Hot melon and future potatoes

Hello dear friends and family! Late start tonight, 11:32, oooh la la. We just finished up a really good movie, The Interpreter, to which I said beforehand, “I’ll only watch an hour tonight, I need to write my journal.” The intensity and a little coffee convinced me that I could pull a late-nighter. The crickets are chirping outside my window, my fan is louder though. I think the frogs must have gone to sleep, the mosquitoes are still at work and the possums who sometimes stamp around on the roof have not yet come to visit.

The teepee garden is rapidly evolving with its new native shrubs and the beginnings of our shed/shelter. Matt for lack of much bank work had time to work a lot on the land. He has sunk 8 posts in cement and put up all of the front and back cross beams for the shed. The shed is right up against the chicken forest and looks out onto the teepee and onto the pond, what a view, complete with a nice breeze. Remaining work includes cross beams in the middle, a roof, some shade cloth at the back and a dividing wall between the lounging space (for hammocks and chairs) and the garden shed. He mowed a few lawns and learned about fixing (and giving up on) broken lawn mowers. He fixed a broken water pipe (pierced by Keith’s  pitchfork while creating the new potato garden), and dug a new trench for the pipe to suit the new garden layout and its water needs. Would you believe he still had time to play, make music, help with the potato garden, keep up on world events, eat, sleep and pay close attention to cricket and the Australian Open (tennis)? Well, yeah, he did.

From the “house garden,” we ate our first rock melon this week. What an exciting sight to see, a melon ripe enough to fall off the vine onto the ground. Jacinta reveled in the tiny melon as did I, but it wasn’t sweet. Perhaps it shouldn’t have climbed up the fence rather than along the ground, then it mightn’t have fallen off. But we all had a taste of the little melon and enjoyed the sharing and the beauty of a hot melon right off of the vine. I planted some lettuce, spinach, and a few beets. After months of adding fruit tree after fruit tree to the orchard, I have finally put in a few native bushes which are essential in preventing the birds from eating every last fruit on the trees. A few of my corn seeds have sprouted but we sure miss the short lived love affair with our own corn. The beans keep on coming, and Jacinta hasn’t grown tired of picking them or eating them raw. We prefer the purple ones, sadly though, if you cook them, they turn green. The sunflowers are producing seed now and the birds are feasting.

En fin (finally)! The terracing has begun in the future potato patch and boy is it a lot of work. Like I said before, none of this could happen with Matt or Keith, but now my friend Michelle has gotten involved. Keith, Michelle, Matt, Jess, Rory and I had a great work day on dreary Wednesday and dug in to the slope of the dam. After clearing out the top terrace garden, 12 old cement wash tubs were lined up and dug into the rich soil creating a retaining wall to prevent rain from washing away the whole garden. In front of the tubs is about 2 feet of garden to be planted.  Then 3 fallen trees were dragged up the hill and stacked upon each other to hold up the first “step.” We cleared the next terrace and by then, the water line had been pierced, Matt had bolted in his first cross beams on the shed, the kids were muddier than you can imagine and one was sleeping, we were all sore and proud and the day was done. The wash tubs are still empty but the water line has been repaired. I can’t wait to plant all of my new herbs (a wagon full of pots recently given to me by my friend Melina) in the wash tubs, and certainly to plant some spuds.

I’m feeling well at home now. We have some pictures up on the walls, I have my apple plates back in use, my mom, dad and sister have all figured out how and when to call Australia, and we even have our own closet in the bathroom, newly built by Matt. These seem like strange things to make you feel at home but it’s the truth. We have precious things of the past in our reach and precious people from our home in the USA who seem closer through pictures and telephones. The search for work is no fun for Matt, but who likes to lay themselves out for approval and just wait. It’s just a grueling task that will hopefully end in something rewarding. We have found a few lovely friends and love and get to know our family here more and more each day. We often just drop our jaws at the beauty surrounding us and stand in shock that this is our home. Last week we found ourselves on Sunday morning swimming in the surf, eating watermelon, laughing and playing in the rock pools above the beach with our friends the Murphys, how’s that for church?  We sometimes get overwhelmed by the tasks ahead of us in building onto this house. For now, we are and creating beautiful gardens and building a shed for our hammocks so that we can lie near the water and enjoy the breeze.

Jacinta, well, I don’t know how much “lying around” in hammocks is going to work for her. I can see it now…”Mommy! Mommy! Water?!!! Water?!!” She always associates the teepee garden with water play, watering the garden and herself. “Jess, don’t you want to swing in the hammock?”  We’ll swing for a minute and she’ll say, “Plum! Plum!” Plums are her new favorite fruit and the answer to all problems. So we’ll trudge up the hill and she’ll eat her plum and say, “cookie? Cookie?” I try to make “healthy” cookies full of molasses and nuts and fruit and she’ll eat as many as I will allow. As soon as she enters the house, she goes straight to the cupboard and looks for them while I search for better options. Matt, on the other hand, would not touch these cookies with a ten foot pole. He still kids me that I would make cookies with lentil flour if I could find it.

Jess’ vocabulary is just exploding. She says, “piece” and “some” when she wants a bit of something that you have or when she wants to share some with you. She says, “Mommy? Hand?” and takes my hand while trying to fall asleep. She then says,”foot,” and puts my hand on her foot while she goes to sleep. She’ll ask you if you’re “coming?” when she is about to go somewhere and wants your company (often this is the dog). She has finally stopped calling diapers “peepee,” and calls them by their proper Aussie name, “nappies.” She says “daddy” very clearly now and no longer mixes up daddy and doggy. Today she got to help Matt place washers on the big bolts for the shed, what an honor, really. She listens very well to conversations and will act on something you say when you think she was not listening. She loves playing with her musical instruments but this week was injured by a tambourine! Lesson: don’t let babies use tambourines as hula hoops. She still won’t drink milk intentionally but loves her yogurt and will consume “hidden” milk. One of her favorite words is Rory, her 3 year old friend. She chants his name whenever she has a spare non-active moment. It’s strange though, every pair of pants I put on her, she points at them and says, “Rory!” She then points at the window where his mom parks her car. I sometimes bother saying, “No, these are not Rory’s pants, Iris gave them to you! Or Ulysses gave them to you,” but she doesn’t get it. Pants make her think of Rory for some reason. When Rory finally visits, they don’t seem too fussed with each other, it’s all in the lead up. Rory really likes Jacinta’s toys and just wants to stay inside and play with them, it’s hilarious.

So life is good, and as Jacinta is learning new words every day, we learn more about life in Macksville and life in general. We miss you all, miss life in the Mid-West but love hearing about it from you all. Good night.