Summer's been a sea of slow, simple, busy, beautiful, heartbreaking, ordinary, too-swift days.
Living them is always enough, and I haven't felt like blogging, but I break this drought with solid evidence that photograph-happy bloggers (i.e. ABIGAIL HERSELF) are stupid. I'm in the middle of canning right now (and by "right now," I mean "two minutes ago before I ran into the sunroom to put up this post"), half-sunken in a slough of cucumbers, beans, and squashes; peppers, herbs, and peas. I found the time, however, to snap the following picture when I looked down at the work of my hands and found it lovely.
Ah. Freshly-picked dill weed, pungent and bright. Peppercorns, dark and round.
Then I laughed and took this picture to show the truth outside the frame. A sloppy vision of shredded zucchini, pickles ready for canning, elderberries, and a half-ne**id sidekick.
Then I took this picture to show the frame yet larger. Front and center is a box of miscellaneous stuff my dad just dropped off for me to sell on Ebay some fine day. Unseen are the pounds of green peppers behind me, and the stack of canning jars on the floor to the right.
Then, to top it off with a death blow of hilarity, I took a picture of the garlic skins, elderberry leaves, peppercorns, and playdough on which I stood.
At least the madness is mostly confined to the kitchen.
In less cluttered news, here are my dirty feet next to the season's first bowl of tomatoes. One hundred and twenty four plants, the majority grown from seed indoors and nutured into adulthood, are dying of blight, so I'll probably showcase every last bowl of these red beauties we get, with true gratefulness.
Father of grain, Father of wheat,
Father of cold and Father of heat,
....
Father of minutes, Father of days,
Father of whom we most solemnly praise.
p.s. There are so few cherry tomatoes because they always mysteriously disappear before they make it to the bowl. (Not one of us exercises self-control when it comes to cherry tomatoes.)
ReplyDeleteIn case anyone noticed, I did indeed change that opening sentence after the fact, cutting a "windy" and adding a "busy." This is not to say that we have not have windy days a'plenty. It's just that the windy days were also busy days. The slow days were even sometimes busy. TOO MUCH BUSY.
ReplyDeleteDear Abigail,
ReplyDeletePlease stop using the comments section of your own blog as a means to avoid making things for the noon picnic and evening company. I don't care if you're sick to death of busy. GET TO WORK.
Respectfully,
A Stranger Who Cares Enough About Your Screen Time to Comment Here, Which Is to Say (abigail herself)
Four comments!
ReplyDeleteI am loved!
Can we make that five?
ReplyDeleteFIVE!!!!!!!!!
And for good measure...
ReplyDelete!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
ReplyDeleteYou amaze me my friend!!!! I have to say the half nekked helper is adorable!
ReplyDeleteMary
Seriously though, how do you do it? Is that 7 kids now, and homeschooling and an awesome garden and a super sweet kitchen, etc. Etc, etc? I mean, how are you not always exhausted? Or are you? I ( only) have 5 kids and am mostly tired all the time from all the
ReplyDeleteschooling, cooking and cleaning, and general mama- ing. Is there a secret you' d like to share with me, yes, a total stranger, but also a faithful reader of your blog for some time now??? If so, thank you in advance!
Catherine in Kansas
Abigail,
ReplyDeleteYou've outdone yourself with this post. There are SO MANY COMMENTS--you have SO MANY FANS!!!
You made me chuckle, sister.
And I agree that the half-nekked helper is a must.
Much love,
Deborah
I love it all. Please extend yourself some grace for you are a busy Mom with a happy household. The aroma of that kitchen must be wonderful! But the best part - to be sure - is the,"half-nekked helper"!
ReplyDeleteMuch love!
Mary,
ReplyDeleteMy comments to myself are always amazing. :) Did I tell you that Ezekiel has run buck nekkid across the lawn to greet my Dad so many times this summer that my parents now call him "Wolf Boy?" Yup. Wolf Boy.
Catherine,
Hullo and welcome! What fun to know you spend some spare minutes here! Your question is loaded, and I'm not often brief. Sorry in advance...
#1. Read my last post ten times in a row. (Yeah, the one in which a flubbish mama cries in the bathroom.) Once in a while there are days like that. :)
#2. As our family size has grown, the garden size has grown, and the canning tally has grown. I'm blessed to be able to garden and preserve food for my family and consider it a necessary part of providing good food we otherwise wouldn't be able to afford, but I don't necessarily think it's fun. The first 12 jars are fun, and after that, we're all just hanging on until it's over. :) Thankfully, the children have grown, too! They are a HUGE help. There is no way I could do all this without their busy hands. Seriously. (And there's no way I'd want to.)
#3. Even with all this, I'm still sometimes up half the night canning, and, yup, I'm tired a lot. Most mamas are, I think, because mothering is encompassing even without the extra stuff of gardening, canning, learning, and....cleaning? Wait! Some mothers clean?!
#4. Whenever we're crossing off a to-do from the pesky list, something else is always not getting done, and that's okay. During canning season, we're not homeschooling. During the home learning year, I'm not canning, and the house is a wreck until the pre-supper clean-up. When I'm reading to my children on the couch, I'm not washing the stack of dishes, and this is not only okay, but it's GOOD. I'm still in the middle of learning this lesson, and I often err on the side of busy-ness over the gift of leisure. I've been thinking lately about the virtue of leisure instead of the virtue of work, and someday these thoughts will probably sprout into a blog post.
All this babbling to say that you are not alone. Tending five children is a beautiful, worthy, and, yes, often exhausting job. The work is great. The rewards are greater. And if we can catch a few extra zzzzz's in the midst of it all, so much the better!
Deb,
The half-nekkid helper is now ALL nekkid. (Like you've never seen him so before. Ha!) We miss you.
Molly,
Thank you, ma'am. I have felt so swamped these last few weeks, and I welcome reminders of the Grace that surrounds. John's been helpful, too, in reminding me to just relax and focus on the good, important things (PEOPLE) in the middle of such an unpleasantly busy time.
p.s. I just came back in here from the kitchen to post that John is also helpful by washing all of yesterday's dishes before he went to bed last night. KINDNESS.
ReplyDeleteAh! We miss you!
ReplyDeleteThis post is exactly why your blog is on my favourites list - because you keep it real and don't put on aires(?spelling)! I love your garden posts and canning posts and everything posts because you write so beautifully, have such adorable helpers and keep it real!! I seriously don't know how anyone could keep their kitchen clean while canning - I practically stick to my kitchen floor at those times! Now to keep the comment real- I just wrote this comment in a few parts. I'd better go as I have to get ready to go out (sigh) - I'm such a homebody!
ReplyDeleteHave a wonderful day
Blessings
Renata:)
PS your helper really is adorable
PPS I had to giggle at all your comments
PPPS Inhad to laugh at your parent's name for Ezekial! I had so much trouble keeping clothes on my twins at that age. I remember them shocking some visitors!
I was busting up laughing by the time I got down to this comment box. You crack me up.
ReplyDeleteWell, remember I deleted all but ten blogs? Yours was one of them. Like you, I figured I would check once a month or so. But then- I have no willpower when it comes to this blog (always has been a favorite, as much as you have a love/hate relationship with it.) so I added you back.
For times such as these- what if I miss Abby's real-time kitchen?!?
I came across in Femina (a non-commital, no comment blog that I had kept all along) an article that I wanted to share with you, knowing that you wouldn't find it otherwise since you deleted your blog list!
I do know this kind of defeats the whole purpose of deleting a bloglist- having a friend sabotage your efforts by putting them in comments boxes-but bear with me just this once.
The article speaks to our desires to have a less cluttered house and adds a dimension that I think we would be well to consider every now and again.
"Show me the fruit"
Sometimes (often) I have this vision of a tidy, uncluttered spacious and it seems so far off and so unattainable...but that dream is actually a sterile lifeless environment and I need to remember that.
Maybe, among the messes and clutter and busyness of your household, a reminder like that could help you too.
Your home (and kitchen!) are FRUITFUL!
Here it is:
http://www.feminagirls.com/2014/08/26/funner-part-1/
Go ahead...you know you want to...
Renata,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the encouragement! By the way, it's nice to know I'm not the only one whose kitchen floor works better than super glue. Some days when John gets home, my greeting is a kiss and a "Don't take your shoes off yet if you want to go in the kitchen!" :)
Rebecca,
Thank you so much! That post (and "Joy Can't Die")were well worth it. Feel free to pass along more when you run across them (pretty please). It's encouraging to be reminded of truth, and the part about being in bondage to potato peelers made me laugh because you know of my endless and futile attempts:
He said “Show me the fruit. What are you making?” And as we talked about this, I began to see how many ways I am not looking at the fruit – and how much more important that is. His comment was that I could show him that I had gotten rid of all the junk in the kitchen – cleaned the drawers out super clean and now I had only a one cup measure and a rolling pin. Ta-Da! Look how sleek and simple this is! Look how much we aren’t in bondage to all those potato peelers and microplanes! Look at how we finally have uncluttered our space and are living the good life. And it wouldn’t tell you anything at all. The question, upon looking in the vacant kitchen drawers ought to be, “What are you making with that?” And, “Is it any good?”
That was the exact spot that struck me too!
ReplyDelete