Watching the flowers grow
Good evening folks. A new week has begun and I’ve finally found time to sit and relax and contemplate the week just past. It’s hard to know where to begin. Well, Saturday night was the national election and we elected a new Prime Minister (head of State). His name is Kevin Rudd and he represents the Labor Party. Matt and I, many of our friends and especially Matt’s sister Allison are all very happy for the change. The “Liberal” Party had been in power for over ten years, with the same man at the top for eleven years. It was time for a change. Allison is now assistant to the Minister of Health of the party in power, whereas on Friday she was assistant to the “Shadow” Minister of Health. I’ve never known anyone in a national government, wow. I feel special now, really. I’m slowly coming to understand their system, very slowly. Jacinta had a T-shirt sent from Allison, saying “KEVIN ’07.” I learned after the fact that it would not be wise to wear it out on the town. We got it out one last time to visit our friends Sunday morning. Having just learned that the “new rulemaker of Australia” was Aunty Allison’s boss, Jess began chanting “Kevin ‘07” over and over. We really didn’t mean to politically brand our three year old, just that simple explanation brought out the chant. Oh well. Hopefully this new leader will sign Kyoto and really work for green energy like he promised.
Matt had a very busy week with two days of work at the school and sending out a mailing advertising his new business to a few thousand addresses locally. He has prepped me to be the receptionist for TooManyPhotos.com, perhaps as well as you can train a dog to sing. Other than the fear that Evie will outscream the customers on the phone, I’m excited for our first call. Now it’s just a waiting game that Matt will feel more anxiously than I. Luckily he has plenty of other things to think about. Since he’s been working so much, his desire to finish the deck is much stronger. He was finally ready to order the decking lumber on Wednesday. On one of his random trips to town he saw a large truck filled with his decking drive by. So he quickly jumped back in the car and raced the truck home. That’s how small our town is. Right now he is outside in the dark stretching on our newly built deck. So yes, he finished the floor. It is simply awesome, beautiful, spacious and covers up all of the uneven ground we’ve been tripping over for the last few years. There are no rails yet, so it’s still off limits for children. The few chickens left are already crapping on it, much to my hopes of making it chicken-free. It’s not going to happen.
Dear chickens, what a saga. Cheep cheep and Baby (chicks named by Jacinta) were still sleeping in the tree this week. Cheep cheep was the only rooster left so all the hens tried to follow him and his “sister” up the tree. The clucky hens had finally gotten off the nest and continued life as normal with the new, smaller flock. Chicken law somehow makes hens feel safer with a man. Roosters, although their mating ritual leaves something to be desired, are loud, protective of the hens and make sure the ladies eat first. They scare off other food competitors. Our rooster chick quickly grew up when the other chickens were all killed. He proudly stepped up to the plate, so the hens tried to get up the tree to sleep near him and his “sister.” We thought it strange that his sister was starting to crow like him. The other hens have been coddled in the chook pen for a long time, so they make pathetic attempts to get up the tree. Dangerously, they settle on the bottom branches, only to be picked up and locked up in the chicks’ cage once asleep. Much to our surprise, it was our only rooster who had his neck broken while we were at the neighbor’s Christmas (???) party, in broad daylight! So today, Baby, his “sister” has taken over rooster position number one and is crowing like a champ. Looks like she’s not a sister, but a real rooster with less of a comb on her head. One more chicken down, but the flock still has a man. Jacinta is guessing that one of the three chicks that sleep inside is a rooster. When we leave the chickens we say good luck to them now.
Our plan is to build a luxurious fortress of a chicken pen, with a door to the orchard that can be opened and closed at my will. Until we have the time to knock down about ten more massive trees and close up the wall, the chickens are living an uneasy life. The garden is living the high life though, after all of the rain. What a divine sight: corn taller than me, terraces full of lettuce and spinach, purple bean vines climbing up the corn and tepee poles, edible plums on the trees, pumpkin, cucumber and melon vines sprawling everywhere, male and female kiwi vines climbing rapidly towards each other, towards embrace. There are even some small green tomatoes on the vines, a few small zucchini to eat, and patches of basil and carrots wherever Jacinta happened to scatter their seeds. Because we fed the strawberries compost and manure, they are giving us a second season! My garlic has become crowded by lettuce. But no matter, now it is garlic harvest time. Braiding garlic is good fun, and it is nice to see it hanging down in the shed again. The oats have all of the sudden sprung from grasses to seed bearing plants.
I’m sure we all feel at certain points in life that “Aha” moment, “Now I understand! This is it!” We wonder how we could have gotten by without this bit of knowledge or experience. It wasn’t the soap that I made this week, but the oats growing in the orchard that have done it for me. Have you ever wondered about how a grass like wheat or oats just sprouts seeds out of its head? I hadn’t wondered, but now I see it with my own eyes. Was that all in the seed? Where does it come from? My God, it is just amazing, watching this evolution. Honestly, I feel like I understand life now, development, patience, divinity, pre-destiny. There are lessons in every aspect of creation, but I’m just tapping the surface and feeling so privileged to be here to watch things grow. Jacinta, Genevieve and I walked into town the other day. I sware, we walked slow enough to see the flowers grow. Growing up surrounded by them, Jacinta’s eyes are open to the nuances of each plant. Excitedly she collected one of everything she saw and shoved it in the bottom of the stroller. We even found bamboo growing alongside the river and picked a flower, they are white. Artichoke flowers are just brilliant, bright purple. Upon catching a glimpse of this magnificent thistle plant at my friends’ house, I had the idea of taking photos of all of the amazing vegetables growing for you all. Being a city girl I am shocked by their beauty, having had no idea where or how they grew. We all know how corn, tomatoes, pumpkin and wheat grow, but have you ever seen asparagus, kiwis or artichokes? Let me know if anyone would be interested in such photos and I’ll get to work.
My only hour of “work” besides momming this week was called off due to Jacinta falling ill on Wednesday. My “no-nap” big girl actually walked into her bedroom to have a nap in the hopes that she would sleep off her fever and bellyache before French class. She slept for two hours and woke up well. Bigger bodies take illnesses better. Genevieve caught whatever Jacinta had and took three days to kick it, rather than five hours. She had just taken a turn toward better sleeping and less neediness for mom, when bam! Illness sets it all back a few steps. I shouldn’t complain, because obviously she suffered quite a bit to be so needy, but I am anyway. Being needed every second of the day and night is not so nice. I wish I could just enjoy the few moments of life when I am the only person in the world that this little being wants and needs. But when I can’t get off my bum to clean up anything because my baby wants to be on me permanently, I start to go insane. The physical mess surrounding me starts to cloud my mind and all I can focus on is when I will be able to put away the three baskets of laundry filling up the couch, do the dishes and sweep the floor. You’d think I was a neat freak, but I’m really not. I just don’t like clutter. Poor Evie doesn’t mind clutter, she just wanted to be cuddled back to health, and that she was. After a lot of herbal tea, water, milk, lukewarm baths, cuddles and sleep, Evie is well again, well enough to try her first spinach pie! We are so grateful to see her smile, laugh, reach, crawl and stand again. A weak baby is a very sad sight, and what joy it is to be around a happy baby.
Jacinta did well throughout Evie’s neediness, thanks to Matt, Mary, Keith and friends. One big highlight was getting ready for Christmas with Grandma. They went to town to buy a few things, went out for morning tea, voted, and came home to decorate and play in the tinsel all day long. Another was playgroup and friends coming over to play and celebrate Thanksgiving. Matt took both girls to the circus last Sunday so I had five hours on my own!!! This was before the girls got sick, just had to put it in as a highlight. From what I heard, they enjoyed themselves with the elephants, tigers and acrobats almost as much as I did gardening, mulching and resting in the hammock. Jacinta still tells us before bed each night that the following day will be yet another, “trick day.”
Thanksgiving was also a trick day. I can never remember which tricks she has showed me, but I know we dug up some early potatoes to roast. I thought that was a good trick. Another Thanksgiving gone by and all of our free-loading brush turkeys are still alive. My friend Sara came over and cooked all day with me, listening to me tell stories about my family and all the things I’d loved on Thanksgivings over the years. We took turns holding a hot, weak little Evie while Jacinta and Nickolas played games all over the house and outside. At one point they went outside in the rain and instead of playing in the playhouse, poked sticks in cow manure, nice. We didn’t really figure it out until Jacinta got splashed with it and continued to yell at the top of her lungs, “MOM!” until Sara came out and cleaned her up. All the while Nickolas is trying to outdo her yelling, “I SAID SORRY!” wondering why she wouldn’t stop yelling. It was pretty funny. They eventually came in and had a nice long play in the bath.
We roasted potatoes, made pumpkin pie and stew, cranberry walnut rice, cranberry sauce (out of dried cranberries, honey and spices), and bread. Sara wondered how I would have done it alone and I explained that usually families cook together on Thanksgiving. Good thing! I’ll have to continue having friends over because Matt’s not about to jump in the kitchen and enjoy the work, it’s just not his thing. With luck, Jacinta and Genevieve will rejoice in food with me for a long time to come. My friend Lauren in Michigan told me that she cooked for three days in preparation, happily. She managed to acquire every bit of their Thanksgiving feast at the local farmers market. We all take in food differently. Some people love the process, some love the product, and some just eat it because it’s put in front of them. No matter how you take it in, gratitude has to be part of the meal: recognition of how food is one of earth’s most divine gifts.
This Thanksgiving Jacinta said she was grateful for fruit. In her own way, Evie said she was just grateful to be held. Don’t we all just need to be held some days? Matt is thankful for employment. I am thankful for a full rain water tank, a beautiful garden, good friends close by, good friends far away, and close family relationships maintained across great distances and in the next room. I was able to chat with my family and pretend I was with them, lucky. I know the roots of Thanksgiving are a bit lofty, the Native Americans and the white settlers setting down peacefully together to share a meal given the general European mistreatment of the natives. But I love Thanksgiving: stopping the fast pace of life for a few days to gather with family and think about food and gratitude sounds great to me. Hope you all had a lovely Thanksgiving weekend too.
Peace,
Shana
Matt had a very busy week with two days of work at the school and sending out a mailing advertising his new business to a few thousand addresses locally. He has prepped me to be the receptionist for TooManyPhotos.com, perhaps as well as you can train a dog to sing. Other than the fear that Evie will outscream the customers on the phone, I’m excited for our first call. Now it’s just a waiting game that Matt will feel more anxiously than I. Luckily he has plenty of other things to think about. Since he’s been working so much, his desire to finish the deck is much stronger. He was finally ready to order the decking lumber on Wednesday. On one of his random trips to town he saw a large truck filled with his decking drive by. So he quickly jumped back in the car and raced the truck home. That’s how small our town is. Right now he is outside in the dark stretching on our newly built deck. So yes, he finished the floor. It is simply awesome, beautiful, spacious and covers up all of the uneven ground we’ve been tripping over for the last few years. There are no rails yet, so it’s still off limits for children. The few chickens left are already crapping on it, much to my hopes of making it chicken-free. It’s not going to happen.
Dear chickens, what a saga. Cheep cheep and Baby (chicks named by Jacinta) were still sleeping in the tree this week. Cheep cheep was the only rooster left so all the hens tried to follow him and his “sister” up the tree. The clucky hens had finally gotten off the nest and continued life as normal with the new, smaller flock. Chicken law somehow makes hens feel safer with a man. Roosters, although their mating ritual leaves something to be desired, are loud, protective of the hens and make sure the ladies eat first. They scare off other food competitors. Our rooster chick quickly grew up when the other chickens were all killed. He proudly stepped up to the plate, so the hens tried to get up the tree to sleep near him and his “sister.” We thought it strange that his sister was starting to crow like him. The other hens have been coddled in the chook pen for a long time, so they make pathetic attempts to get up the tree. Dangerously, they settle on the bottom branches, only to be picked up and locked up in the chicks’ cage once asleep. Much to our surprise, it was our only rooster who had his neck broken while we were at the neighbor’s Christmas (???) party, in broad daylight! So today, Baby, his “sister” has taken over rooster position number one and is crowing like a champ. Looks like she’s not a sister, but a real rooster with less of a comb on her head. One more chicken down, but the flock still has a man. Jacinta is guessing that one of the three chicks that sleep inside is a rooster. When we leave the chickens we say good luck to them now.
Our plan is to build a luxurious fortress of a chicken pen, with a door to the orchard that can be opened and closed at my will. Until we have the time to knock down about ten more massive trees and close up the wall, the chickens are living an uneasy life. The garden is living the high life though, after all of the rain. What a divine sight: corn taller than me, terraces full of lettuce and spinach, purple bean vines climbing up the corn and tepee poles, edible plums on the trees, pumpkin, cucumber and melon vines sprawling everywhere, male and female kiwi vines climbing rapidly towards each other, towards embrace. There are even some small green tomatoes on the vines, a few small zucchini to eat, and patches of basil and carrots wherever Jacinta happened to scatter their seeds. Because we fed the strawberries compost and manure, they are giving us a second season! My garlic has become crowded by lettuce. But no matter, now it is garlic harvest time. Braiding garlic is good fun, and it is nice to see it hanging down in the shed again. The oats have all of the sudden sprung from grasses to seed bearing plants.
I’m sure we all feel at certain points in life that “Aha” moment, “Now I understand! This is it!” We wonder how we could have gotten by without this bit of knowledge or experience. It wasn’t the soap that I made this week, but the oats growing in the orchard that have done it for me. Have you ever wondered about how a grass like wheat or oats just sprouts seeds out of its head? I hadn’t wondered, but now I see it with my own eyes. Was that all in the seed? Where does it come from? My God, it is just amazing, watching this evolution. Honestly, I feel like I understand life now, development, patience, divinity, pre-destiny. There are lessons in every aspect of creation, but I’m just tapping the surface and feeling so privileged to be here to watch things grow. Jacinta, Genevieve and I walked into town the other day. I sware, we walked slow enough to see the flowers grow. Growing up surrounded by them, Jacinta’s eyes are open to the nuances of each plant. Excitedly she collected one of everything she saw and shoved it in the bottom of the stroller. We even found bamboo growing alongside the river and picked a flower, they are white. Artichoke flowers are just brilliant, bright purple. Upon catching a glimpse of this magnificent thistle plant at my friends’ house, I had the idea of taking photos of all of the amazing vegetables growing for you all. Being a city girl I am shocked by their beauty, having had no idea where or how they grew. We all know how corn, tomatoes, pumpkin and wheat grow, but have you ever seen asparagus, kiwis or artichokes? Let me know if anyone would be interested in such photos and I’ll get to work.
My only hour of “work” besides momming this week was called off due to Jacinta falling ill on Wednesday. My “no-nap” big girl actually walked into her bedroom to have a nap in the hopes that she would sleep off her fever and bellyache before French class. She slept for two hours and woke up well. Bigger bodies take illnesses better. Genevieve caught whatever Jacinta had and took three days to kick it, rather than five hours. She had just taken a turn toward better sleeping and less neediness for mom, when bam! Illness sets it all back a few steps. I shouldn’t complain, because obviously she suffered quite a bit to be so needy, but I am anyway. Being needed every second of the day and night is not so nice. I wish I could just enjoy the few moments of life when I am the only person in the world that this little being wants and needs. But when I can’t get off my bum to clean up anything because my baby wants to be on me permanently, I start to go insane. The physical mess surrounding me starts to cloud my mind and all I can focus on is when I will be able to put away the three baskets of laundry filling up the couch, do the dishes and sweep the floor. You’d think I was a neat freak, but I’m really not. I just don’t like clutter. Poor Evie doesn’t mind clutter, she just wanted to be cuddled back to health, and that she was. After a lot of herbal tea, water, milk, lukewarm baths, cuddles and sleep, Evie is well again, well enough to try her first spinach pie! We are so grateful to see her smile, laugh, reach, crawl and stand again. A weak baby is a very sad sight, and what joy it is to be around a happy baby.
Jacinta did well throughout Evie’s neediness, thanks to Matt, Mary, Keith and friends. One big highlight was getting ready for Christmas with Grandma. They went to town to buy a few things, went out for morning tea, voted, and came home to decorate and play in the tinsel all day long. Another was playgroup and friends coming over to play and celebrate Thanksgiving. Matt took both girls to the circus last Sunday so I had five hours on my own!!! This was before the girls got sick, just had to put it in as a highlight. From what I heard, they enjoyed themselves with the elephants, tigers and acrobats almost as much as I did gardening, mulching and resting in the hammock. Jacinta still tells us before bed each night that the following day will be yet another, “trick day.”
Thanksgiving was also a trick day. I can never remember which tricks she has showed me, but I know we dug up some early potatoes to roast. I thought that was a good trick. Another Thanksgiving gone by and all of our free-loading brush turkeys are still alive. My friend Sara came over and cooked all day with me, listening to me tell stories about my family and all the things I’d loved on Thanksgivings over the years. We took turns holding a hot, weak little Evie while Jacinta and Nickolas played games all over the house and outside. At one point they went outside in the rain and instead of playing in the playhouse, poked sticks in cow manure, nice. We didn’t really figure it out until Jacinta got splashed with it and continued to yell at the top of her lungs, “MOM!” until Sara came out and cleaned her up. All the while Nickolas is trying to outdo her yelling, “I SAID SORRY!” wondering why she wouldn’t stop yelling. It was pretty funny. They eventually came in and had a nice long play in the bath.
We roasted potatoes, made pumpkin pie and stew, cranberry walnut rice, cranberry sauce (out of dried cranberries, honey and spices), and bread. Sara wondered how I would have done it alone and I explained that usually families cook together on Thanksgiving. Good thing! I’ll have to continue having friends over because Matt’s not about to jump in the kitchen and enjoy the work, it’s just not his thing. With luck, Jacinta and Genevieve will rejoice in food with me for a long time to come. My friend Lauren in Michigan told me that she cooked for three days in preparation, happily. She managed to acquire every bit of their Thanksgiving feast at the local farmers market. We all take in food differently. Some people love the process, some love the product, and some just eat it because it’s put in front of them. No matter how you take it in, gratitude has to be part of the meal: recognition of how food is one of earth’s most divine gifts.
This Thanksgiving Jacinta said she was grateful for fruit. In her own way, Evie said she was just grateful to be held. Don’t we all just need to be held some days? Matt is thankful for employment. I am thankful for a full rain water tank, a beautiful garden, good friends close by, good friends far away, and close family relationships maintained across great distances and in the next room. I was able to chat with my family and pretend I was with them, lucky. I know the roots of Thanksgiving are a bit lofty, the Native Americans and the white settlers setting down peacefully together to share a meal given the general European mistreatment of the natives. But I love Thanksgiving: stopping the fast pace of life for a few days to gather with family and think about food and gratitude sounds great to me. Hope you all had a lovely Thanksgiving weekend too.
Peace,
Shana
posted by Matt & Shana & Jacinta & Genevieve Henry at
11:20 PM
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