Ahhhh...there's nothing like a day of digging in poo to make a person feel good.We love our new house. We really, really do. It's very hard, though, to love the house payment. I mean, yeah, we knew what we were getting into when we started planning, and, yeah, we decided that we wanted to build a house in which we could raise a family and be happy for life, but we never thought we'd be--never planned to be--housebroke.
I know it sounds like I just have bad grammar, but I don't. Not usually, anyway. "Housebroke" is the term for spending all of your income on your house payment and having nothing left over on which to live. Those pesky little things like eating and wearing clothes actually cost money that seems to be rather elusive right now.
It's really not all that bad. I'm making it sound worse than it is. I hope. But, it's true, things have been very tight here. We live paycheck to paycheck, we have implemented a largely vegetarian diet, and I have been doing what I think I should to cut back on all spending. I cancelled my cell phone, cut back on the NetFlix, am considering Vonage (if it weren't for that scary "no 911 service" thing, I'd be there), and quit buying things that once seemed like essentials but aren't, like paper towels and fabric softener. Yes, I know I still have more than most third world countries. That awareness rarely leaves me. This is not Western Civ Whining. It's simply stating my facts.
I've been cooking a lot more, which means spending a lot more time in the kitchen, where I seem to be living these days. But I'm happy to be doing it. Truly! I like the creations that are coming out of my culinary experiments--breads and cakes and spreads and rice dishes and salads and dressings--it's been a lot of fun. Tonight, we had a bleu cheese/cottage cheese/white cheddar/almond/tomato/basil spread on toasted flax spelt bread with a layer of hummus thrown in and a cucumber salad on the side. For lunch, it was freshly ground peanut butter on sandwiches, homemade pound cake and strawberries from the picking we did last week. We've completely cut out not only sodas, but all sugary drinks, including juices. It's water, tea from the garden, and organic whole, raw milk from the farmer, which is almost 1/3 cheaper than conventional milk and at least 3/4 cheaper than organic from the health food store.
But one thing that has been hard to manufacture in our financially-challenged state is garden beds.
Gardening is one of my main loves, especially herb gardening. I love any useful plant that can add to our sustenance. This year, I have no vegetable garden because we couldn't decide what to do with our new lawn, especially since we have no extra money to do major landscaping. Since I can't afford garden soil or bedding plants, I've been staring at the area around our house's foundation with a combination of desperation and disgust. Until today, it was a dirty, dog-trodden sore spot on my pasture-turned-lawn.
Yesterday, my dear husband Bo wondered aloud if the neighbor's horse manure pile would do the trick for our garden bed needs. If it's well-rotted, I said, it would be perfect. So just for the asking, he brought home a pickup load of composted horse poo ("There's more where that came from," he said) that I happily dug into all afternoon. I had enough clearance-sale seedlings of tomatillos, basil, tarragon, lavender and marigolds to get the bed started, and then I had Bo transplant some chives, bronze fennel, oregano and coreopsis from my wild, untamed tea garden into the beds. To keep the dogs out, we surrounded the whole thing with rabbit fencing we bought two years ago and it looks loverly. Much loverlier than the dog path it was before!
While we were out digging in the poo, my newest friend, neighbor and renter, Pensive Wanderer, blessed me with a visit and a gift--a sample of Green Tea ice cream from Woo City! I'm so happy to have PW as a friend. I finally have someone in my life who speaks my love language...gifts! For some reason, when I receive a gift, it makes me feel especially warm and fuzzy inside. I just know that someone thought enough of me to take their time and energy to buy, make or find me something (like some Good Eats DVDs...thanks again, Happy Housewife!) It's always so nice to get things from PW--a subscription to Countryside magazine (which I blackmailed out of her by telling her I hated her for having a subscription), a Barry Manilow CD (she's the first person EVER to buy me a Barry Manilow CD!) and now, Woo city ice cream. Thank you, PW, for being so thoughtful. You rock.
The other highlights of the day were:
- Monet's new friend from baseball coming to visit. Monet rode his bike to his friend's house, they rode back together. Monet showed K. his piano pieces, they played baseball together, and they made a chart to keep score. Then Monet, K and Houdin all headed down to the pond with bottles and nets, returning with tadpoles, frogs and crawdads which are now living in a rubbermaid container on my front porch;
- Watching Houdin use the tiller in my herb bed. He's becoming such an amazing young man, so strong and witty, and it seems as if it's happening overnight;
- Seeing the boys run through the field and up to the neighbors' house to swim in their pool;
- Seeing Sweetheart's excitement as she caught a butterfly, studied it, let it go, and then looked it up in our North American butterflies book with great accuracy;
- Watching a gorgeous sunset with my family;
- Standing outside in the dark watching fireflies flicker in the trees throughout the valley while Monet figured out how many hours it was until the Fourth of July, when we'll watch fireworks from our front porch;
- Nursing The Baby on the front porch in the cool of the night while Sweetheart studied and identified a large moth that was drawn to our porch lights;
- Singing "Just You Wait," along with Eliza Doolittle and "On the Street Where You Live" with Freddy;
- Listening to the rain on the roof and Bo snoring as I type this.
Throughout every day, I think about so many things I want to write down, the sweeth comments and the amazing sights and the inspiring thoughts, and by the time I get in front of this glowing screen, I forget them. But I have a piece of some of them now, a snippet of my life, a reminder of how good things are when I'm feeling like they're all so very bad.
Thank you, God, for such a gorgeous day.
*Photo from beefchickenpork.org.
