On Second Thought: a Thanksgiving Post

Dear Lord.  How is it more than a month since my last post?  Argh.  Way waaaaay more.

OK.  So, it's not that I haven't started posts. 

There was one draft that I began back in early November, and all that I will say about it is that

"Time management."

was the first sentence (fragment).

I am not qualified to expound upon that subject...obviously.  Off to the virtual trash can it goes.

The second (circa a predictable 11/24) started off with this:

"Gratitude is pretty in these days.  So is talking about being 'blessed.'  Both of those words tend to make me feel a bit twitchy to be honest, but that is a symptom of their popularity and overuse rather than a deep-seated aversion to being genuinely thankful.  This is the second year, actually, that I've tried to write a Thanksgiving post, and my failing has nothing to do with how much gratitude I feel for the gifts I have in this life."

[...but it does signify the beginning of a long tradition in aborted gratitude posts, apparently.       *sigh*] 

*   *   *

So it is not that I've been lacking stories to tell, but rather that I am suddenly a much busier, employed person.  Then you add holiday prep/panic time and a catastrophic computer failure...and we end up...here.  With a sadly neglected blog and a few more gray hairs.  Would you like a quick update on the rest of my life?  Did I mention the sprained ankle?  The contractor who quit in the middle of a project for my new job, one that had already been delayed by three weeks--?        

--Wait.  That's not the stuff I want to share; that's just stress getting in the way again.  I want to talk about the good stuff, like my most recent bout of harvesting--yes, harvesting in the last few weeks of December.  I was on the prowl for plantain, if I could still find it growing in the yard, and also out to snip the last of the comfrey that had escaped frost damage.  Both, along with some of the calendula flowers I harvested and dried all summer, were for a healing salve that I planned to make for our home medicine chest as well as for gifts.  Jason was outside with me, and as I paced along, bent over and staring intently at the ground, I started to giggle. 

Plantain is a weed.  A prevalent and much-combatted one--in fact, my guess is that it is second only to dandelions as the weed most people could easily identify, due to their constant struggle to eradicate it from the lawn or flower beds.  And here I am, in the freezing cold with a scarf over my head like a peasant woman, combing the yard for this hated plant.  To use in a potion.  For healing.  Oh, poor Jason.  I laughed again.  How did I get to this place?  How did Jason get yoked into sharing his life with a crazy person harvesting weeds in December for Christmas gifts?

Jason was over by the chicken yard, talking to the girls, and he finally noticed me snorting to myself as I shivered and snipped comfrey leaves and asked what was so funny.  I joined him, explained, and we both laughed as we stood side by side, watching the girls beg for treats.  This is a good life.  A funny life, certainly, but a rich and satisfying one where we love each other dearly despite our glaring mental health issues, and where we can stand outside in the cold together, surveying our yard, chickens, garden, weeds with pride and contentment.  Where food and beauty and even medicine can be found just beyond the kitchen door, even in December when summer's gone and the living ain't easy for man nor beast nor fat, spoiled hen.  We have so much--so much of what counts.  I may not be capable of finishing a Thanksgiving post, but I am oh, so thankful.

When I started this blog, one reason was to write it as a project for school--to record my experiments in urban sustainability, and to keep a descriptive commentary going that others could use for their own purposes (hopefully as a guide for their own adventures and not just to laugh at my ridiculous musings!)   Well, the time has come to summarize this blogging experience in a paper, and I am already feeling nostalgic. 

The simple days of working on house-projects, caring for the girls and the garden, teaching four-year-olds about seeds, soil, and Nature, the long winter evenings snuggled on the couch with knitting needles whipping around industriously--now I have to find time for these luxuries on an increasingly crowded calendar.  Herein lies the basic dilemma of the two-income home:  who makes the home while both people are at work?  I don't know what the future of this blog is, or how frequently I will be able to write posts.  Now, more than ever, I realize the hard, cold value of time and labor; no matter how much I may want to reduce our consumption by making things ourselves, the truth is that there are only so many hours in a day.  How and where will I draw these lines? 

While I don't have these answers, I do have one:  I will still be posting here.  I have grown to love this strange blog world, an odd hybrid between a diary and pulpit where I am required to ponder life and Nature and lessons-learned and then offer up my ponderings under the bloggish-assumption that these thoughts are worth recording and sharing with you. 

Of course, the bottom line is that the girls have a responsibility to their public, and I am the only one who can type!

 

Happy New Year to all of you!  Thanks for reading!

Winter vacation to the Land of Knit

Well, let's see.  Is anyone else ready for spring?

Jason's company has been closed since Tuesday, thanks to several days of ice pelting from the heavens, and having stocked up at the grocery, we have been hibernating and celebrating our impromptu winter vacation with a sinful amount of snuggled-on-the-couch movie marathoning.  We've gone through every pajama-type article of clothing in the house.  The kitchen is piled high with dishes related to toasting homemade bagels and whipping up cheese omelets.

My friend Amy asked yesterday:  "How is it that being stuck at home for days means that my house is a complete mess?  You'd think, with all of this time to fill, it would be spotless--?"

Dear Seeds:  soon, I promise.  Really.

 I truly had more productive intentions for this week.  I started out to tackle the Great Seed Sort  and Garden Plan of 2011 during the ice storm and was promptly overwhelmed and exhausted by the vast sea of seed packets and plastic baggies, as ice relentlessly ticked and clicked at the windows.  So rather, than fighting it, I switched to dear, mindless knitting as a tiny, guilt-assuaging bit of productivity, and we've thoroughly enjoyed our mini vacation at home.  Barring some further session of Arctic fury, Jason will be back at work tomorrow, and I will be happy to shove the knitting in the cupboard and catch up in other areas--but it was really nice to simply spend these gray days together.  So, here is the sum of my industry for the week:

On the 42nd day of Christmas, my true love gave to me...a finished pair of socks.

And then, I just couldn't resist making something from this gorgeous merino blend for myself.  The yarn was a gift from a friend who has tried repeatedly to start knitting and gave up in exasperation, bestowing--in the process--this dreamy blue and green luxury upon my yarn stash.







 So, I decided to knit up a pair of fingerless gloves and a cowl, by way of my favorite glove pattern:  "Fetching" from www.knitty.com--a quick knit and with just enough flair to make them fun.

Apparently I'm still not sick of this pattern, because I am making another pair of the gloves for my long-neglected friend Amy, in a yarn that I picked out for this exact purpose many many moons ago.  I guess  this is another strategy to survive the winter doldrums--by gleefully soaking up such vibrant colors as though they were sunshine.









Despite the laziness of this week, I am relieved to say that my plans for school are really starting to sprout and flourish in the midst of apparent neglect--honestly, it seems that as soon as I deliberately refuse to stress and obsess the answers begin to pop up like flowers in my path. Once things are a little more certain I can't wait to share details, but for the moment, suffice it to say that chicken-raising seminars, school gardens, and urban homesteading manuals seem to loom in my future....