God is everywhere
Good day my loved ones. As I endeavor to interest you with a month of our Aussie lives in what would normally have taken fourteen pages in about four, I am a bit daunted. First off, I can say that spending one month in a real American winter has energized me beyond belief. I was running on empty, in need of the chill like apple and plum trees. (Here we grow the low chill varieties, but alas, I demand more chill than they do.) It could also be that I’m in the honeymoon phase of being home after a month away. It could have something to do with the girls growing up. I might also feel lighter due to a late night chop of my long messy hair. It could also be the inauguration of Barack Obama. It surely couldn’t be the state of the economy energizing me because you know better than I how unsure things are at the moment in the US, the economy from which the rest of the nations’ economies seem to spiral. It couldn’t be that there are any less wars today than there were last month, as far as I know the battles continue to burn strong.
I mostly give the credit to our new discovery: waking up before the children. Both being night people, Matt and I enjoy our alone time in the evenings. The girls were our alarm clock. Now we are trying to start the day alone, either gardening, reading, kayaking, or writing. When the girls awake, we are actually excited to see them. Novel concept. Daylight with no questions, no need to feed anyone, watching the sun rise, working/meditating in the cool of the day, inspired by the sunlight. Many parents learn this lesson quicker than we have. The majority of the world knows and has known this, but we had to come to this discovery on our own.
Another excitement is Matt’s new job. He said goodbye to his friends and clients at Community Care Options in Coffs Harbour about a week ago. They surprised him with their extreme disappointment in his departure, but wished him well in his new position with the government in the Department of Community Services. In his spare time and in his week off between jobs he has outdone himself. He had to give up his work car, bummer. Since this job will be a 40 minute commute heading south instead of north, he car shopped and researched for a few weeks. Just last week he chose and purchased a tiny golden Toyota, nine years used. It is so funny and cute, I can’t help but laugh and smile every time I look at it. I have never seen such a small car in the United States. Speaking of my homeland, Matt is still working hard on the Creation Spirituality website, networking and planning his next teaching trip to the Creation Spirituality Communities Conference in North Carolina for this summer.
Matt is also reorganizing, rewiring, cleaning, and making his tool shed/workshop a productive space. This is big news! It looks awesome. I can even find the tools I need, empowering for both of us. He has rebuilt the desk in our room, also making more efficient use of the small space. He created so much space that we now have a chair in our room, new artwork and can access all of our bookshelves. One of Matt’s major frustrations is being crowded by disorganization and not having the time or energy to do anything about it. Creating space luckily is one of his gifts.
Back in the US when we used to shop as a pastime, Matt used to go to those big organizing stores, wander the aisles of crates and clever storage containers and dream. Now we live too far from the big stores to waste much time dreaming in shops. But we buy less because we aren’t inundated with clever displays to sell you what you want, rather than simply what you need. Having enjoyed late-night superstore shopping in the US, I have come to the conclusion that never ending desire and consumerism are not just convenient, but stressful. The twenty-four hour superstores that exist in many pockets of the US mean that there are NO hours in the day when our needs/wants must wait. If we choose, we could consume all day and all night. It leaves no Sabbath, no rest, no waiting, not on the weekends, and not even in the evenings. I love that our supermarket closes at 8pm and that everything else closes at 5pm, otherwise I would feel obliged to “get the shopping out of the way,” and waste my restful evenings. I love that our camping store is tiny, and has a lot of necessary items smashed into a small space. It’s less likely to entice me to buy anything unnecessary than REI where Matt and I used to love gazing and always found something we could convince ourselves we needed. I’m sure small towns all over have short hours, but I never lived more than ten minutes away from an all-night superstore until I came here. Actually at camp and in Massachusetts, we were about 45 minutes from these monsters. You can bet we drove the distance on the weekends and bought all we needed plus lots of junk at midnight, just for entertainment. We hardly ever shopped in town.
Pardon the interruption of my cultural wanderings, me oh my. Where was I? Matt….yes…in addition to all of his physical productivity, as usual, he is pouring endless love and energy into our little girls.
Genevieve’s imagination is growing as much as her vocabulary. She is a keen little storyteller, and does not limit herself to reality. She makes up stories about what she has done in a day. Mainly she recounts the funny and surprising moments of a day, sometimes getting so excited that she jumbles all the words up and makes no sense. We love her nonsense when it comes because it reminds us that she is not three, although she talks like Jacinta at age 3. One of Matt’s funny recollections was at bath time when Genevieve picked up a foam letter X and said, “Look Daddy, D for pekilan (pelican).” Copying Jacinta is surely the theme now, but sometimes copying doesn’t work out quite right for our baby. She is potty training like a “big girl,” but she reminds us when she wants to be cuddled, pampered or fed, “I baby, mommy.” She does about half of her toilet business on the toilet, but often needs reminders to stop what she’s doing and sit down and wee.
Genevieve is a natural hostess, always too busy trying to serve everyone else things at meals to sit down and eat her meal. Her favorite occupation lately is her little tea set. At any down moment, she sets it all up and serves cups of tea, trying to insist that you must sit down with her to enjoy the tea. This will be a strong memory of her as a baby, standing up, never sitting down unless strapped down or having a tea party. Her friend Henry came to play for the day, without his mummy. Upon entering the house, Evie excitedly ran to Henry’s favorite play corner by the fireplace and breathlessly exclaimed, “Look Henry! Toys!” complete with hand gestures, as if this was his first (and not fiftieth) visit. A lovely hostess and great companion but left alone, sometimes the mischievous side comes out when Evie isn’t being paid much attention. She draws on everything but paper when we are not looking. She pushes stools to get higher on the shelves and pulls down things she knows are off-limits. The other day Jacinta called for us to come see what Evie had done. After my normal, “I’ll be there in a minute-ing,” (which always lasts longer than suggested), Matt and I found Evie with every book off the shelf in their room, this is almost 200 books. “I want to read a book,” said Evie. It is so funny to have a second child who is nothing like our first. I suppose this is normal. Genevieve’s will to do is much stronger than her will to please.
Jacinta’s will to please is so fierce that she seems to battle internally: her own strong will versus the will of the person she is trying to please. The beauty of this is obedience, trust and order, but the difficulty is when she breaks down from the internal battle of wills. Whereas Evie seems to simply choose her own will, Jacinta often chooses to do what she is told, and then feels obliged to teach Evie how to behave and do what she is told, which is a hard task and often leads to another battle. When I leave them alone, I actually tell Jacinta to “forget the rules and have fun, don’t feel like you have to control Genevieve.” Imagine that. It works too, they enjoy each other. Since Jacinta is such a “rule girl,” as Matt says he was too, I want to teach her flexibility, even with rules as she draws lines hard enough for herself.
For example, we have always stressed the importance of hellos and goodbyes to everyone present, African style. Jacinta’s friends are not into “kisses and cuddles,” surely not all the time. Jacinta understands greetings and goodbyes as a rule. After our return from the US, her emotions were a bit high, understandable with so many hellos and goodbyes and love so far away. Her best buddy here, Lily didn’t want a big cuddle on a few occasions. This turned into chasing, screams and tears, one time lasting for ten minutes. We have had a few discussions since then and gotten back on the naturopaths recommendations. Time has passed and she is learning that not many kids her age like cuddles and kisses, at least not here. She sometimes has a hard time finding her way in a group of children free playing if there are no adults to assist. She seems to find comfort in solitude in such situations. I am learning to accept this as a beautiful choice, rather than grief that she can’t find her way in.
Jacinta has so many interests at the moment, it’s hard to get to all of them. She sings all the time, both she and Genevieve dance every day. The girls’ favorite dancing music this month is Hannukah songs, on repeat, over and over. One day in school a teacher may ask about Hannukah and our girls will tell these deprived children who have never met a Jewish person about the horah, dreidels, latkes and menorahs. Jacinta has been painting paper, gnomes, her body, and all of our faces. We have so many craft plans, but very little opportunity to do them with all of the time we spend outside. (This is why we need a real winter!) Jacinta goes to Macksville Preschool on Fridays and has started a new preschool on Wednesdays, Valla Community Preschool. This is a preschool that is the closest thing to the nurturing Steiner school I came to love. It is a twenty minute drive away, instead of the five minute drive to Macksville. Jacinta didn’t know a soul when she began two weeks ago, but is easing her way in through arts, crafts, singing and the playground, without any tears.
In the heat, we are spending a lot of time in the water and Jacinta loves to swim. She gets more confident every day. New water activities are the local pool’s waterslide and paddling alone in the kayak, yelling, “Up to Shore! Up to Shore! She then jumps in, pulls the kayak to shore, climbs back in the kayak and paddles out into the dam again. In this dry heat, the cows have been using the dam too much. It has just gotten too low to swim in safely. Luckily we found a new place to swim, Gumma Reserve is less than ten minutes from home. A clear water creek, a never ending sand bar, salt water, calm water, and we all love it. We loved it so much we decided to take the plunge, upgrade our 2-man dome tent and camp there, 10 minutes from home. We lazed in the creek with water noodles and Evie’s new floaties, canoed, explored the creek, played cricket and pole tennis, lived out of a cooler and did not cook for 2 days and nights. Matt and Jacinta played quite a few games of checkers, which they call “Draughts” (drafts) here. We had a lovely time relaxing together away from home.
The new school year begins just after Australia Day in the last week of January. So now things are just getting rolling again: preschool, playgroup, choir, and French class. Playgroup was on hold in hopes of a more hospitable location. Being the coordinator, I spent some time researching and inquiring at schools, the local council, different halls and the like. It was a good opportunity to get to know my surroundings. In the end, the local elementary school excitedly invited us to meet on their grounds. Although we are all excited to start up again, this means another planned morning. In my dream of a local growers market, I have also been chasing up people who were involved with the bygone Macksville markets, trying to learn the history and understand the reason for their failure.
Besides playing and caring for the girlies, I have found more time for the garden. Matt and I are making better use of our time by taking turns spending time up at the house with the girls in the early morning and evening. Matt has also been a great help with this by making the shed a better play space and just by spending more time in his tool shed. His presence gives the girls extra energy to come down to the garden. I’ve spent some time organizing my side. The garden shed (attached to the workshop/tool shed) now has enough space within to sit down and play/work. Jess, Evie and I processed and packaged dried seeds the other day. Our main pastimes are digging up potatoes, collecting grubs for the chickens, harvesting cherry tomatoes and ripe corn cobs, climbing the apple tree to pick beans, and hunting for baby cucumbers and monster cucumbers. The girls eat the little ones, but I let them jump on and play with the big ones in the sandpit, otherwise the rats get them. We have a better time together in the garden, now that I am getting enough alone time to do the harder work.
Logic (and books) would tell you that having certain veggies right out your door would encourage you to actually harvest them and eat them. Permaculture talks about zones: draw a few concentric circles around your house. In the inner circle (zone 1) there should be a salad greens and herb garden because these are things you probably want for most meals and do not store so well in the fridge. As the zones get further from your house, there you grow things which require lots of space and are harvested less frequently. Given this idea, I was inspired to redo the garden outside my window, because I can’t get out the door and down to the gardens right before meals, when you want your greens and herbs. I have finished one little bed and planted some greens, but have yet to finish the big one. Thinning strawberries is hard to do, in that it feels like you are diminishing your chance for fruit. But the plants multiply themselves into such abundance that they produce very little given the lack of space and the battle for nutrients. Down in the other gardens, technically in zone 3, life is abundant and I have had alone time to ponder the successes, failures and sheer beauty. There are sunflowers scattered throughout. I am hanging a few to dry so we can eat the seeds. The beans and the cucumbers are climbing the corn. One lot of corn is just finishing, while the next crop is one or two weeks away from maturity. Successive plantings are a great theory, but I have never done it before. I planted one full terrace of corn, bean, sunflower and melon seeds the day before we left for the US, assuming it would all fail because I wasn’t there. The arrogance! As if the seeds need me. This terrace is gorgeous! Almost every randomly placed seed came up.
My green thumb is quite inconsistent though. More often I plant whole garden beds, prepare them with a little weeding, a pitchfork, some lime, compost, water and seeds, and get very few or no seeds to . It obviously depends on the plant. Easy crops for me are corn, beans, sunflowers, cucumbers and potatoes. I have a hard time growing carrots, onions, beets, broccoli, lettuce, and peppers. I planted sweet potatoes the other day, but that night the bandicoot dug them all up. I have just planted some popcorn, and wonder of wonders: iceberg lettuce! Jacinta has just started to eat lettuce in salads, but sticks to iceberg. It has to have some nutrients in it, doesn’t it? It’s a start anyway.
Not being churchgoers, our girls know God through the garden, the sun, the rain, music, people, love and a few books that talk about God. Author Sandy Sasso writes wonderful children’s books about God. At bedtime Genevieve and Jacinta most enjoy In God’s Name? Each page talks about a different name someone might call God. For example, the lonely child calls God, “Friend,” the mother nursing her baby calls God, “Mother.” It is abstract as descriptions of God tend to be, but Genevieve has started to point to different pictures and ask, “This is God?” Is the bunny God? Is the bird God? I laugh and tell them that God is everywhere. The other night we listed off all the little places that God is and Evie nodded knowingly and said, “God is everywhere.” Jacinta pointed to the dark brown spots in the plywood above the bed, laughing that God was in those spots. I told them that God made everything. One of us tooted and Jacinta noted that God made the toot. I agreed, “God made us so God must have made toots.” Jacinta thought for a minute and laughed, “So you didn’t make a smelly fart. God made it smelly, you just did it.” Nice excuse.
So I have gone on long enough. We are fortunate to live in New South Wales and not Victoria, where the worst bush fires in the history of Australia are blazing and still killing more people, animals and laying waste to communities. They are far from us, but the mood all around Australia is devastation. Although the devastation is real, I will end on a more positive note. The girls are learning beauty and understanding the world more each day, as we all are. We found a progressive outdoor church this week, something we have sought for a while. Matt starts his new job tomorrow. Send us some rain for Victoria, if you don’t mind.
Peace,
Shana
I mostly give the credit to our new discovery: waking up before the children. Both being night people, Matt and I enjoy our alone time in the evenings. The girls were our alarm clock. Now we are trying to start the day alone, either gardening, reading, kayaking, or writing. When the girls awake, we are actually excited to see them. Novel concept. Daylight with no questions, no need to feed anyone, watching the sun rise, working/meditating in the cool of the day, inspired by the sunlight. Many parents learn this lesson quicker than we have. The majority of the world knows and has known this, but we had to come to this discovery on our own.
Another excitement is Matt’s new job. He said goodbye to his friends and clients at Community Care Options in Coffs Harbour about a week ago. They surprised him with their extreme disappointment in his departure, but wished him well in his new position with the government in the Department of Community Services. In his spare time and in his week off between jobs he has outdone himself. He had to give up his work car, bummer. Since this job will be a 40 minute commute heading south instead of north, he car shopped and researched for a few weeks. Just last week he chose and purchased a tiny golden Toyota, nine years used. It is so funny and cute, I can’t help but laugh and smile every time I look at it. I have never seen such a small car in the United States. Speaking of my homeland, Matt is still working hard on the Creation Spirituality website, networking and planning his next teaching trip to the Creation Spirituality Communities Conference in North Carolina for this summer.
Matt is also reorganizing, rewiring, cleaning, and making his tool shed/workshop a productive space. This is big news! It looks awesome. I can even find the tools I need, empowering for both of us. He has rebuilt the desk in our room, also making more efficient use of the small space. He created so much space that we now have a chair in our room, new artwork and can access all of our bookshelves. One of Matt’s major frustrations is being crowded by disorganization and not having the time or energy to do anything about it. Creating space luckily is one of his gifts.
Back in the US when we used to shop as a pastime, Matt used to go to those big organizing stores, wander the aisles of crates and clever storage containers and dream. Now we live too far from the big stores to waste much time dreaming in shops. But we buy less because we aren’t inundated with clever displays to sell you what you want, rather than simply what you need. Having enjoyed late-night superstore shopping in the US, I have come to the conclusion that never ending desire and consumerism are not just convenient, but stressful. The twenty-four hour superstores that exist in many pockets of the US mean that there are NO hours in the day when our needs/wants must wait. If we choose, we could consume all day and all night. It leaves no Sabbath, no rest, no waiting, not on the weekends, and not even in the evenings. I love that our supermarket closes at 8pm and that everything else closes at 5pm, otherwise I would feel obliged to “get the shopping out of the way,” and waste my restful evenings. I love that our camping store is tiny, and has a lot of necessary items smashed into a small space. It’s less likely to entice me to buy anything unnecessary than REI where Matt and I used to love gazing and always found something we could convince ourselves we needed. I’m sure small towns all over have short hours, but I never lived more than ten minutes away from an all-night superstore until I came here. Actually at camp and in Massachusetts, we were about 45 minutes from these monsters. You can bet we drove the distance on the weekends and bought all we needed plus lots of junk at midnight, just for entertainment. We hardly ever shopped in town.
Pardon the interruption of my cultural wanderings, me oh my. Where was I? Matt….yes…in addition to all of his physical productivity, as usual, he is pouring endless love and energy into our little girls.
Genevieve’s imagination is growing as much as her vocabulary. She is a keen little storyteller, and does not limit herself to reality. She makes up stories about what she has done in a day. Mainly she recounts the funny and surprising moments of a day, sometimes getting so excited that she jumbles all the words up and makes no sense. We love her nonsense when it comes because it reminds us that she is not three, although she talks like Jacinta at age 3. One of Matt’s funny recollections was at bath time when Genevieve picked up a foam letter X and said, “Look Daddy, D for pekilan (pelican).” Copying Jacinta is surely the theme now, but sometimes copying doesn’t work out quite right for our baby. She is potty training like a “big girl,” but she reminds us when she wants to be cuddled, pampered or fed, “I baby, mommy.” She does about half of her toilet business on the toilet, but often needs reminders to stop what she’s doing and sit down and wee.
Genevieve is a natural hostess, always too busy trying to serve everyone else things at meals to sit down and eat her meal. Her favorite occupation lately is her little tea set. At any down moment, she sets it all up and serves cups of tea, trying to insist that you must sit down with her to enjoy the tea. This will be a strong memory of her as a baby, standing up, never sitting down unless strapped down or having a tea party. Her friend Henry came to play for the day, without his mummy. Upon entering the house, Evie excitedly ran to Henry’s favorite play corner by the fireplace and breathlessly exclaimed, “Look Henry! Toys!” complete with hand gestures, as if this was his first (and not fiftieth) visit. A lovely hostess and great companion but left alone, sometimes the mischievous side comes out when Evie isn’t being paid much attention. She draws on everything but paper when we are not looking. She pushes stools to get higher on the shelves and pulls down things she knows are off-limits. The other day Jacinta called for us to come see what Evie had done. After my normal, “I’ll be there in a minute-ing,” (which always lasts longer than suggested), Matt and I found Evie with every book off the shelf in their room, this is almost 200 books. “I want to read a book,” said Evie. It is so funny to have a second child who is nothing like our first. I suppose this is normal. Genevieve’s will to do is much stronger than her will to please.
Jacinta’s will to please is so fierce that she seems to battle internally: her own strong will versus the will of the person she is trying to please. The beauty of this is obedience, trust and order, but the difficulty is when she breaks down from the internal battle of wills. Whereas Evie seems to simply choose her own will, Jacinta often chooses to do what she is told, and then feels obliged to teach Evie how to behave and do what she is told, which is a hard task and often leads to another battle. When I leave them alone, I actually tell Jacinta to “forget the rules and have fun, don’t feel like you have to control Genevieve.” Imagine that. It works too, they enjoy each other. Since Jacinta is such a “rule girl,” as Matt says he was too, I want to teach her flexibility, even with rules as she draws lines hard enough for herself.
For example, we have always stressed the importance of hellos and goodbyes to everyone present, African style. Jacinta’s friends are not into “kisses and cuddles,” surely not all the time. Jacinta understands greetings and goodbyes as a rule. After our return from the US, her emotions were a bit high, understandable with so many hellos and goodbyes and love so far away. Her best buddy here, Lily didn’t want a big cuddle on a few occasions. This turned into chasing, screams and tears, one time lasting for ten minutes. We have had a few discussions since then and gotten back on the naturopaths recommendations. Time has passed and she is learning that not many kids her age like cuddles and kisses, at least not here. She sometimes has a hard time finding her way in a group of children free playing if there are no adults to assist. She seems to find comfort in solitude in such situations. I am learning to accept this as a beautiful choice, rather than grief that she can’t find her way in.
Jacinta has so many interests at the moment, it’s hard to get to all of them. She sings all the time, both she and Genevieve dance every day. The girls’ favorite dancing music this month is Hannukah songs, on repeat, over and over. One day in school a teacher may ask about Hannukah and our girls will tell these deprived children who have never met a Jewish person about the horah, dreidels, latkes and menorahs. Jacinta has been painting paper, gnomes, her body, and all of our faces. We have so many craft plans, but very little opportunity to do them with all of the time we spend outside. (This is why we need a real winter!) Jacinta goes to Macksville Preschool on Fridays and has started a new preschool on Wednesdays, Valla Community Preschool. This is a preschool that is the closest thing to the nurturing Steiner school I came to love. It is a twenty minute drive away, instead of the five minute drive to Macksville. Jacinta didn’t know a soul when she began two weeks ago, but is easing her way in through arts, crafts, singing and the playground, without any tears.
In the heat, we are spending a lot of time in the water and Jacinta loves to swim. She gets more confident every day. New water activities are the local pool’s waterslide and paddling alone in the kayak, yelling, “Up to Shore! Up to Shore! She then jumps in, pulls the kayak to shore, climbs back in the kayak and paddles out into the dam again. In this dry heat, the cows have been using the dam too much. It has just gotten too low to swim in safely. Luckily we found a new place to swim, Gumma Reserve is less than ten minutes from home. A clear water creek, a never ending sand bar, salt water, calm water, and we all love it. We loved it so much we decided to take the plunge, upgrade our 2-man dome tent and camp there, 10 minutes from home. We lazed in the creek with water noodles and Evie’s new floaties, canoed, explored the creek, played cricket and pole tennis, lived out of a cooler and did not cook for 2 days and nights. Matt and Jacinta played quite a few games of checkers, which they call “Draughts” (drafts) here. We had a lovely time relaxing together away from home.
The new school year begins just after Australia Day in the last week of January. So now things are just getting rolling again: preschool, playgroup, choir, and French class. Playgroup was on hold in hopes of a more hospitable location. Being the coordinator, I spent some time researching and inquiring at schools, the local council, different halls and the like. It was a good opportunity to get to know my surroundings. In the end, the local elementary school excitedly invited us to meet on their grounds. Although we are all excited to start up again, this means another planned morning. In my dream of a local growers market, I have also been chasing up people who were involved with the bygone Macksville markets, trying to learn the history and understand the reason for their failure.
Besides playing and caring for the girlies, I have found more time for the garden. Matt and I are making better use of our time by taking turns spending time up at the house with the girls in the early morning and evening. Matt has also been a great help with this by making the shed a better play space and just by spending more time in his tool shed. His presence gives the girls extra energy to come down to the garden. I’ve spent some time organizing my side. The garden shed (attached to the workshop/tool shed) now has enough space within to sit down and play/work. Jess, Evie and I processed and packaged dried seeds the other day. Our main pastimes are digging up potatoes, collecting grubs for the chickens, harvesting cherry tomatoes and ripe corn cobs, climbing the apple tree to pick beans, and hunting for baby cucumbers and monster cucumbers. The girls eat the little ones, but I let them jump on and play with the big ones in the sandpit, otherwise the rats get them. We have a better time together in the garden, now that I am getting enough alone time to do the harder work.
Logic (and books) would tell you that having certain veggies right out your door would encourage you to actually harvest them and eat them. Permaculture talks about zones: draw a few concentric circles around your house. In the inner circle (zone 1) there should be a salad greens and herb garden because these are things you probably want for most meals and do not store so well in the fridge. As the zones get further from your house, there you grow things which require lots of space and are harvested less frequently. Given this idea, I was inspired to redo the garden outside my window, because I can’t get out the door and down to the gardens right before meals, when you want your greens and herbs. I have finished one little bed and planted some greens, but have yet to finish the big one. Thinning strawberries is hard to do, in that it feels like you are diminishing your chance for fruit. But the plants multiply themselves into such abundance that they produce very little given the lack of space and the battle for nutrients. Down in the other gardens, technically in zone 3, life is abundant and I have had alone time to ponder the successes, failures and sheer beauty. There are sunflowers scattered throughout. I am hanging a few to dry so we can eat the seeds. The beans and the cucumbers are climbing the corn. One lot of corn is just finishing, while the next crop is one or two weeks away from maturity. Successive plantings are a great theory, but I have never done it before. I planted one full terrace of corn, bean, sunflower and melon seeds the day before we left for the US, assuming it would all fail because I wasn’t there. The arrogance! As if the seeds need me. This terrace is gorgeous! Almost every randomly placed seed came up.
My green thumb is quite inconsistent though. More often I plant whole garden beds, prepare them with a little weeding, a pitchfork, some lime, compost, water and seeds, and get very few or no seeds to . It obviously depends on the plant. Easy crops for me are corn, beans, sunflowers, cucumbers and potatoes. I have a hard time growing carrots, onions, beets, broccoli, lettuce, and peppers. I planted sweet potatoes the other day, but that night the bandicoot dug them all up. I have just planted some popcorn, and wonder of wonders: iceberg lettuce! Jacinta has just started to eat lettuce in salads, but sticks to iceberg. It has to have some nutrients in it, doesn’t it? It’s a start anyway.
Not being churchgoers, our girls know God through the garden, the sun, the rain, music, people, love and a few books that talk about God. Author Sandy Sasso writes wonderful children’s books about God. At bedtime Genevieve and Jacinta most enjoy In God’s Name? Each page talks about a different name someone might call God. For example, the lonely child calls God, “Friend,” the mother nursing her baby calls God, “Mother.” It is abstract as descriptions of God tend to be, but Genevieve has started to point to different pictures and ask, “This is God?” Is the bunny God? Is the bird God? I laugh and tell them that God is everywhere. The other night we listed off all the little places that God is and Evie nodded knowingly and said, “God is everywhere.” Jacinta pointed to the dark brown spots in the plywood above the bed, laughing that God was in those spots. I told them that God made everything. One of us tooted and Jacinta noted that God made the toot. I agreed, “God made us so God must have made toots.” Jacinta thought for a minute and laughed, “So you didn’t make a smelly fart. God made it smelly, you just did it.” Nice excuse.
So I have gone on long enough. We are fortunate to live in New South Wales and not Victoria, where the worst bush fires in the history of Australia are blazing and still killing more people, animals and laying waste to communities. They are far from us, but the mood all around Australia is devastation. Although the devastation is real, I will end on a more positive note. The girls are learning beauty and understanding the world more each day, as we all are. We found a progressive outdoor church this week, something we have sought for a while. Matt starts his new job tomorrow. Send us some rain for Victoria, if you don’t mind.
Peace,
Shana
posted by Matt & Shana & Jacinta & Genevieve Henry at
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