A Mother's Journal ~ A Bit of Birdsong

Would you laugh if I told you my garden keeps me grounded?  (I crack myself up sometimes.)  Thank goodness there is something to keep me grounded around this crazy place.  My life is a whirlwind and sometimes I think I’m the only one who has a whirlwind kind of life, but I know that’s not so.  Is your life crazy too?  (If it’s not, please don’t answer.  Just pretend, okay?)

I love just about everything.  It’s a big problem.  I love to paint, I love to garden, I love to work with clay and string and paper.  I love to write.  I love to harvest wild things and eat like a caveman.  I love to go to thrift stores and then organize my clutter and putter around like a 90-year-old person without any cares in the world except puttering around.  I love to eat.  I love to cook.   I love playing with our baby bunnies and gathering greens for them.  I love to walk through the neighborhood and visit and I love getting together with the homeschool group.  I hate typing. 

Therein lies a huge problem.  Huge, I tell you! 

I’m a jack of all trades and master of none, I suppose, and I hate typing.  That can be written as my epitaph.  It does not matter to me if it is. I am a good typist.  I can type really fast.  I’m a good speller.  Spelling is easy.  (Don’t say anything if I misspell something, okay?)  When I was in high school I failed my typing class, I’m embarrassed to say, because I would just place my hands on the keyboard and pretend I was typing really fast and none of the letters would be right, though I really did know where the letters were.  All of them.  I said I would NEVER, in a million trillion bazillion years type for a living.

As I said, I’m embarrassed by this because I would be really mad at my kids if they did something like that.  But I just hated it.  Hated it.  And I knew I’d never need it.  I never did progress past typing 101 (I know the typing teacher was thrilled), but I still learned to type.  Well.

I type for a living.  (Insert insane laughter here.)

If you wanted to spend your morning reading the rambling words of a slightly crazed work-at-home mom who homeschools and loves everything except typing, you’ve come to the right place. 

I’ll quit talking about that now.  I just wanted to illustrate how life can give you exactly what you did not expect and you can still be happy and function with it. 

My mom and I have this inside joke.   Sometimes she will call me and when I say hello, she’ll say, “I’m just standing and looking around.” 

It’s then my turn to say, “Oh NO!”

Or I will call her and when she says hello, I’ll say, “I’m just standing and looking around.”

Then she says, “Oh NO!”

Maybe we’re the only one who does this, but do you ever look around your house and you just know everything’s got to change?  Furniture needs to be moved around, decluttering must be done, all curtains must be washed — or better yet, ripped down and replaced with new handmade ones!  It’s a day for upheaval and you know it and you are just standing and taking in what’s left of life as you knew it before you dive in.

Beware!  It can lead to arguments when hubby comes home and the place where he normally sets his toolbox has been moved and is being used now as a plant stand and then he trips over the loveseat which has been moved — not only to a different spot but to a different room!   He won’t say too much, though, because he realizes that if you are in one of those moods where you can move a loveseat through the house by yourself, he does not want to pick a fight.  Danger.

So, yeah.  I decided to just illustrate (I like that word today) what kind of mood I’m in.  I must be at some kind of magic 7-year mark or something because my living room looks like a U-Haul.  Every other room is getting cleaner and cleaner and lighter and lighter, and I’m planning for a HUGE yardsale soon.  The living room is “the storage room’ right now.  I told hubby that last night and he said, “Uh, okay.” 

“Be careful,” I told him.

He said, “Uh, okay.”

I’m sort of running out of steam here, and I need to get busy tearing out more stuff.  I’m getting ready to go into another room and stand and look around for a bit.  Now that you know what that means you can say, “Oh NO!”

Friday I have to type, but until then, life is perfect.  And even when I have to type, I can’t complain.

Enjoy this day.

Don’t Do What You Like.  Like What You Do.

I love that little quote.  I have to take hold of it and apply it to my life.  I have to make myself take hold of it some days. 

I was thinking last night about how I wish I could get my house cleaned up — the whole thing, all at one time.  Seems that never happens anymore.  I get a few rooms cleaned up, but then there’s a row of baskets of clothes to be folded somewhere and a bathroom that didn’t get cleaned yet.  Or a few rooms will be done and there’s a large stack of papers in one room to be sorted and filed and a child’s room that looks like they just held a bag sale with people fighting over things and tumbling through things and then tossing them aside.  Big sigh.

My August Beauty Gardenia is in bloom right now. It makes my garden The Scented Garden

Last night as I was going through baskets of clean clothes that were not dealt with immediately upon coming out of the dryer, I looked at all the wrinkles.  I was so close to a tearful frustration anyway, I felt like crying.  Then I thought of one of my bestest friends in the whole world, who never folds a blanket or sheet or tablecloth, but sort of rolls them up and sticks them on the linen shelf because she does not care about wrinkles in her linens.  She’s got books to read and places to go!  I decided that instead of worrying about wrinkled T-shirts, I will be glad that my children have learned to be happy in wrinkled T-shirts (well, all but one of them anyway).

The gardenia is a lovely bloom. One bloom brought inside will scent a room.

I want to wear a joyful countenance while tending my own little garden of life, including during the times when I have to pull weeds or dig hard soil.  I want to remember that there will be days of sunny skies, brightly blooming flowers, birds singing, and baskets of fruit to look forward to.  I don’t know of many greater gifts that I could pass onto my children than a positive attitude.

A little wren has built a nest in this gourd. The parents fly back and forth tending the babies.

I have to work today, but I have had a wonderful week.  The menu cards are working out well.  I will share this week’s worth later.  I’ve still been caught in a last minute situation on a couple of days, but the things I had on hand helped me get by!  Think stocked pantry.

The grape vine that welcomes us into the vegetable garden is loaded with grapes this year. 

You know this time of year was made for walks through the garden and creature appreciation classes. There’s an abundance of nature to take school lessons from. Are you wondering about a creature in the picture above? Do you see it?

It’s a large dragonfly that darted around the garden the other morning as I was wandering around. 

Remember to wander around outside a bit today, looking at nature.  Even the tiniest creatures have something to say.

Just thinking this afternoon.  This morning was the last FIAR co-op of the year.  It was, as usual, worth every ounce of effort.  We mostly studied Benjamin Franklin, but more about that later.

This afternoon I came home, took a short nap, and woke up in very much a thinking mood.  Sometimes we just need to think — about what’s worked, what has not.  You know.

We have had an amazing, deep, cleansing rain here in the last few days.  We got inches and inches of rain, and oh did we need it.  The picture of the goldfish pond, above, was taken after the rain.  Can you see the difference in the water in this picture and the pictures posted yesterday which were from before the rain?  (I have more goldfish pictures that I’ll post later.)  There’s nothing like a cleansing rain. 

Sometimes a nice long period of sitting down and doing nothing but thinking is like a cleansing rain for me.  I tend to do and go, do and go, all the time, sometimes too spontaneously, when suddenly I find myself drained and ready to throw every little thing out the window. 

If I did only one thing, I suppose I would not get like this.  Drained.  The little ant has one focus, and does it so very well that he was mentioned in the bible.   Am I foolish for doing so many things?  Maybe I am foolish for not planning better so that something less important doesn’t overrun something more important.

What a difference the rain makes.

Well, it’s just a thinking time.  That’s all. 

I have dreams.  Dreams of perfect days and gladness and joy.    When my highest thoughts in their purest form take their wings.  Sometimes I feel the cool relief of the faintest breeze under my wings and my feet stretch out, toes barely touching the ground. 

But as easily and quickly as it came, the joyous current dies, and my wings fall away, into the clashing sounds of responsibility and burden.  It it were not for the contentment in serving and the fine honing that comes from persevering, there would be no need in going on.

Anyway, dreams don’t die easily.  They can be put away, put down, shut up, spoken to harshly, and pressed and pressed again by the weight of what one must do.

Dreams have a way of preserving themselves and coming back again, in a keener and keener form.  Like a knocking at the door that won’t go away, dreams call and call again, sure that you need what they hold out to you.

So it’s good to listen and to bring the dreams out and to nurture them and run after them.  No matter how pressed down dreams have been, they are still just as strong — maybe stronger, and they shine better than before.

Sometimes, with the pressing, dreams just get more and more beautiful.  With the pressing, perfect days become more precious.  With the pressing that is life, we learn a strength and determination that could have come no other way.

With the pressing, we see colors we never knew were in us, and ideas and thoughts that could never have made it to the surface, without the pressing.  Thus I choose to keep believing that, like cream rising to the top of a worn pitcher in an old country kitchen, some sweet day my dream will surface, fully formed, and I’ll have my wings.

PS — Sometimes I just need to ramble. It’s a rocky road some days, but you are welcome to come with me.

I want that to be true about myself.  It’s something my mother says in regards to herself, and I admire that about her.  It’s part of being content: being able to take a little something and be happy with it. 

When it comes to working at home, I think the most enormous challenge is staying at the desk.  A desk that’s in your house.  All day.   All.  Day.  Long.

Some days, I have conversations with myself all day.

The curtains upstairs sure could stand to be washed.  

Hey, you must stay at your desk. 

Oh, the sun is so bright, it would be so nice to be in the garden. 

Uh, you gotta stay at your desk.

That’s right!  I got a new seed catalog in the mail yesterday!  I want to go look at it.

Listen, hardhead, stay at your desk.

So, what I do is focus on some little thing that I can do on a break or during lunch that’ll make me happy.  It’s a little something to look forward to, and then a little something to think on afterwards.  On Saturday, I washed the vintage-looking soap dish in my kitchen window and put in a new bar of soap.  Do you know I could smell that soap all the way to my little desk in my little office off my little kitchen?  It made me happy.  Lord, let me be happy with little things.