Uncertain

Maybe I should quit reading the news. Or maybe I should quit life. Of course not. But life sometimes feels so fragile and at other times it feels safe and happy.
Tomorrow we will attend a funeral. She was only 16. Somebody's baby.  Her death was untimely and still not clearly understood. It's all making me kiss my little girls more often. And pray more. Summer is cranking up to it's highest pitched scream and I've been forgetting to pray. Now everything seems to be dangling from a thread. Or maybe it feels like Hoo-ville, my world resting on a flower, carried by an escaping elephant.
The news articles : The Aurora shooting, the Chick-fil-a drama, it's all drama.
Are uncertainty and sadness linked? Tonight they are. I could list my sadnesses. There are just too many dangling ends for my mental comfort. Decisions to make, those I can't make because they're not mine to make, too many wait and see's.
Tonight before we put the girls to bed I played a few hymns on the piano. I remember this one from church when I was a little girl. I didn't understand it like I do now, but I remember if made me feel equipped.
"We have an anchor that keeps the soul
"Steadfast and sure while the billows roll.
"Fastened to the Rock which cannot move,
"Grounded firm and deep in the Saviours love."

Back to Eden Update (1)

     This post is specifically for Arla, since she specifically asked for it. :-)
      Last week we finally got summer sunshine. Most of the month of June was cold and wet. It was that way so long that only the worst of whiners were still whining; everyone else was resigned. And then there were some of us who finally lost all hope and started to complain for the first time. But finally it got nice and hot and now everyone is happy. Except for those who don't like it hot.
     We didn't one day go out and plant the whole garden. Jay has been planting different crops all spring and summer. Most things are doing well. There were some brassicas (broccoli,  cauliflower,  kohlrabi, ) that got too cold and never took off. Today I found the cure for them. Feed them to the chickens. I don't like to see an unhealthy plant; it makes me feel bad, like a failure.  But on the positive side, I've harvested two very nice heads of broccoli.  And there will be more soon.
      The beans are looking pretty good, in spite of the fact that there seems to be a rodent doing some "logging".  Does anyone else know about this? Three inch bean plants being chewed off? They grow again, but those poor little plants do make me feel bad.
     The tomatoes are doing very well in the greenhouse. They are sprawling all over and putting on fruit. We also have basil and cilantro growing in there.  I love having them fresh!
     So, all in all all is well. 
      I LOVE MULCH.  I used to look at the gardens with a sinking heart because of the weeds. My favorite flower bed demanded one whole day a week to keep it decent. Of course it never got that. Now I can get around to the big flowerbed, the picture window flowerbed, and the herb garden in one day. And then I can enjoy them for two or three weeks before I have too weed again.
     The test on moisture retention is yet to come. The "Back to Eden" theory claims no need to water. I know we'll water less, but no water? We shall see.

Rainy Day Domestic Bliss

Coffee, clean dishes, clean laundry, messy living room, fire in the woodstove.

Back to Eden Project

http://backtoedenfilm.com/ This is a link to the website that tells about the film that we watched that changed the garden that Jay planted.  If the blogger app for android would allow me a little more mobility, I would tell you the whole story in the "house that Jack built" style, complete with pictures.  Since either me or that app doesn't know how to caption pictures, I will give you pictures and a short story and you get to line everything up yourself.
     Back in March, our friends, Josh and Jessie, gave us a gardening video to watch. It was called Back to Eden, and if you follow the link I won't have to elaborate much. (You don't have to watch the whole movie; 20 minutes should put you in the know. ) Briefly, the idea is to mulch heavily with a good mixture of organic matter and you won't have to water, weed, or fertilize your garden.
     Ok, so yes, that is too good to be true. But we are quite willing to cut back on watering, weeding, and fertilizing. Our well is a little bit wimpy and we have just as many weeds as anybody (maybe more, because we don't like to spray poisons around). We've built up our soil quite a bit with cow manure, peat moss, and organic fertilizer, but that also is an endless job.
     So, after watching this film, Jay called a local pulp mill and found out they have a big pile of the proper stuff - ground up wood, already beginning to decompose.  He procurred three dumptruck loads of it for a decent price and then we spread the joy on all our gardens.
     It looks nice and neat. So far it has cut back on weeding. I don't know for sure why I want to have babies and flowerbeds at the same time; sometimes the flowerbeds really suffer. But this year my perennials look bigger and greener and I am not hopelessly behind on my weeding. I'm just a little bit behind.
      This whole summer will be an experiment in gardening, but some of the test results are already coming in. One example is the radishes. Normally, the radishes we grow are woody, small, and carved up from nematodes. This year they are small, but only because we don't want to wait to eat the perfect little things.
     And since gardening is a never-ending mystery and joy, the pursuit of the perfect soil continues. Our soil, as well as the mulch, tested low in nitrogen. Jay is also curious about the trace minerals content in the soil. His research is getting very interesting and a bit complex. Did you know that your soil needs to have all this good stuff in it, but unless the pH of your soil is right the plants can't use it? Well, now you know.
     I would post a picture of those radishes, but we ate them all before I could get a picture.
   

April Goodness

The month of April brought new growth (and work) in the gardens.
My birthday is in April. The bouquet of tulips and the tiered dessert platter are birthday gifts.
We got some chicks. Light Brahmas as layers.  Olivia is in love with the chicks.  She will spend as long as we allow, cuddling them and rocking them to sleep. Yes, they do go to sleep. :)
The 29th was our 7th wedding anniversary.  We left the girls with Shilah and her family and went to Sandpoint overnight. We came home with Goodwill treasures, a kiddie pool, and a flat of herbs. We bought herbs for landscaping, because the deer don't care for culinary herbs. That'll be the day when they go gourmet! I really hope they never do.
The picture of the girls was taken at Grandma's.

Wabi- sabi

I first encountered the term wabi-sabi in a child's book I had gotten from the local library. The setting of the story was Japan, and the main character was a cat.
The cat in the child's story, whose name was "Wabi-sabi", was an unremarkable brown tabby. Wabi Sabi went on a journey to find the meaning of her name. She discovered that wabi-sabi is a type of beauty. It is the beauty of  the  commonplace, the imperfect, the impermanent,  the incomplete.
Jay and I were intrigued with this concept because it is so much the way we view our world, our home, our gardens. I love the philosophy of it. It makes sense; it's what I have learned about life so far. It's my favorite sort of beauty. The chocolate and the smile on my two-year-old's face after a cookie; my brown sweater that, although it is not fashionable, for some reason I like its lines and the way it feels; the rock wall in my flower bed; that heirloom quilt on Olivia 's bed; the red weathered barn door with bright green moss growing on it; my husband's kind brown eyes, the way he looks in jeans and flannel shirt (don't tell him- he thinks I hate that shirt!); our lane, the way it wends and climbs. The imperfection and fluctuation of life. Knowing that your friends and family are not perfect, but learning to appreciate and love them for what they are. Being grateful for the little things, because sometimes that's all you can find to be grateful for.
At first I wanted to take this philosophy and find its origin in Christianity. Because the ideas are most certainly there! "Be content with such things as ye have." "In everything give thanks." "Love covereth over a multitude of sins." "Suffer the little children to come unto me." "The lilies of the field, they toil not, neither do they spin." "Blessed are the poor in spirit......" In the end, I decided to let wabi-sabi be what it is. It is the name given by Japanese tradition to a truth that is also labelled in God's Word as thankfulness, contentment, kindness, modesty, peace, meekness. And so on. I believe that every truth, every good thing, comes from God whether He is recognized or not.
Our lives are full of wabi-sabi. Our lives are full of God's blessings. Our lives are not perfect. Our faces have lines; our shovels get rusty; people's vices and virtues are often hard to tell apart, but we love them anyway.
I don't know what heaven is like. The descriptions of it in the Bible don't sound very wabi-sabi. That's ok. Somehow I think that wabi-sabi is something just for now. It's a concept that our finite minds can grasp without hurting too much. Maybe it's just a way of dealing with the disappointment of earth, after all! For now I'm grateful. In heaven, may the beauty of perfection reign!

Stinky Babies

Dear husband of mine, please don't fertilize these tomato and broccoli babies with that whatever it is! again. The house smells like a dog pound.