Simple Woman's Daybook

May 30, 2020

Outside my window...it is snowing crabapple petals. Much more welcome than the usual variety. 

I am thankful... for my family. We look quite a bit different than we did when I was regularly visiting this blog, but it is still very good to be part of this group.  

In the kitchen... I haven't been up to much lately. We've been scooping ice cream and plopping it on top of brownies for the last three nights running. We have a Senior to celebrate in the midst of all this chaos called COVID-19 and we've chosen to spread out the party outside in the front yard and offer drive through dessert as an option.

I am wearing... flip flops. At long, last!

I am creating... a new and improved garden. We are replacing the boards on the raised garden and it is a job and a half. I'm digging and sifting dirt and generally getting very grubby. So fun!

I am wondering... a lot of things just now. Let's just leave it at that.

I am reading... Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. It's a perennial favorite. I am preparing to watch the 2019 version with the girls and I wanted to read the book again before I do that.

I am hoping... to get this garden reworked in time for it to grow and prosper. I'm ready for fresh veggies and flowers.

I am looking forward to... summer. We had a taste of it last week, and now the plants I put in the garden this morning will need to be shielded from potential frost for the next couple of days.

I am learning... how to garden with the square foot method. I think I will like this! Hopefully, less weeding.

Around the house... I'm trying to propagate houseplants for gifts for the future. I can find fairly nice pots and give them as housewarming gifts. It's crazy what houseplants are going for at the flower shop!

I am pondering... how to thrive not only where, but when I find myself. These are new waters for many of us and for my part, I want to navigate them well.

A favorite quote for today... Bloom where you're planted.

One of my favorite things... is hanging out laundry on a sunny warm morning.

A few plans for the rest of the week: finish the garden. Get the consarned wretched (only because it's in the wrong place and taking over the garden) hydrangea. It's the spreading variety. I'm not a fan. 

A photo I am sharing: This happened this spring. The curly-headed girl graduated from our local junior college with her Associate's Degree and we are finally done homeschooling. We survived! I'm so proud of her.

I am taking part in The Simple Woman's Daybook.

Hope

This season of my life is quite different from the original purpose of this blog. I'm no longer the mom of pipsqueaks. They have either flown the coop or are on the brink of it. They've officially lost their pipsqueak status.

The things I think about are not so homeschoolcentric. But hope transcends time in a way that many things cannot.

I hoped my kids would build their lives on a solid foundation that would serve them well. I still hope for that. I hoped that they would become people capable of contributing meaningful things to the world around them. I still hope for that. I hoped that we would build relationships that would last and be full of love. I still hope for that.

I'm reading Biola University's Advent calendar again this year. It continues to be excellent in form and in content. I recommend it. This first week is about hope. Where does hope come from? Is it just a desire for better things, a longing for the world to be set right, or is it deeper and founded on something more substantial?

I'm not so sure that the answers to those questions can be found in anything we can conceive on our own, or even in the human capacity for goodness. Our own attempts to explain what we experience tend to be inadequate. At our best, we're all a little broken.

The Caged Skylark
By Gerard Manley Hopkins

As a dare-gale skylark scanted in a dull cage,
          Man's mounting spirit in his bone-house, mean house, dwells —
            That bird beyond the remembering his free fells;
This in drudgery, day-labouring-out life's age.
Though aloft on turf or perch or poor low stage
            Both sing sometímes the sweetest, sweetest spells,
            Yet both droop deadly sómetimes in their cells
Or wring their barriers in bursts of fear or rage.

Not that the sweet-fowl, song-fowl, needs no rest —
Why, hear him, hear him babble & drop down to his nest,
           But his own nest, wild nest, no prison.

Man's spirit will be flesh-bound, when found at best,
But uncumberèd: meadow-down is not distressed
            For a rainbow footing it nor he for his bónes rísen.

In a nutshell, this. If we place our hope in ourselves, we're bound to be deeply disappointed. We need something that transcends time. Or someone. Thus the reason for this first week of Advent. Hope has a name: Jesus.

Steady as She Goes

Our world has lost another hero this week. This man was not one you have likely heard of. He wasn't famous. He wasn't flashy. He was just a quiet man who went his quiet way through life. Steady and ordinary. He would have been the first to say he was no one special.

The two things I will always remember about Henry are his sweet corn and his dogs. I loved the one and feared the other. Every summer, he gave our family of seven enough sweet corn to put some in the freezer. It was an all day process, blanching the corn and shaving it off the ears into the freezer containers. I am still searching for sweet corn that tastes like his. It was the best. Henry's wife, Audrey, was my piano teacher, so every week for several years I went to his farm. I liked the lessons well enough, but I sure didn't like the dogs. Henry trained his dogs to guard his house, and they did a good job.

Henry was born on a farm in Illinois in 1923. After he survived the Great Depression and graduated from High School, he joined the United States Navy and was trained as a mechanic. Day in and day out, he and his mates kept their ships in good operating condition.

Photo Credit: US Army, Harry S. Truman Library and Museum

On June 6, 1944, Henry was pulled out of the engine room by a superior officer and directed to use a long pole to keep the bodies of his dead comrades out of the path of the landing craft. This was his job for the rest of the day. Seventy-two years later he told me the story. We were visiting with him and Audrey in their room at the Care Center.

He answered some of our questions, and then he sat caught in his thoughts. Several minutes later, he rejoined the conversation as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred. All his life he carried that memory with him, yet he was one of the kindest, steadiest men I have known. It is true that he was a hero for his actions on June 6, 1944; but Henry was a hero to me because of the life he lived after that day.

Double Chocolate Muffins

Our new favorite breakfast muffin recipe can be found at this link. Don't tell Mom, but it's almost like eating chocolate cake. We like to make them with dark cocoa powder because double chocolate is not enough. The good news is - this recipe makes about 16 muffins; enough for afternoon snacks.

Orange Candles

This time of year I am anticipating the long, dark winter so I'm searching out warmth in all its forms. Shorter days bring out the need for comfort.

The straight-haired girl made orange candles. We melted down two tapers that were past their prime and poured the wax into clove studded orange hemispheres. They have burned for quite a while now, giving off light and warmth and a wonderful holiday aroma.

Love Letters

Every year the Minnesota Association of Christian Home Educators hosts a convention for the entire state. The location rotates between Duluth, the Twin Cities, and Rochester. Rochester is six and a half hours away from where we live, and we don't always go on those years. When the convention was in Rochester several years back, I went to an alternative convention put on by the Duluth homeschool group. Although I missed the ginormous room full of used books at MACHE, the CORE convention was excellent.

Tracey Finck was one of the presenters that day, and what she had to say really lit a fire in my brain. I go back and read my notes every once in a while when I am discouraged, and I always come away feeling better about our school journey. She's the author of the little paperback book Love Letters to a Child. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to use the medium of journaling to enrich the relationship they share with their children.

The Woman Inside My Head

Day after day, we're bombarded by images of the outside of others' lives. We see perfectly styled photos of other homes, perfectly airbrushed images of other women. We read stories about people who save the world by age 27 and then juggle two careers, a family of seven, and find time to sew their own wardrobe on the side. And then we turn around to look at our mess. And most of the time, it's not even hot. (Why doesn't it occur to me to just. turn. off. the computer?!? Why?)

When I get overwhelmed by all that perfect input, I revert to the perfectionist in me that says, "Well, then. If I can't do every single aspect of my life as perfectly as they are, then I might as well not even try." And then, because the sane part of me realizes that's not good to completely disengage from life, I start paying just enough attention to my life so no one notices the lack. Or so I tell myself.

Just enough that my kids and my husband don't completely feel ignored, but not enough to actually say I am investing in their lives. Just enough to maintain connections with my friends, but not enough to say I am living in true community. And please, let's not even talk about the house and the menu.

Quite honestly, there are times when giving up seems like a good plan. I stop swimming upstream toward the life I want - not the perfect life I see on my Pinterest boards - the life I am thoughtfully working toward (most of the time). The life where I'm living, not just marking time.

If I want that life, then giving up is not really an option. Eventually, I get my head out of the fog long enough to realize that comparing myself to anyone else is an exercise in futility. I don't live anyone else's life. And when I lose sight of the reason I am swimming upstream, I need to hunker down, get some rest, and start thinking about why I'm doing any of this in the first place.

“Love always perseveres.”  - The Bible