. So He offers rest. Sleep is wonderful, but rest is amazing.

And yes, there is melatonin, but it is faulty. So is chamomile tea, because while it may lull you to sleep at bedtime, it will urgently awaken you a few hours later. It is kind of funny, the more you think about it. As with so many other minor ailments in life, humor just might be the best medicine.

I’ll close with a smattering of photos of the trees and the double tulips that have given me joy this week. Blessings and a happy spring to you!

Pinky Purple Days

I sat outside on the deck until the last light faded out of the bits of sky I could see through the towering hickory trees to the west. It was the longest day of the year; there should have been some sort of solemn ceremony as it passed. But the mosquitoes were biting me in the evening chill. I did the prosaic thing and came inside. It is difficult to realize that we are already heading toward the tedium of winter darkness: ugh.

Right now we are in the blessed noonday and it is glorious. This is what we waited for all through the dreary months. The garden is silvery, pink, and purple, with one scarlet Oriental poppy lifting its showy head. The sort of flowers I like to plant are cottage garden flowers, kind of shy and old fashioned, but I cannot resist a poppy, even though it is a bit of a braggart. My neighbor gave me red hot poker roots and I dutifully planted them. They looked so out of their element in my purple coneflower and Russian sage border that I took a dislike to them and tossed them to the chickens.

We are deep into the spindly, ethereal florals, some with scents so cloying you cannot really bring them inside. The bees are not wasting a minute of it, and its a good thing too, because it’s only a matter of days until the Japanese beetles crawl out of the ground to ravage the sweetest blossoms. Rita brought in my favorite sort of bouquet today, and I love how it looks with that white valerian in it, but it is so powerfully scented I will have to banish those.

Our hummingbird feeder broke in storage over the winter, so we decided to plant hummingbird feeders instead. We looked for trumpet-shaped flowers and I have seen hummingbirds at every one of these. It’s the best reason for planting the ubiquitous petunia. I don’t even know what some of these blooms are. They just sort of slid into my wagon at the greenhouse and I didn’t argue with them.

Today I noticed that the first baby yellow tomato was ripe, and I ate it without even showing it to anybody else. I paid a foolish fifteen dollars for a large plant that was blooming already back in the chill of spring because I do weird things like that when I am fed up with cold weather. It would be premature to say that it was worth the money, but if it continues to produce such sweet orbs of tomato-ness, the summer is looking promising.

Last year I bought strawberry plants at the local hardware store and I wish I could remember what they were called so that I could warn you not to bother with them. After all the watering, weeding, mulching, fertilizing the plants, covering them when it frosted, I am picking the weirdest, smooshiest berries I have ever grown. (There aren’t many, because of the late freeze I didn’t see coming.) A day in the fridge leaves them looking so tired and wilted I am not even tempted to eat them. The best way is to stand in the garden and eat them immediately. “If you don’t expect them to be strawberries, they are good,” Rita concluded. I do not quite know how to do that. Shut my eyes? Hold my nose? Because they are perfect, red, seedy, and smell right. It’s a texture thing. This week I showed Little Bee and her brother where the strawberries are and they obliged me by eating them all that day, foraging up and down the row and experiencing no difficulty with unmet expectations.

Speaking of expectations, there is a small fruit stand a few miles west of us, run by an Amish family. On Saturdays they sell donuts and I have seen the sign often, but never happened to pass on a Saturday until last week. I took a look at the donuts and promptly bought a half dozen. They were enormous, glistening things, with hardened glaze drips at the edges, and I could hardly wait to give everybody one when I got home. My first bite revealed a sorry truth: they were obviously fried in rancid lard. I took another bite and weighed the question, “Are these worth the calories?” But surely, so I took another bite. I got some milk, and I ate the donut. Almost it was not worth the disappointment that was every bite, but I had paid for an experience that I was reluctant to give up. In retrospect, I paid for a lesson but it isn’t clear what it is. Maybe it will come to me the next time I am picking the strawberries I don’t like.

This spring I needed a strong new stick teepee for my cucumbers. Gabriel and I started with bigger saplings and screwed them together instead of tying them with twine. It took longer this way, but I hope it holds up. He also made a beautiful new arbor for the hardy kiwi vine after I had started it on my own when he was working. My arbor panels were pitifully lacking in structural integrity. When I asked for help to assemble the lot, he was kind enough to lay aside his work in the shop and spent hours finding some stronger supports. We cut down most of the sycamore saplings down by the creek for this project, and I pulled wild grapevines out of the woods for the finishing touches. I am really liking the homegrown look of these supports.

It’s early days in the garden, but things are flourishing and by the time the dahlias do their thing, it will be full to bursting. Every day I walk around and marvel at what is happening, how the leaves unfurl and buds form, some puffy like marshmallows and some spiky like chestnuts, but all brilliant.

When I was a child I had a startling thought one day, “If God had made everything brown, would we even know it wasn’t pretty?” I can’t say for sure when my lifelong yearning for color started, but I was too little to even know what it was. ( I just knew that I hated my grey double-knit dress that made me feel ugly.)

God walked in the garden too, you know. It’s a great time to lay down my smallness and offer to join my work to His great work. I’ll just keep planting the pink and purple things in my bit of earth.

Perambulation

I started the day with the book of Daniel and a cup of Dandy Blend, trying to convince myself that it’s as good as coffee. My self could tell that I was spinning it a yarn.

Gabriel went out the door with his lunch and the real coffee I fixed lovingly for him, with collagen and raw sugar and cream, about the time that my babysittee came for the day. (I will call her Bee here.) She sat on my lap and chattered while I drank my pretend coffee. It’s our ritual so that she doesn’t insist on “making something” or playing hide and seek or some other fascinating pursuit that requires too much energy first thing in the morning.

Today Bee had a sketchbook full of line upon line of serious squiggles with occasional wild bursts of scrawls that represented sunshine and a ballerina skirt. You have to admire the confidence of the young in their creative outlets. They don’t apologize for what they make. In fact, they give their sketches away with all the poise of those who know they have made something from their hearts, and why wouldn’t the world be happy with it? Why indeed?

I am not doing so well with the daily writing habit that I aspire to, but I am slowly working through The Story of my Life journal that I bought at Walmart. If you like writing even a little, it is worth your money for the fantastic prompts. Today’s writing prompt: “Describe your parents’ parenting style. Tell a story that shows how much (or how little) freedom you had.”

My mind went back to last week when we four siblings surprised my dad for his 70th birthday. We truly did surprise him, and what fun that was! We all went without any kids or spouses so it was just the immediate family group when we went on a drive in the van to look at our old haunts. Out of the floods of childhood memories, this story surfaced from when we moved to a summer cottage turned house beside a good-sized creek. The boxes weren’t even all unpacked before we children were wading, fishing, swimming in the frigid water. I do not remember any parental shepherding, but probably there were some ground rules given. We crossed to the island in the center of the creek by leaning into the current of the rapids and feeling for sure footing with bare feet on the algae covered rocks. Just upstream there was an eight foot deep pool where the water ran still and mysterious. That’s where we taught ourselves to swim, first by paddling about on anything that floated and held us up. Eventually we started to wade out to chest depth, then turned around and swam to shore. As we got more confident, we went out deeper until we were all decent swimmers, and thank the Lord, nobody drowned. Somehow my parents gave us the freedom and confidence to try new things without hovering too much. I do remember a lot of admonishing and rules that were intended to keep us safe, but not a lot of on-site coaching. (Granted, this was the era when nobody bothered with seat belts, car seats, bike helmets, or safety nets on trampolines.)

After our morning rituals of just sitting, writing, etc., Little Bee and I checked on the chickens and watched the flock tiptoe around a very easily ruffled mother hen and her excitable offspring. This hen is an example of 100% concentrated devotion to motherhood. She spends her entire day keeping track of her babies, scratching up choice morsels for them, showing them how to tip their heads back to trickle water down their throats, and calling them to herself to sit under her wings for a warm-up when it’s chilly. We are enchanted.

When it was time to go inside, Bee evidenced some hanger. She is always cheered when I let her make her own scrambled eggs with the little pink spatula that’s just her size. Every. single. day. she wants applesauce to eat too. If I were asked what the most common food of my childhood was, I would have to say applesauce. Little me got tired of it. Little Bee thinks it is the best treat ever. When it was time for a nap, she wasn’t one bit sleepy and her feet stomped to emphasize it. I have noticed that a small child will fall asleep much quicker if you tell them they do not have to sleep if they can’t. How about having some quiet time, just lie down on the bed and read some books? I wasn’t even through the second story before there was a gentle whiffling snore beside me. I drifted off myself. Maybe it was Just the Thing for Geraldine that did it.

I woke up an hour later, with exactly 20 minutes before Olivia’s dental cleaning appointment, and it was going to take us 15 minutes to get there. I left the sleeping tot with Rita and we skedaddled faster than we have in a long time We made it with one minute to spare. It was a relief to sit in the lobby and just read my new book about soil. Except for one granny with a magazine, every other soul there was on their phone. The granny and I virtue-signaled like everything, but it didn’t make a difference.

Since Olivia got braces, her sisters complain about how she holds up the bathroom, cleaning her teeth all the time. Apparently it is paying off. Her hygienist said she has never seen cleaner braces and Olivia feels rewarded for her virtue.

On our way home, we stopped for groceries. I estimated that the cart, half full, would probably be 150 bucks, but I was ten dollars too high. Should I feel smug at my estimating abilities, or dismayed that I am getting used to the inflation of the times? (I no longer need to buy grocery store flowers to cheer my household, so that may be where the savings are.)

It is a delight that never palls for me: walking outside, just casually picking some blooms for the table. Today it was grape hyacinths and on the mantle we have branches with wrinkly crimson leaves that are opening fast in the warm house.

Tonight Addy was hungry for escalloped potatoes like we had in Florida. I found my favorite recipe with “top milk” as an ingredient, presumably the creamy milk at the top of the jar before the cream is skimmed off. I showed her how to slice the potatoes thinly on the mandolin, then I practiced the same sort of parenting style I grew up with and went outside to mow lawn (after I warned her sufficiently to use the guard if she still wants all her fingertips). When I came back inside, she was ready for the seasonings and cheese and cream.

When Addy and I cook, unforeseen things tend to happen. We are both”schusslich”, only I have learned many lessons over time to avoid epic cleanups. This evening she accidentally pushed my binder of recipes onto the floor. It was so stuffed that it popped open and the pages fanned out over the kitchen floor. She was chagrined, but I saw an opportunity to do something I should have done long ago. The old binder is getting a thorough edit. There are recipes in it that I clipped out of magazines twenty years ago and only made once. I am culling them down to the favorites and the ones handed down from loved ones. It will take a while.

The potatoes were ridiculously good, by the way.

Thanks for joining me on my meander through the day. We didn’t go far, but we covered a lot of ground.

Ten Down, Two to Go

Not that I’ve been wishing for the year to hurry… October was a magical month. We felt the usual harvest urgency, without the high stakes that attended harvest time for centuries past. It doesn’t seem fair that we can grow things just for fun, and if we have a crop failure we won’t starve.

We have tucked in the garden with a heavy blanket of chopped leaves from our lawn and pine straw from our neighbor’s trees. My strategy was to blow or mow as much as we could into piles, then run over the piles with the small mower and a bagger attachment. A few teens in this household thought that was a weird and unnecessary way to clean up leaves, but I persisted. That is, I persisted in asking them to do it my way because the leaves break down better if they are chopped, especially our tough oak and hickory leaves.

We obliterated all the corn stalks and sunflower trunks through our BCS chipper attachment, a task that required two persons because a lot of the organic matter was soft from rain. I loaded them into the hopper and Gabriel tamped down the dead plants with a sturdy tree branch, and cleared the chopper blades when they became clogged. Once everything was chopped up, we spread it out to compost right on top of the soil.

The only plants left are the fall crop broccoli and cabbage, the slowly fattening Brussels sprouts, and a brilliant row of kale. It would be noble to be like a brassica, bowing under the hard frosts of life, but standing cheerfully upright again repeatedly until you die. Unfortunately this is just not a homily that inspires me. I do not want to be likened to broccoli, much as I admire it.

While we were cleaning up the outdoors, the field mice were claiming the indoors. I knew we had a problem, but I didn’t know how bad it was until I offered Rita a dollar for every mouse she catches. She is at 9 currently, and the last three were all caught on the same raisin. This little venture is turning out to be quite profitable for her, what with such a low overhead on bait for her traps. I do not begrudge her one penny of those dollars though.

I had a big pile of wood chips dropped off here by the power line workers this summer. We set up the chicken fence around it and let the girls out of their chicken tractor once they were about half grown. Immediately they did their henny-penny things, completely leveling the pile in their constant scratching quest for bugs. For a foolish minute I thought that I would let them free range once the garden was dead. How far could they go? It took them less than 10 minutes to be all the way at the house, digging great holes in the flower beds as they sampled all the dust bath options on the property. Okay then, that’ll be a no, chickens.

We are at last getting plenty of eggs from our flock. It seemed to take forever for them to start laying, but now I feel smug every time I walk past the egg section in the grocery store and see the prices. We have added a thin layer of food independence to our lives.

(If you are curious about the way to homesteader land, chickens are the foot in the door. Owning a small flock makes you a fledgling homesteader just like that. )

There is only one Ameraucana in our small flock of buffs and reds, a silly hen the girls named Susie. She navigates life with the idea that she is special, slipping out of any crack in the fence, roosting in weird places like the entitled lady she is, getting extremely ticked off if you open the nesting box lid when she is sitting in it, and not so much cackling as bellowing her triumph of the day: another blue egg. She could be more humble about her accomplishments, seeing as she only lays about three eggs a week. We forgive her arrogance because we are fascinated with the processes of a bird who eats worms and corn and somehow produces blue pigment that permeates her egg shell.

We are on track for homemade pasta, custards that are yellow instead of beige, and eggnog with that special flair because it didn’t have to travel far to the blender. I even bought whole nutmegs to celebrate this goodness, only to run into the small problem of not owning a nutmeg grinder. I ordered one because we don’t care for knuckle skin in our nutmeg.

I have done my annual sort-fest through the winter gear, giving away things that are too small and donating the snow pants with Steelers logos. Now I know exactly what we have and what we need. I like to do this to Be Prepared. While I was sorting, Addy persistently flitted around, reminding me that her ice skates are too small or broken or something, and it was seventy degrees outside and there was such a ridiculous amount of gear all mixed together. I felt the old panic start to rise: the premonition that I will be swallowed alive by winter, inundated by mittens and hats, my withered skeleton emerging from a mound of boots and puffer coats when spring comes again. And then I laughed because I remembered two things. My children can take care of their own clothes now, and also it is impossible to wither with a mug of something hot in hand. I’ll make it.

Last week we planted tulip bulbs and a large bed of garlic, sticking them in to wait quietly for the right time to show up. I feel myself turning into a tiresome philosopher when I draw parallels from my garden, so I will trust your intelligence to figure out what that could mean.

Addy just asked me a rhetorical question, “Why do we never have dessert?” I serenely ignored her lack of logic and told her that she can make dessert if she wants some. That’s why there is the aroma of cookies baking right now. That is my baby, and here I am sitting on a chair, writing about an October just past.

To welcome in a new month yesterday, we had our Tuesday Tea at a coffee shop where they sell Boba tea. The girls all fell for that, naturally, and I had a chai latte. Here’s to November!

Change Is In the Air

We are still alive here. I experienced the very first sickness of the winter last week when I contracted a miserable head cold that drained me for 3 days. (Get it? Sorry, I know that is obnoxious.) I found myself dragging along in a haze of Vicks, carrying a tissue box, so far behind with normal life that writing seemed downright frivolous. In fact, I entertained discouraged thoughts of shutting down the blog entirely. Then I started to feel better and got over it.

I have noticed some milestones recently in my children’s lives. My absent minded son was on kitchen duty the week I was dragging. “Mama, what in the world are all these pills doing on the counter? You would think they have no home!” Not only did he quote my words back to me, but before that he had actually noticed some stuff that needed to be put away. I am sure I cannot really describe to you what a marvel that is to me. Until very recently, this child saw no reason why anything should have a spot. His practical idea of locating missing stuff was always traveling with a mother. I must have explained to him twenty-eleven times why he should always put his treasures away in his drawer, his boots on the rug, and his bike in the shed. So even though I felt like snot, I got a little burst of encouragement from that conversation. I think there may come a day when he might actually become neat and organized. I see some small signs and how they do cheer me!

I saw some buzz on the web for using a system of mom-bucks to reward a child’s responsible behavior and decided to give it a trial shot. Obviously, penalties involve paying back some bucks to mom. Thus fixing the bed earns a buck, but leaving the pjs on the floor costs a buck. It is impossible to redeem privileges from the mom-store if all your bucks were frittered away in penalties because you neglected to put your folded piles of laundry into the proper drawers or you quarreled with a sibling. I picked some specific behaviors to reward and zeroed in on some especially entrenched habits. There is no way I can keep up with anything complicated, but I think I can cautiously say it is helping my boys to be more heedful.

Gregory seems to have hit his stride with baking. Just a year ago I groaned (privately) when he asked to cook something. He does so dearly love to mess in the kitchen, going into a really happy place, humming, measuring with flourish, the dry ingredients puffing this way and that, the eggs unpredictably doing their oblong rolls off the counter, the whisks and scrapers all saved for licking with gusto when his project is safely baking. At first I had to watch every step of the way or he would use a tablespoon of salt instead of a teaspoon, or forget to grease his pans or use a little more sugar than the recipe called for “to make it better”. I will be honest, it was a trial. The cleanup was dreadful. We blundered along like that for a very long time until he graduated to me just carefully explaining a recipe to him, then forcing myself to let him alone, only coaching him as he came up with questions. Last month for the first time ever he made cookies all on his own steam. Even scooping out the dough. Even putting the baking sheets into the oven. Even cleanup. Whew! Then he did it again and again. We had snickerdoodles one week, chocolate chip cookies the next, and brownies the next. I can see that this could pose a problem, so we will need to work on spaghetti or omelets or chicken soup for a while. 🙂

Olivia is losing teeth with alarming rapidity this spring and now she talkth with a charming little lithp. And she can read. Just like that, she finally got over the hump of great effort in sounding out to reading for fun. I just sat and got all sentimental while she read Ten Rubber Ducks to her little sisters. Forgive me for the little rave, but it thrills me every time it happens for the first time. And every homeschool mom said Amen.

I won’t go down the whole row of children and their changes, but I should tell you that I started about 120 little plants in peat pots: tomatoes, peppers, cabbage, broccoli, etc. There they are, all plucky and greenish, straining to the sunshine. I keep them on the warm floor of the kitchen, where they may not always be safe from stomping feet, but on the sunshiny days I set them out on the deck. Today I thinned out the extras and I ate them. It was such a lovely, wheatgrassy thing to do.

I also freed the bulbs and perennials from the winter’s accumulation of blown leaves and junk, so that now they can reach for the sky. It always reminds me of Mary Lennox in The Secret Garden, setting the little plants at liberty to flourish. Strange as it may seem, I like weeding, especially my flower beds. I find it about ten times more fun than wiping the dirty handprints off the walls in the hallway. Mmmhmmm, that explains a few things.

Change. It is good. It is delightful to feel the cocoon of winter slipping into a memory. I sneeze an average of 17 times a day, so pollen is also in the air. Oh, how I do love this time of the year!

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.”

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.”