Pausing for a minute

 Sometimes in the whirlwind of life, I pause long enough to catch glimpses of beauty, growth  and progress. I try to stop and luxuriate in the sweetness of it before the next demand on my time brings me back to whatever task is at hand.  Here are a few throwback photos from this summer that melt my heart like butter. 

This Bouquet

This bouquet whispers to me about courage, victory and overcoming defeat. It challenges me to persevere, grow, and believe. It reminds me that it takes time to cultivate beauty and that beauty is a worthy pursuit.

Last winter I when started sighing over seed catalogues and sobbed over the loss of yet another box of dahlia tubers that didn't make it through the winter, I considered giving up on what felt like a frivolous pursuit. I questioned my ability to keep up with seed trays and a planting schedule in light of many more pressing demands on my time and energy. And yet, I didn't. Instead I bought MORE seed trays, MORE dahlia tubers and carefully organized my seeds so that I knew exactly what needed to be planted where and when. I drew up garden plans according to sunlight requirements and purchased a ten year garden journal from Lee Valley to document my journey. I hurled myself into gardening with  fervor, planting a whole garden bed of dahlias from seed. I carefully potted up hundreds of snapdragons with a toothpick, presoaked sweet peas and carefully nurtured hundreds of seedlings all the while believing that I was insane to do so. I knew that there was no guarantee that it would amount to anything, and yet I pushed past this doubt because my soul longs for beauty as well as the  thrill of imagining something and bringing it to fruition. 

Each time I gathered an armload of tall, luscious, multi-hued blooms I would find myself musing -"what else can I cultivate"? What else could I succeed at? What else am I pouring my time and energy into that would produce so much loveliness. For me the obvious answer is my children.  Like those tedious snapdragons that took forever to amount to anything, I am beginning to see growth and beauty in  areas of my children's lives that has taken YEARS to nurture. Choosing to be home and labor alongside them in their formative years has not been an easy choice and there are days where my heart aches for other pursuits, but when I look at the fruit of my decision, I am overcome with gratitude that I have stuck with it. 

Currently: April

Enjoying

When my children bring me handmade cards, un-solicited head rubs and a hot cups of tea. 

Listening

To "Just Like Heaven" by Brandon Lake on repeat. 

Reading

The Question by Leigh A Bortins

Contemplating

Becoming a director for Classical Conversations. I have been asked to be the "lead learner" for the Grade nine class. Gulp! It  would require a great deal of planning and intention. 

Delighting

All the tulips, fritillaria, and daffodils that I planted in the fall are unfolding and bringing a burst of color to the verdant sea of green in my yard.

Thinking 

About where I would like to go on my 20th anniversary trip with my husband. We have been saving points for this trip for a long time. The options are endless and overwhelming. 

Currently

Potting up the dahlia's I grew from seed and hopefully sowing some amaranth seeds today.  

Learning

About Indigenous people across Canada with my children.  They have loved making pemmican, learning how to weave and building wigwams and other traditional structure on our property. 

Reading 

Calm my Anxious Heart by Linda Dillow. I would highly recommend this book if you struggle with anxiety. 

Dreaming 

Of rows upon rows of sunflowers, cosmos and dahlias. 

Baking

Sourdough bread

Planning

My garden maps and making lists of curriculum to order for next year. 

Longing 

To spend an entire day in my garden planting out all the seedlings that have taken over my boot room. .

Garden House

 This is a post I wrote last June but I never posted it. How I long for the green that Spring brings! 

This morning I stumbled out of my bed at 5:30 and started the kettle, not so that I could enjoy a cup of tea, but rather to warm up goat milk for an orphaned fawn. It would seem, that in this particular season of my life, I am learning and re-learning how to adjust to every changing demand of life. Sometimes it feels as though those demands will crush me, however, I want to believe that they are refining and helping me prioritize better. The truth is, while my character is undoubtedly being shaped, many things are being cast to the wayside: like cleaning my home, doing laundry, working out, and carving out time to read in the morning. What, you may ask, is taking precedence in my life other than keeping a fawn and a small herd of children alive? The answer is gardening. It consumes the majority of my waking thoughts. It's all I want to do. |I wish I could say that I was devoting my energy to finishing our homeschool year strong, as we only have a mere four weeks left, but the truth is, we are doing the bare minimum and enjoying every available moment outdoors.  Needless to say, my house is in shambles. There is a name for this condition; my friends over a Homemaker Chic podcast lovingly refer to it as "garden house". Essentially, you are spending so much time out of doors raking, sewing seeds, transplanting, watering, and scheming where to plant things that everything else in your life is put on the back burner. You have chronically dirty fingernails, dirty floors, and mountains of dishes. It's all about priorities and we all only have 24 hours in each day. When I am not gardening we are saying "yes" to all the people. Sometimes at the same time. I can't tell you how many times I have parked a guest on a chair in my garden so that I could visit while I gardened. I call it "productive visiting". I intend to have a really tidy and clean house this fall when the ground is covered with frost and decaying leaves but right now everything is bursting with life and beauty and I want to soak up every blessed moment. 

Setting aside time to write

I am setting aside two mornings per week to write. Something deep inside me needs an outlet for expression, not just because I live a fairly isolated existence but also because my children are not yet riveting conversationalists.  I long to share my heart and its musings in a meaningful way.  I suppose it is a therapy of sorts, an unraveling of the spaghetti that is my brain. 

I love reading works of literature that invite the reader into the inner dialogue of its author. It's like climbing into people's minds to understand how they arrive at their various conclusions. Some of my recent favorites include The Secrets Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert: An English Professor's Journey into Christian Faith"  by Rosaria Butterfield. I also recently enjoyed The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Murial Barbery and The Truth and Beauty: How the Lives and Works of England's Greatest Poets Point the Way to a Deeper Understanding of the Words of Jesus by Andrew Klaven. 

Both reading and writing are an invitation to contemplation and to wrestling with ideas.   Truthfully, I have felt a little exhausted wrestling with ideas the past two years, particularly in light of all the conflicting information that has steamed rolled my direction.  I find myself struggling with the temptation not to think, but rather to stuff every waking moment with someone else's thoughts and opinions on a particular matter. Some of the content I consume is incredibly encouraging, insightful, and motivating but some of it is complete drivel.

It's unhealthy and I am making a concerted effort to invite silence back into my life. Often that looks like sitting in my bay window with a hot cup of tea in the afternoon, just relishing the view. In doing so I find myself more refreshed than I would have if I had spent that time scrolling through Instagram. 

Over the past two years, I have had an uncanny aversion to writing. Even journaling has taken a back seat. I think perhaps,  I am afraid to feel the weight of my emotions and instead, have used podcasts and other diversions to avoid having to sit with my emotions. I know that it is unhealthy and I am making a concerted effort that change that.

Currently: September

 Listening

To Patrick Mayberry song "Holy Spirit Come".

Reading 

              The Question: Teaching your child the essentials of Classical Education by Leigh A Bortins                                            The Psalms: Poetry on Fire by the Passion Translation                               Created To be His Help Meet: Discover how God can make your marriage glorious by Debi Pearl                              Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of your Child by Anthony Esolen                                    It Can Be Done: Poems of Inspiration by Joseph Morris and St Clair Adams

Thinking

about the philosophy of classical education, how to plan my days better and how LOOP subjects during our home-schooling week. 

Learning

How to be a better wife to my husband 

Memorizing

Psalm 119:33-40 with my children

Dreaming

About frosty mornings and crackling fires

Baking

At least 1-2 sourdough loaves a week

Planning

Out my month in advance. This means blocking out certain parts of my day for specific activities like working out, writing, gardening and being hospitable. 

Longing

For proper fencing to keep our curious goats contained. They are stripping bark of our trees, raking their horns on our lilac buses and nibbling our bamboo to oblivion. 

Eating

Lots of croissant sandwiches with homemade bacon, freshly picked cherry tomatoes and asiago cheese. 

Contemplating

Creating my own YouTube channel and asking Amelia to teach me how to edit film 

Ordering

Heap and heaps of books. I have a long list of books on my kindle that I read though the pandemic that I would like to have in hard copy. Namely "How Shall We Then Live" by Fracis A. Shaeffer and "Live Not by Lies: A Manuel for Christian Dissidents" by Rod Dreher. So worth reading, underlining and bookmarking. 

Trying

To work out four days a week. My shoulder is finally allowing me to do let downs and my back is permitting deadlifts and squats. Hallelujah!

Watching

The new "Rings of Power" on Amazon Prime. Unfortunately, it bears little resemblance to Tolkien's work and doesn't hold a candle to the "Lord of Rings" trilogy. Booo

Aspiring 

To verbally appreciate my husband more

Appreciating

How diligent my daughter is at doing her schoolwork. She is so motivated to keep up with her peers at Classical Conversations and eagerly looks forward to community classes on Friday. 

Wearing

My green safari style, button up dress with leather moccasins and a vintage jean jacket from a friend. 

Working 

On wainscoting a half wall in my basement. I have all the necessary materials, I just need some time and inspiration to get it done.  

Rejoicing

That I managed to put in my fall/winter garden last week. I planted three kinds of kale, beets, swiss chard, rosemary, stevia, lettuce, sugar snap peas and leeks.  

Preserving

 I am proud of the fact that I have processing produce from our garden on a regular basis. I have grated heaps of zucchini for the freezer, made numerous Greek salads from our cucumbers and cherry tomatoes and recently canned tomato sauce and pickles with my hubby. We have picked a ton of blackberries and look forward to making jelly with them. 

Multicultural Upbringing.

Lately I have been reflecting on my multicultural upbringing.  It feels strange to say that, given that I grew up  in a small, isolated community on the west Coast of B.C. However, the  combination of a deep sea port and  sawmill drew a diverse population of immigrant families to our community.  

While we were not poor,  our family lived in a singlewide trailer. My dad firmly believed that it was important to live within our means and remain debt free. As a child I had no idea that living in a trailer park had negative stereotypes. All I knew, is that I lived at the foot of a mountain and that the forest and the rivers that lay beyond were mine for the exploring. My world consisted of  building forts, exploring rivers, leaping off our local dock into the cold ocean, exploring caves, exploring our inlet in our skiff, and riding my bike with the other neighbourhood children. Our living room window looked out on a incredible mountain vista. 

It was not uncommon to see up to ten eagles perched on a nearby snag or witness black bear wrangling our garbage bin.  Many mornings we had to bang pots and pans to scare them away so that we could access our bicycles. 

We were blessed to be surrounded by families of Asian, Punjabi, Italian, Polish, German, Russian and Yugoslavian descent. It was in this tiny village that my fascination with other cultures and religions began.  

I remember one particular  Russian family who invited us over for steaming bowls of Borsht, which we ate with tiny, painted wooden spoons. Borst became one of our families favorite dishes and I secretly loved grossing out my schoolmates out when I opened my thermos at lunchtime. They thought my favorite soup looked like eyeballs soaked in blood. They had no idea what they were missing out on.   Their father played bag pipes in his yard- a sound shook my bones.  Our Ukrainian neighbour introduced us to Ukrainian eggs and it has since become a tradition to paint them each Easter - a painstaking operation that my husband  has much more patience for than I do. Two of my closest, neighborhood playmates were Punjabi. I still remember the way their long, thick braids would bounce on their backs as we ran around other trailers in our neighbourhood. I easily recall the incredible aroma of curry that would waft out  their home when I would stopped by to pick them up for our daily trot to school. Our family had the pleasure of being welcomed into many Punjabi families lives and they kindly taught my mother how to make roti, pakora and samosa. To our great pleasure, it became regular fare at our dinner table. After school I would sometimes visit my Indian aunties and they would feed me warm, buttery roti filled with brown sugar. I remember watching their strong, deft fingers expertly reach into the hot pans and flip the flatbread at just the right moment. It was magical. Many years later I got to sit with Muslim women in Zanzibar and watch them prepare something similar in the streets for their children. I wanted time to stop. 

 My mom enjoyed a close friendship with a woman of Chinese descent and it was in her home that I was introduced to egg rolls. I inhaled her son's collection of anime comics. In school I became aquatinted with a young polish man.  I vividly remember the stories he would recount of his difficult childhood in Poland. 

My mother intentionally nurtured a profound appreciation for different cultures. One of my favourite yearly events was a multicultural dinner that  she would host with her friends. I can't remember if it was the ladies axillary or our church.. I just remember tables laden with textiles, dishes and relics of people's home countries. It gave them an opportunity to share their culture and treasures with the community. Each table provided cuisine from their home country and a glimpse into their world.  I felt like a minority basking in the beauty of other cultures.  I remember wondering how they left their country to come to our rainy, isolated village.  Of course I wasn't aware until much later,  of the poverty, government corruption and desperation that existed in their homelands. They all had different stories but the common thread was that they wanted to give their  children better opportunities than they had. 

When we weren't enjoying far flung cuisine at our neighbours homes we were welcoming missionaries to our table. Our home was a revolving door for guests, neighbours, and sometimes perfect strangers. In one bizarre instance I woke up to find a stranger sleeping on our couch. It turns out he was a homeless man who had come to visit our community and wound up on our couch as there were no local services. We invited him to join us for breakfast and then sent him on his way with a bagged lunch.

It grieves me that my children are not exposed to other cultures the way that I was. They hear the beautiful south African accent  in our church but don't rub shoulders, visit homes and get to know people from different backgrounds like I did. I try to compensate for it but cooking ethics dishes and choose curriculum  that explores other cultures, but it is still a far cry from my own experience. I long to travel with my children and expose them to the color, vibrancy, and beauty of other cultures. In the meantime we read them living books and tales about children growing up in other cultures. We recently finished reading  "Amal Unbound" by Aisha Saeed. It is the tale of a young girl who becomes an indentured slave when she challenges a powerful, rich family in her community. We just started a novel study called Underground to Canada by Barbara Smucker. It recounts the storey of a young slave girl and her journey to freedom. Both have been springboard for conversations about difficult things as well as an opportunity to learn about another culture. More than anything, I want them to develop an appreciation and curiosity about other people and cultures.