No way, Jose

Good day my dear distant loved ones. February has arrived, I hope it has brought nice weather and good vibes for you all. Its arrival to me is very exciting: Matt’s birthday month, the first safe month in which the baby may arrive, a visit from good friends from Sydney and the start up of choir and playgroup now that the school children have gone back to class. For Matt, it means the beginning of his work as a “casual” teacher now that he has worked through all of the red tape, and crunch time to build a kitchen and a bathroom. His birthday is probably more exciting to me than it is him, I like making cakes. It is hot, yes, but we’re in the final month of summer and pregnancy so I think I’ll make it. Jess has helped by taking back her afternoon naps and I have also been able to nap, daily! It makes the evenings more fun when I can stay up with my night owl husband, at least for a while. February is also watermelon season, not in my garden but on the farms. For Jess and I, this is not just a food, it is a daily activity.

Harvesting, sadly, is no longer a daily activity. The carrots are finished, the corn is gone, no more peppers, no more strawberries, no more tomatoes, well…a few cherry tomatoes, and the Swiss chard has lost its vitality. There are a few beans, though most of them have dried out, one more cucumber, some basil, eggplant that no one wants to eat, and lots of green onions. One lovely surprise we found while weeding was a patch of about eight potatoes ready to eat. Jess always begs to dig up potatoes and voila! Hidden under the weeds, artichoke plants and borage were the lovely little spuds. I’ve actually found quite a few volunteer potato plants scattered around the terrace garden, it makes me think… “I should be planting potatoes now!” I did a lot of watering and weeding this week and since it was overcast, Jess happily played down in the garden. While walking around the garden edge made of logs, proudly balancing herself, Jacinta curiously asked, “What do they call cucumbers in America?” She was surprised to hear that we call them “cucumbers.” I tried explaining that most words we say are the same, but she still gets a kick out of pretending it’s a whole different language, like French.

This week she caught on to the phrase, “No way Jose!” She uses it quite often, and likes to ask where Jose lives. I’ve explained that Jose means Joseph in Spanish, so now she asks about words in Spanish. Matt and I had a good laugh when she changed the phrase, insistently yelling, “Don’t Jose!” It didn’t have quite the same ring. As I’ve said before, she keeps us laughing. This week I saw how girly she is just naturally, by watching her in the mirror. She was practicing her smile: real smile, fake smile, frown, sheepish look, snotty look. She is ready to be a big sister and has the maternal instinct in her already. Playgroup started up again after six weeks of vacation. I thought she’d have missed her friends so much she’d dive right in and play with them. Her hair may be longer, she looks older and taller, but she still plays the same game. She begs for food from mom every ten minutes, searches out the best toys, including the battery operated violin, plays on the slide, and pushes around dolls in strollers by herself. Her pram pushing went to a new level though, she actually took the doll on a long stroll around all of the paths she could see, walked slowly and gently and sang lullabies to the baby. A few of her friends came to the house for visits and they all had a nice time playing together, but playgroup is a different story. It’s all about the toys there.

Water was a big theme this week. Jess steadily becomes more comfortable in the water each week in swimming lessons, willingly diving underwater to fetch toys if the water is shallow enough. She’ll gladly tell you, “I was brave!” She swam in the river, the pool, the spa and today she even went in the dam! We never go in the dam, but today, there was a good reason. Stop worrying though, there’s no chance we let her put her head under that water. Our dam is quite shallow and has no underground source of which we are aware. When there is a real drought, it will dry up. We are not in terrible drought right now, and I don’t think it’s about to dry up tomorrow. The issue is its potential, it could dry up or we could prevent this from ever happening by digging it out to be much deeper in the interest of the cows, the garden, the water life within, and for our viewing pleasure. Our neighbor is forking out the money for excavation to make this a better dam for his cows, we are paying to pump the water out of the dam so that it can be dug out efficiently.

We will benefit from the deepening of the dam through the rich soil which we can use after it is removed from the bottom of the dam, it will be cleaner, it may go deep enough to find a natural spring, and perhaps one day it will be swimmable. The sad part is the loss of the water lilies and that soon we will have no water in the dam and nothing with which to water the gardens. The task now is to use and store all of the water we can on the gardens and in tanks before it is all pumped out into the river. But in the future, after it rains a whole lot, we will be better off. So for two days straight we have been watering the gardens all day long in the hot sun (it does seem silly when so many people have no water at all for their gardens). Yesterday Keith rolled down a 500 gallon tank for us to use and set it all up He also helped me make up a huge oil drum of fertilizer with cow manure and green manure. It felt good to save such a large quantity for dry times. Today Matt and I purchased a heavy duty sprinkler and I weeded under its showers for a few hours. It was lovely, and productive! Jess, all the while, was in her mucky clothes jumping around in the strong stream of muddy water being pumped out of dam over the bank. She and Jedda looked as if they were playing on a slip and slide, but there was no plastic underneath, just tons of water moving very fast. Watching all of this lovely water showering the trees and gardens made me sad that I have so little planted right now. But realistically, I can’t take the extra work. It’s about time I gave up trying to eat only vegetables in the garden and buy some at the shops. Green onions, eight potatoes and basil aren’t going to cut it this week!

Speaking of food, Matt successfully installed our gas oven in the kitchen. I have stalled its christening until today, Jess and I cooked a tortilla on it just for fun. I’ll probably wait until the shelves and cupboards are all in to really begin cooking in our new kitchen. Matt spent a lot of time down in his shed workshop this week, toiling away on kitchen furniture. Instead of purchasing flat sheets of expensive hardwood, he is taking the time to cut thin strips from our stock of floorboards and other boards, glue them together, sand them, stain them, sand them, and stain them over and over. It creates a beautiful work surface, you should see the countertop he is about to install. I am so excited to use them in our own kitchen, it’s surely worth the wait. We bought a large box of recycled cupboard doors and drawers which are coming in very handy. Already in the kitchen is the sink mounted on top of a few cupboards and these recycled doors. It only awaits shelves and plumbing. Matt got a break from building for a few interviews with schools for casual teaching and a trip to Eco House, a great second hand warehouse. Two days after his interview came his first request for substitute teaching, but by chance it fell on his only day of work at the bank. Hopefully he’ll spend more time in schools than in the bank these next few months. One thing is for sure, he’ll still be spending a lot of time in the shed, playing with Jacinta and cuddling our new little one.

Thinking of little ones, we had some very sad news come from friends here in Australia. Our friends Bernie and Anne Marie who Matt has known since high school were due to birth a child in February. They knew the child would be born with a congenital heart disease and that most likely it would not live long enough to even grow teeth. They stuck it out, hoping and praying that he or she would come out and at least stay with them long enough to be cuddled and loved if even for a few minutes, but maybe for years. On Tuesday evening, Teresa Clare Higgins was born and cuddled for five hours, and then she passed away. Besides the tears of sadness and amazement at our friends’ faith and strength, there is not much else to say. Life is full of joys and pains, and particularly painful for some of us. It is rare that we lose babies so soon in wealthy countries so we are not prepared to hear outcomes such as these. Matt will soon travel to Sydney for the funeral to celebrate her short life. It’s hard even to write that word, celebrate, but we are learning from Bernie and Anne Marie.

Our little being, thankfully still safe and happy in my womb, is doing quite well. We are one month away from our due date and this now means weekly doctor’s appointments. Oh well. I am faithfully drinking all of the herbal teas and tonics and taking vitamins that the naturopath and my books recommend. I am also fulfilling all of my duties in blood tests and the like. One awesome thing about the medical system in this country is Medicare. Everyone, rich and poor, gets money back for going to the doctor. It’s so easy, there are no humiliating workers that make you feel bad for asking and request numerous forms of proof and ID. You just walk into the Medicare office, (there is never a line) hand over your Medicare card, your receipt for paying the doctor and they hand you back about 80% in cash, smile and wish you a nice day. I go the doctor so often now that I visit Medicare to get money rather than the ATM. Back to more important matters, the baby moves around a lot, although its head is still down and has been for a month or so. It’s funny to watch my belly contort while baby is stretching, playing, checking out what each limb can do or whatever it may be doing. I am still knitting a blanket for this little one, but it’s hard holding wool in the heat. It makes me wonder, “Why am I knitting such a warm blanket???” The simple reason is that I fell in love with the wool, not very practical, I know.

So after all that, to sum it up, we are enjoying life, each other, the trees, the birds, even the goat and are excited for the newness to come. We received packages almost every day this week from America and got a few phone calls and this made the week even better. I’m now trying to catch up on some real letter writing before baby number two comes to us. Thanks once again for all of your letters, love and support.

Happy February!

Peace,

Shana