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.”