Purple Marker.

I am pretty sure she has an unseen pocket where she hides them for her main source of mischief.

I want to chew up every marker in our house and never see them again.

Or maybe let the dog do it.
(But I don't.)

I angrily pull the stained white bedspread from off my bed,

muttering dragon sized billows of steam from my mouth.

It's just another one of those things.

I fumble with the bundle.  I mutter.  I find the culprit and correct her for the 5,555 time, 

explaining the seriousness of her purple damage.

You will sit and listen to me and understand,

 or I will banish purple markers from your little life until you are daddy's age.

Her little brown eyes fill with tears as she tells me,

"I promise I'll never do it again,"

and I wonder just as soon as those falsehoods are spoken how soon until I'll see her purple signature again.

As I throw the victimized bedspread into the washer,

I get control of my thoughts and ask God to take my love of things

and measure them against helping to train her.

Perhaps I should just admit defeat, forever rid myself of my desire for white, clean things,

 and succumb to a purple bedspread.

Things aren't really what is important,

but when you work so hard to have a few "things",

it is hard to see them as such.

And I don't want her purpling up our entire house until she is 18 either.

The balance of correction and holding things loosely is a hard one to walk.

The soap drizzles over the smudge as I silently pray for us both:

her need to submit to where she may color and do what is right,

and mine to know the weight of teaching obedience tied to a light embrace of things that can be replaced...

or at least washed every other week.

In the Eye of the Beholder.

His face was bright as I filled his cup.

He lifted it to his lips, closing his eyes and swallowing the orange liquid as if he were drinking an ice cream cone: pure bliss.

"Ooooo, I love orange juice," he said with a liquid mustache.

I suddenly felt a twinge of guilt.  We rarely bought orange juice.  Luxuries like that seldom made it into the budgeted grocery money. I wished we could have orange juice all the time, and he would have the joyful acquaintance with this cup every morning.

The grocery store has special sales of drastically reduced items each week with one of their coupons,

limited usually to one of the item.

It is an enticement to get shoppers to visit, I suppose.

This week, it happened to be orange juice.

A carton made it into our refrigerator with eager eyes watching.

As I thought about it later, I began to question in a different perspective: are we the ones who are deprived, or are we the ones who are actually privileged to possess something only tasted by those who embrace the contentedness of simple "limitedness."

I remembered going out to eat with a family once a while back for breakfast

and when the orange juice came out, their little girl said,

"I am sick of orange juice.  We have it all the time."

She had no idea in her little mind how unappreciative she sounded,

especially to orange juice loving ears.

I began to wonder.

Is it really the "rich" who are privileged,

or are they the ones who are missing something.

By giving every indulgence to our children,

everything that we felt we didn't have or should have had as children,

are we creating a better person?

Everyday luxuries become commonplace to the one whose tongue is spoiled to its taste.

The person who sees treasures in simplicity will find a life full of unexpected enjoyment.

The spoiled tongue must wait for rare, expensive moments while plodding on in daily trivialities:

a cup of orange juice to one is a treasure in a cup to another.

I do not consider us poor by any means.  

We are well cared for and have abundantly more than we need;
I am certain my kids have lots of "spoiled" attitudes that pop up,
as does their mother.

I still have to think, though, that it has to be considered that often blissful appreciation is worth waiting for a coupon to experience,
more often than not.
It develops the sense of how really precious every good gift is in our lives.

"Better is an handful with quietness,
than both hands full with travail and vexation of spirit."
Ecclesiastes 4:6



Linking to:
Raisinghomemakers

Themodestmomblog.com

A Box from Home.

Apricots.

An Apple.

Pretzels.

Nuts.

A few fresh cherry tomatoes from the garden.

 Granola bar.

Some cookies.

They are place into that stained, square-foot compartment in random fashion,

apricots cushioning the apple from bumping and damaging its skin.

There is still room for the main course:

usually the leftovers from dinner.


I hesitate over the colorful crew and think a little prayer over them,

a prayer for my husband's day tomorrow,

something I try to remember to do as I pack his lunch,
although sometimes in my weary hurry to get to bed,
I forget.

But I shouldn't.

 He has to eat his lunch away from the comforts of home:

the kitchen table and chairs,
the sound of birds and the rooster crowing,
the atmosphere of home.

It is a quick few moments over his future day,

a recognition that he is away at work
so that we may enjoy a satisfying lunch in a home we can call ours,
sitting on chairs that have the price tags removed.

A small prayer for a large duty,

greatly appreciated although not nearly thanked enough for it.

A small thing,

a packed lunch with the power to change the world,

or

at least,

hopefully his.

Linking to these Blog Parties:
Themodestmomblog.com
Theprairiehomestead.com
Btweennapsontheporch.net

Good Things.

They say:

"Good things come in small packages."

It's true.

But sometimes,

Good things come in big packages.

 The thing about both is:

No matter what size they come in,

everything is better when it is shared.

 ("Hey, guys.  You are going to share and let me play sometime, too,
 right?")

Same Mess, Different View.

My kitchen for the last few weeks...

well,
it isn't pretty.

"You bit off more than you can chew."

It's a common enough phrase, but what if it feels more like sometimes is,

somebody threw the pie into my face,

no, threw four pies into my face,
one after another,

and then handed me a napkin to clean up the mess.

It all has limited life,

counter life to be more exact,

or floor life.

It is a race against the ever breeding fruit flies,

the power of the invisible spatters of the creeping corrosion of mold.

 

 None of it will wait long.

It all demands immediate recognition and care.

And yet, still life goes on.

The little humans demand constant feeding and care.

Somehow, three square meals are supposed to go into their little bellies,
although with as much as they eat, they don't seem so little.

The big human needs his meals as well.

The magnificence of a pristine kitchen is a dream that only those colorful magazines

and homes where the people live somewhere else all day long must possess.

Someday I will have a kitchen that doesn't look like a zookeeper's workshop.

The son calls from the other room.

His dinosaur domino kit is frustrating him and he wants some help.

The oldest is beckoned to fill in for the steamy, sticky-faced kitchen maid.

The assortment of single socks that Violet has weeded out of the clean laundry for me waits in a pile.  Without their missing mates, she leaves them on the couch unsure of further direction.

  The couch wears a temporary "slip cover" since the other has been forced to take that trip to the mountain in the basement where the washer forever trudges through it's daily spins.

 Other sorted and folded pieces await their final trip up the stairs.
Little bodies are limited in their hauling abilities, so this rests on my shoulders.

I groan at the thought.

 Craft projects litter the ironing board...

while others cover the table.

 The molding fruit is sorted and tossed; the good is cooked,

stirred, a hot and tiresome job with the many others still looming and silently shouting,
"Process ME!  Process ME!"

 

The fruit is then dumped into the bag to drip,

splattering sticky purple drops in precarious heights hinged on thin legs.

 

I sigh.

Messes, messes, everywhere.

How does one ever conquer.

Then I see this.

And I realize that maybe my view of things should be...

different.

Maybe my view is spoiling the fruit that is all around me.

A garden that produced well so that we will have food for the winter as well on our tables today, yesterday, and tomorrow.

 

Organic peaches an Amish woman was willing to sell for a reasonable cost:

an unexpected happiness.

I had given up on ever finding organic peaches.

 Food for supper:

most of it we have grown ourselves,

but just the fact that we have food for supper,

something not everyone in the world has,

is something to give thanks for.

 A kitchen:

I have a kitchen:

I have a stove that works,

I have electricity to make it work,

I have counters to work on,

a floor to stand on,

I have food to cook,

I have the ability to cook.

It may not look beautiful all the time,

but it is.

My kitchen is beautiful.

 I have kids who want me to help them

who like for me to play with them.

They create things

 and that is far better than sitting idly and having to be entertained by somebody else in a digital box.

 Their messes are temporary schools of learning that will someday turn into something useful

and if I squint really hard, they are actually colorful.

The tiny pieces all over the floor

are plastic raindrops of colorful happiness.

(Okay, that may be slightly overstated about the ones on the floor,

especially when I step on them and have then sticking to my bare feet;

but pretty colors: yes, I can say that.)

 

The kids do help and do their part;

they do their jobs, what they can.

 And we do have

 socks to keep our feet warm...

even the mixed pairs I occasionally find on my feet,

when necessity demands.

 We have clothes to wear and keep us warm,

a sizable assortment of them, actually.

 We have special treats, like berries that Levi loves to eat

and are so good for him,...

and the syrup they make will be a great treat in yogurt
and on pancakes.

 

They are bottled up treasures stored away for a time when I don't feel so overwhelmed in the steam of the kitchen.

A harvest of thanksgiving in September is certainly better

than having to 'beware of  grouch prosesing' in the kitchen.

Sometimes, I get lost in the steam of life's hot oven,

but there is a better way.

"Thou are good, and doest good;

teach me thy statutes."

Psalm 119: 68

Pink Blooms, Purple Blooms, and Life.

My gardens have been alive with purple and pink flowers.

Do you see that little pink poking up there?

It is one of my treasures, slow-growing but diligent to come up every year.

It is a hardy orchid.

I have had it for about 5 years now, 

and it finally has a baby next to it.

Bleeding hearts remind me of childhood days at a friend's house.

I loved her mother's bleeding hearts.

 

That rhododendron was one of the first things I planted when we moved here.

See it around the other side of the tree?

Hardy Gernaniums are a favorite because they seem to rebloom all summer.

These pink with black eyes are Patricia Geranium.

I recently read that although they share the name 'Geranium',

annual and hardy geraniums are not related.

Annual geraniums are actually Pelargoniums.

They don't look alike, but they share the same name:

just a curiosity.

These 'Brookside' geraniums grow large and full so that they actually look like a bush.

Planted with them is a patented specially bred Mountain Bluet.

It's blooms are spectacular.

Another purple that I noticed blooming is my Blue False Indigo.

They usually seem to bloom a bit later than this time, especially with how cool it has been this year,

but these are planted up by the barn where the heat radiates off the cement foundation.

Everything up there seems to be advanced.

The Russian sage up there is much larger than the one I have planted by the house.

I love the smell of crushed Russian sage on the hands.

There is lots of purple blooming in the front flower bed as well.

The dwarf wisteria vine stands tall on its trellis.

The salvia is always buzzing with bees.

These Pink Haze Siberian Iris seem to be much more prolific growers for me than the regular iris.

I think the clay content in our soil is not dry enough for regular iris,

but this one fills out so much, I am able to dig some out of it every year to sell at my plant sale.

Of course, the lilacs were grand this spring, too.

Some of the Miss Kim lilac even made it into the kitchen to lend their fragrance.

Apparently, somebody thought they would be good for more than just a bouquet.

Life with children:
giving new meaning to the garden bouquet vignette.


Linking up to these fun blog parties:

Joyfulhomemaking.com

Nominimalisthere

Raisinghomemakers.com

Firefliesandjellybeans.com 

Gnowfglins.com