Sore backs and fingers

Good evening loved ones! I wouldn’t typically choose such a whiny title, but for the pain in the tips of my fingers tapping on the keyboard. Today was a good day filled with a bit of labor, more for Matt than I. After a week of driving 45 minutes each way to work about 5 hours at the bank, Matt awoke today inspired to sweat. After some coffee and a newspaper he began stuffing all of the barna grass and random sticks that had been collected earlier in the week. The mulcher is louder than your average airplane and demands a huge helmet with a glass cover for your eyes, and ear plugs if you think ahead. He began this work in light rain, and eventually stopped when the rain became too bothersome. He then went down into the teepee garden/orchard to begin tearing apart old pallets to be used as lumber to build us a new shed in the orchard. This is true recycling and hard work. He has to bang apart each piece of wood and then later grind down each and every nail that held it all together.

A few nights ago we dug big holes and planted 8 trees in the orchard. This meant that there were now 8 more wonderful trees to be mulched to add to the 9 other
un-mulched trees. We have “only” 19 fruit/nut trees, and after all of that talk about my grandiose mulcher, only 2 had been properly mulched. In my old suburban garden mulching meant going to the store and buying a bag of mulch, carrying it a few yards to the garden and spreading it on. Here on our big hilly lot mulching means walking up and down hills, most likely with Jacinta either doddling along, running dangerously fast down the hill or whining to be carried, collecting big piles of sticks by cleaning up dead overgrowth, and then dragging them up or down the hill to the mulcher. Then they must be run through the mulcher by someone, usually Matt because it is too dangerous for Jess to be near. Then the mulch sits in a heap until I get around to scooping it, load by load into the wheelbarrow, and pushing it down the hill (this is a lucky thing) and then finally spreading it around the tree, ahhhh.

The only problem (whines the Mid-Western flatlander) is the hills! Oh, they are gorgeous to look at, but maneuvering a wheelbarrow filled with heavy dirt or mulch on a hill is tricky. I’ve lost about 4 loads now to the hill, and after shoveling it all in there once, I don’t usually want to do the same load again after it has landed on my toe. So whine whine whine, I’ll just let it all out. I cut up my hands on chicken wire constructing the new chicken mansion. I sliced off a small piece of my pinky staking tomatoes. I grated a bit of my thumb thanks to parmesan making pesto. Jacinta has learned the word “carry,” and now tell me every time she wants to be carried. She had her first fever yesterday, and really needed to be carried. Right now my right hand fingers all tingle from hand shoveling the splintery mulch for the trees.

Here’s the light at the end of the tunnel: We have 19 trees that will fruit for us someday and all because they are all mulched!??? Jacinta’s fever passed in less than 24 hours thanks to lots of carrying, fluids, rest, ginger, garlic, peppermint, love, chamomile, and baths. We are finally building something that we can call our own, a garden shed to store tools, seeds and machines, but also a haven where we can hang our hammock and put a few chairs, relax while watching the sunflowers and the fruit trees grow. The tomatoes are staked and will give us fruit soon. Matt’s earning money, emotionless or not. I have gotten through all of our boxes and the hallway is no longer filled with our stuff. The pesto was good and it was made with macadamia nuts. We shared the pesto with friends and enjoyed the time together. I finally found all of the ingredients that I used to make granola with and made my first batch of granola. We now have a chicken mansion which is big enough for all of us to enter and play with the chicks. Even better, the chicks and especially Major, the mum, are all happy. The cool thing about this shed is that everyone helped, our friends Jenny and Ted who were here on holiday, Matt, Keith, Mary, Jacinta and I. Perhaps this will keep the snake out??? Jacinta, whether she is doddling, scaring us, or whining, makes us smile and give thanks for life.

The holidays were wonderful, perhaps my favorite part was the few “jam sessions” shared amongst friends and family. One night this week we had 3 guitars going, a few drums, some rhythm sticks that Keith had carved, and of course a few voices. Jacinta likes to drum along with me on her new drum that Grandma Whittinghill sent her for Christmas. That night she saw the biggest tree frog of her life, perhaps mine too. The holidays are over now and life is back to normal. It’s quiet here. We only see friends once in a while and are enjoying the sound of the crickets. It has rained for the last 3 days, and for this we rejoice. I must admit that after the tank filled up again and made us feel better about doing laundry and taking showers, I was ready for some sun. And it returned this afternoon, just as Matt and I were digging into our work and Jess was napping. We don’t often get to work together and alone, so today was really nice. Hard labor and sweat are so rewarding when you’re working for something you really want. Mary listened for Jess and …my gosh,here the rain is again!

All of this rain obviously makes the plants very happy, especially since it is not accompanied by hail or wind. There are now baby watermelons, pumpkins and canteloupes on the vines. All of the sunflowers are in bloom and in fact, if any of you have a bird book, look up King Parrots. These are gorgeous red, green and yellow birds which have come to our land for my sunflower petals. This makes me so happy, to be able to bring even more native bird life to our surroundings. There are plenty of beans to eat, but no zucchini. They have “mysteriously” stopped producing. Jess has gotten a few strawberries after the birds munched the bottom half of the berry and still loves cherry tomatoes. I can’t bring myself to eat much of the arugula, but the basil, that’s easy. The corn is still almost ready, perhaps I won’t know when it is ready. They say when the silk is brown, but I looked in one brown silked ear and it wasn’t ready. Time will tell.

Jess wakes up jumping in her crib some days with a smile, exuberant to join the new day. She always has a lot to say. Lately I’ve been hearing complete sentences of Jess language ending with the one word I understand, “Mommy.” I wonder what she’s saying about me. New words this week are spa, kiwi, mango, butter (she’d love to eat this rather than cheese), paper, Jedda (the dog), bone, frog, tree, flower, shower, pants, skirt, shirt, pretty, sorry, and boots. She has this bright red pair of mud boots that she has been dying to wear since we arrived. They are too big, but I took them out for her friend Rory the other day. They did not fit Rory but Jacinta saw them and had to have them on her feet. The first outing to the chook pen in these boots was a mess. She needed coaching on how slow to walk to keep them on. She likes to be carried and every time I picked her up, her boots fell off and we had to put them on again. Now she wears wool socks underneath and they stay on better. The last new word that I can recall at 11pm this evening brings me to this story with which I will close.

Yesterday Jacinta awoke from her nap at about noon and was very hot. After a meal, we came back into the bedroom where I was finishing up unpacking. Jacinta lied down and cuddle the packing foam and watched me, sleepily rolling around from time to time, or coming over to cuddle me. We laid down and read books in bed, and eventually she took another nap. When she awoke, she lied down on the bean bag and watched me knit, no smiles, no giggles, no words! She watched me start chopping veggies for dinner and then wanted up. I put her in the carrier and she stayed on my back for over an hour, awake but dopey. Later she let Mary read her a book and daddy try to make her laugh. She then got back up in the carrier and watched me cook a teryaki stir fry and ate a bunch of raw marinated tofu. She cheered up after dinner, played a little bit, had a bath and then dozed off to bed, watching me knit, trying to help by grabbing onto the ends of the needles. She woke up in perfect health this morning, ate some granola, fed the chickens in her red boots, mulched a few trees with me, got fussy and came up the hill for a snack. After her snack she started whining some word at me, I had no idea. I let her lead me where she needed to as she continued to call out, “Kawwy!” “Kawwy!” She brought me to my closet where I hang the baby carrier and yelled out, “kawwy!” She wanted me to carry her, in the carrier, so I did. What an amazing thing communication can be when you’re on the same wavelength.