Dripping sweat

Good day everyone (: November is truly here and although I thought spring would last longer, it is gone and summer has arrived. It did rain for a few days and gave the garden a lovely boost, but now it is scorching hot, the kind of hot that makes you relax, and have a lazy Sunday. But alas, it is Sunday, and this morning no one was resting. Matt hammered in weatherboards, Jess and I punched nails, Mary did laundry, and Keith packed up a whole bunch of rubbish and drove it to the dump. When Keith returned, we all sat down and had a drink. Jess commented, “You’re dripping Pop, wipe it off with this rag.” To ease the heat, Jess and Keith just cleaned out the spa and it is now filled! We use this as our swimming pool and it is well-loved. Tiny lizards sneaking into the house are finally taking the place of the mice, but not entirely. Flies and mosquitoes have come back to celebrate the season, which forces us to take notice of all of the holes in the screens and windows. The flowers on the trees have grown into big luscious leaves, and those that flower all summer long are coming into flower, like the frangipani tree. A new lot of birds have come to forage through the trees so there are new songs to hear and old songs to be missed.

Having been here as a family for over a year now, events are starting to become commonplace. The Melbourne Cup, a big horse race that most people actually care about and bet on, took place this past week. At Mary’s Aged Care Center they all dress up in extravagant hats and have sweets to celebrate the race. There are “sweeps” that everyone puts a few dollars in on a horse they think may win, and the winners win a bit of money. Mary entered Matt, Keith and I in hers and lo and behold, Matt won $12! Matt’s bank had “sweeps,” also, having entered himself, Jess and I, won $4 in my name. Perhaps this is the excitement of the Melbourne Cup, winning more than you spent to enter the sweep. The “Macksville Gift,” a running race for humans happened this weekend. Matt and I, having stopped in last year, laughed hearing that it was going on, and remembered how new everything was last year at this time and how little we had to do then.

This week was pretty standard, Matt worked at the bank and Macnuts, worked on our own website and a website for Creation Spirituality and worked on the house. Jess and I went to town for playgroup, choir and to run errands, gardened, cooked, napped, and visited with friends. In town we usually try and park by the river so Jess can chase seagulls and look for pelicans, and so I can gaze at the water. This week she discovered the dock, and that you can see fish under the water if you look really hard. Jess had her first little play date without me at the neighbor’s house playing with a five year old girl from playgroup. We had knitting down in the garden shed, but after over an hour of sitting on a slope knitting, eating and playing with three children, my pregnant friend and I gave up on that idea and came up to the house. Jess always has a blast playing with Lily and Aidan, but especially eating the treats that come with “knitting” each week. I am working on my first “nesting” project, turning one of Jacinta’s baby quilts into a blanket for a big girl bed, so she too has started “sewing.” She plays with spools of thread, builds towers, and wraps the leftover cloth around her baby dolls.

In the evenings, Matt usually takes Jess on walks to visit the cows, but one evening this week she convinced me to take her after dinner. It had been a rainy day, so she hadn’t been out much. I said, “only a short walk,” but watching her run from puddle to puddle softened me up and made me go on, even after a long day. Matt and I marveled at the change in these trips since last year when she used to ride in the wagon and whine to be carried. Instead of lingering in each puddle, she now runs straight through to get the next puddle even faster. She’s such a “big girl” that she’s about to start swimming lessons. Matt will take her on Wednesday mornings before he digs into house building for the day. What will I do all alone???

It is not such a rare thing that I have time to myself, I am extremely lucky to have Matt and Keith around on most days, and Mary on the weekends. Jacinta knows what each of us do for “entertainment” and she has come to know which of these activities she enjoys. She cooks, gardens, uses the toilet, sews, dances, sings and plays in the bedroom and on the “building site” with me. She goes on walks, gets carried and tickled, jumps on the bed, looks at pictures, goes to town, and reads with Matt. She feeds the animals, goes on rides in the truck, draws, romps around and goes on shoulder rides with Keith. She watches computer movies of cats, makes cakes, and goes to morning tea with Mary. Jacinta has a rough life, yes. We run into difficulties when she thinks she can always participate in her activity of choice, but otherwise it is splendid. She learns what we all have to offer and does not know the meaning of “bored.” We all have our own level of freedom, with the added bonus of sharing time with our bright little light of a girl.

Wednesday Matt took Jess on a car trip to pick up some items from the Tender Center, the silent auction warehouse, and to the big hardware store, of course. I spent my free time in the garden, doing all of the things that needed doing. It was overcast, cool and lovely. I staked tomatoes, planted corn where carrots had been harvested, I pulled out old broccoli plants and planted beets in their place, thinned lettuces, and filled the house garden with seeds. In the garden requiring the shortest walk from the house, I now have new lettuce seeds, beets, beans, carrots, corn, and spinach to add to the peppers, tomatoes, basil, coriander, borage and passionfruit vine. Keith helped me mulch a few fruit trees which I have been meaning to do for months. By the time I finish them all, the earlier trees will have eaten up all of the mulch I just gave them.

It looks like the first new season crop we’ll be eating is lettuce. Next will be the little patty pan squash, and then perhaps a few tomatoes. Everything is zooming along after all that rain and sun, especially the climbers like cucumbers, zucchini, melons, and squash. My successive corn planting is working out in that I have corn plants of all different sizes in different parts of the garden. Michelle and I have done well in that area with our carrots. By the time we finish eating one patch of carrots, the next terrace seems to be ready to eat. We could easily eat twice as many carrots though. Today Jess and I harvested garlic which was planted last autumn while we were in the U.S. It was almost time anyway, but there has been too much rain which made the plants weak and then aphid infested. Luckily the roots were unaffected, so we harvested almost a bushel of garlic. It must now be hung and dried. I am thrilled to be producing our own garlic! Being a new gardener in a place like this is very exciting.

Another exciting part of life is the progress we are making on the house. Just today Matt finished cutting and nailing on all of the weatherboards, the house is now roofed and sided. With my trusty two year old partner, I have nearly finished punching all of the nails in the bedrooms and hallway. Jacinta even tried nail punching herself! She swung the hammer with two hands and hit the nail punch while I stabilized the punch on top of the nail and winced at the stupidity of the endeavor. Luckily she grew tired of it after thirty seconds. Mostly though, she entertained herself building a “farmyard” out of foot-long off-cuts from the hardwood rafters and playing with her train. Today we brought out her wooden barn with even more animals and made the farm even better. Back to the house, the next step will be finishing the floor and sanding it, then hiring an electrician to wire us up. We are getting closer!

As time rolls on, we are knitting ourselves into this place. Although Matt’s job at the bank is boring, he now knows a lot of people in town and says hello to them as they pass by. He actually knows their names. This always shocks me. As we drove by an older woman walking on the road the other day, Jess asked, “Who’s that?” Matt promptly answered, “Betty ……” I thought he was joking, but it was really someone he knew. He has learned all of the streets and corners of Macksville from his census job. Matt knows the baker, the newsagent and the hardware store workers quite well, whereas I know the natural food shop owner, the Medicare workers and the fabric shop ladies. This week I took on an “official role” at playgroup, yes, you may snicker. I am the treasurer. I have to collect $2 from each mom every week, make deposits and write checks. It’s a very serious job, hee hee.

Jess is making friends though playgroup and in the neighborhood. She is pretty good at sharing for being at home and an only child for so long. She is learning how brothers and sisters act together by watching her friends Lily and Aidan. Her friends are also learning that she will eat most things and how they can make her happy. Although Jess turns her nose up at zucchini and broccoli, she will eat apple peels and bread crusts. She will sometimes finish up her friends’ plates when they leave anything good. On Saturday night, Matt and I took Jess to her little friends’ parents’ house for dinner and had an awesome meal. To finish it all off, they had made ice cream and I had made carrot cake. So the children sat down at their little table and indulged while we chatted. Jess gobbled up her ice cream and began eating her cake. Aidan had finished his cake by this point and asked for more. I told him he had to finish his ice cream first. So he began feeding Jacinta his ice-cream spoon by spoon. Little Lily who doesn’t care to eat much at all joined in the fun of feeding Jacinta. I pretended not to notice, but just sat back and smiled at their fun and creative ways of getting what they want. Jess had the biggest smile of all on her face, yum…ice cream.

The sounds of the night are lively this evening and most certainly bring a smile to my face. Even through the hum of the fan, the frogs and the crickets are making themselves heard. There are no hammers banging, no drills or saws screaming and no one talking. Sweet Jess has gone to sleep, after requesting numerous songs from her crib and repeatedly asking, “Daddy, what are you doing?” “Mommy, who are you writing to?” It is peaceful. The baby is gently kicking me, reminding me that although it may be quiet, I am not alone. We surely are not alone, this I know.

Thank you all for being with us from so far away. If you have time, check out our website www.paintedguitar.com and click on the “pictures” link. Matt updated the site and it looks pretty good! Rather than pasting photos on these letters, Matt is putting little photo albums on the website. There are also a few movies, and a few more songs to hear. He is quite proud of the little ipod connected on a of few of his songs pages…

Take care,

Shana