Happy Housewifery

Alfred & I married young. I was 2 months shy of turning 18 & he had just turned 20. We were engaged after 3 weeks of dating and married 4 months after that in June of ’92.

Being so young and naive, I had no idea what I was getting myself in to. Alfred was an alcoholic and lived the party life while I stayed home with our children – heartbroken that the man I loved didn’t seem to care about us because the alcohol came first. I threatened, nagged, questioned, and pleaded with him to stop drinking – all to no avail.

I can’t tell you how many times I wanted to give up. I even went to a divorce lawyer once for a consultation to see what my options were. But no matter how bad he hurt me emotionally, I just couldn’t do the same to him.

Then he was sent to Iraq for 14 months – they weren’t allowed to drink. We had the best conversations and I felt things would be different when he returned home. That only lasted a month, then he went right back to drinking and coming home late.

I gave up then. I was tired of being hurt. I stopped asking anything of him. Then his best friend was in a horrible car accident due to drunk driving and falling asleep at the wheel. He is lucky to be alive today. He had to spend months in the hospital & Alfred saw first hand what drinking can do.

After 13 years, he made up his mind to quit drinking once ad for all and he did!! I was still very guarded. After all, I had heard this a million times if I had heard it once. But as time went on, I began to trust him again and our love was renewed.

Now our life is so sweet! Perfect, no…..but he is home every night and I know he loves me. The drinking was never about me like I thought it was. He was running away from the problems of his childhood, trying to kill the pain. We are able to talk about things so much easier now. In June ’09 will be married 17 years.

With God, there is always hope. Give up if you have to, but don’t walk away. Let God put the broken pieces of your life & marriage back together and create something new.

I have a grow light as of yesterday . I have some trays and 8 packs from clearance sales a coupld of years ago, and I have some purchased seed starting mix and potting soil. I’m ready to roll.

If I had not bought these things on clearance (the trays and 8-packs) I would not buy them. They can be pretty costly.

You know already that you can start seedlings in egg cartons. I don’t really like to do that because they are so shallow. You can start seedlings in egg shells. Just crack them close to the top so most of the shell is intact. Rinse well. Poke a drainage hole in the other end. Fill with planting medium, plant your seed, and when it’s ready to transplant, the shell can easily be broken away.

If you do buy yogurt in single serve cups, there is a very cool way to use them as seedling starters. Keep the lid. Take a sharp knife and cut away the very bottom of the container. Put the lid on. The lid end now is the bottom of the container. Plant it, and when read to transplant, take off the lid. The whole thing will slide out into your hand, ready to put in the ground.

You can make seed pots w/brown paper bags or newspaper. Cut a rectangle, or several thicknesses of the rectangle if using newsprint (because it’s so thin it will not hold up to watering if using a single thickness) as tall as you want your pot to be PLUS enough to fold under at the bottom — like a penny roll. Tape the side and the bottom. Set in a container to help them stand upright, and plant. When it’s time to transplant, rip them open on the bottom and plant the pot.

If you buy soft drinks or water out, save the cups and cut them down to the size of the pots you want. Cut a draining hole in the bottom. You can do this with water bottles or coke bottles, as well.

Always watch for bargains at the end of the greenhouse season — usually mid- to late-June. I’ve gotten the huge bales of peat moss for as little as $2 a bale. Also, look for planting things at garage sales, though you will need to sterilize used things. Pour boiling water or bleach water over them — carefully so it doesn’t splash up and ruin your clothes. That kind of cancels out the savings from the pots

Look on ebay for wholesale seed lots. I’ve gotten some amazingly cheap lettuce, mesclun, and basil seeds that way. Smaller growers can’t afford to create and send catalogs or do a lot of advertising, so ebay is a good way for them to go.

That’s my gardening bit for the day I’ll let you know how my grow light works.

This is just a few sources. Look up Heirloom seed sources online for more. Some of the catalogs are very informative and contain historical information

Abundant Life Seed Foundation PO Box 772, Port Townsend, WA 98368
360 385 5660; www.abundantlifeseed.org

Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds 2278 Baker Creek Road, Mansfield MO 65704; 417 924 8917; www.rareseeds.com. They have history and craft exhibits once a month for several months out of the year. This is also the town in which Laura and Almano Wilder spent most of their married life and where the Little House books were written. The house is open for tours at $9 a person or something like that.

Bountiful Gardens — 18001 Shafer Ranch Road, Willits, CA 95490; 707 459 6410; www.bountifulgardens.org

Colonial Williamsbrg: The Colonial Nursery Seed List; The Colonial Nursery, PO Box 1776, Williamsburg, VA 23187-1776; 757 565 8703; www.history.org/History/CSLand/nursery3

Deep Diversity — Box 15700, Santa Fe, NM 87506-5700; 888 762 7333; www.seedsofchange.com

One of the neatest ideas I came across in my reading suggested planting a Peter Rabbit garden. Check out children’s story ooks or nursery rhymes and plant the flowers, hebs and vegetables mention or illustrated. Plant McGregor’s garden and a patch for Mrs. Bunny’s herbal tea. Put in a pumpkin for Peter the Pumpkin Eater and his wife who was submissive to the point of living in a pumpkin shell! Or daffodils for Daff-down-dilly.

Here are some common herbs and flowers specifically grown for:

Dyes: coreopsis, brown-eyed susan, goldenrod, catnip, clematis, marigold, red clover, parsley, zinnia, and Queen Annes Lace

Fragrance: roses, clove pinks, lilacs, peonies, lavender, lemon verbena, iris, daffodils, sage, thyme, mint, sweet peas

Cut flowers: Zinnias, coreopsis, galiardia, gomphrena, strawflowers, daisies

To dry or make wreaths: amaranth, baby’s breath, gomphrena, sweet annie, statice, strawflowers, tansy, yarrow

To attract bees, butterflies and hummingbirds: red honeysuckle, butterfly weed, mondarda (bee balm), borage, lavendar, red clover and other red flowers.

Tea: Mints, thyme, sage, lemon balm, catnip, chamomile, red clover, lemon basil

Culinary: Basil, sage, thyme, chives, dill, oregano, rosemary, marjoram, parsley, savory, cilantro for the leaves — the seeds are coriander.

The proper gardening journal is of course made of HOMEMADE, acid-free paper, and contains beautiful original watercolors of everything you plant in all stages of development.

My gardening journals, however, usually look like $.79 spiral bound notebooks with lots of scribbled notes in them. Or bunches of index cards with jottings on them and seed packets organized into photo albums with pockets . . . sigh . . .

This year, I have made — MADE, I TELL YOU! — stitched journals out of construction paper. Here’s how: Take a few sheets of contruction paper and fold them in half in either direction. Stitch them together with embroider floss — several strands — or ribbon. I made three of them, each using six sheets of paper.

I have not yet decided how to fill them, but have been looking over plans for journals in books and on the internet and know there’s a llot of stuff I COULD put in them that is not suited to my style. For instance, I don’t want to track, from year to years, the soil amendments I have made. I am not scientific about it. Every year I dump compost on my garden from our pile as well as composted manure, straw, newspaper, etc. When I clean our fireplace I toss the ashes in the garden. I let dried leaves lay in the garden until spring at which time they are tilled in. Anyway, this is not the kind of thing I pay attention to I am a creative, impulsive, short-on-time experimenter, as well as a practical person who wants to grow healthful, organic foods to feed my family. This type of person doesn’t have an orderly, well-trained garden journal that tracks things like garden amendments.

My ebb and flow style aside, consider the following for inclusion in your own garden journal . . . or index card collection

Your purposes for gardening: Beauty? Food? Money? Health? Figure quantity and type of seed needed to fullfill your purposes.

Garden layout and design

Seed companies to contact, if you liked or did not like dealing with them and why.

People with whom you will trade plants and seeds with.

Soil test results and amendments needed. When applied.

Planting dates, anticipated harvest dates, and actual harvest dates,

Temperatures and weather throughout the growing seasons.

Type and breed of plant, how it performed, disease problems, how they are handled, would you grow it again?

How you plan to utilize the harvest: can, dehydrate, freeze, use fresh, share with family, friends, charities (may end up being redundant or a restatement of purpose)

Schedule of garden maintenance: daily, weekly, monthly, seasonal

How and when plants are propagated.

Seed saving and storing instructions

Daily journaling of actual accomplishments, concerns, meditations, etc.

This is not for anyone, but yet it is for anyone who connects with it: I had a “revelation” today. I have had these over the years, and they always help me release some expectation I have for my relationship with my husband that causes tension between us. I released responsibility for his crabbiness long ago when I quit taking it personally and realized that he has to deal with crabbiness, not me. Doesn’t have to affect me, and it’s really just his habit of dealing with irritants.

I released him from being my best friend as well. He is my loyal, loving husband who will do just about anything for me that I ask, but De is my best friend. She and I have more interests in common than my dh and I do. And she likes to analyze and brain pick and be thrifty and frugal and loves homey stuff. I have heard that ones husband should be ones best friend, and always felt bad that he wasn’t, but I couldn’t make him be that if that’s now really who he is.

Philippa, sometimes when you talk about your friendship growing with your husband, I have felt a little sad for my own dh and myself. We don’t have much to communicate about. My dh is a constant worker who loves to accomplish. He loves to hang around men and work with them on building or making knives or talking hot rods. He doesn’t really like to “hang out” with me, other than watching a movie, the Wheel of Fortune, the news, etc. So when we are alone together, there isn’t much to say. “Did you order the bee feeder?” “Will you mail these knives for me.” “Thanks for grinding my coffee.” “What’s for dinner?” “What do you have on under that?” ‘So and so called and wants us to come visit them.’ “Wheel of Fortune’s on.” Just daily stuff.

Todays revelation is that that’s ok. I adore this man who has worked so hard and cared for us for 30 years. He likes to pinch me and wedgie me and stare at me and joke with me, but he doesn’t want to pick my brain or analyze anything or discuss politics or scripture, etc. I have sometimes thought I should tell him that it’s a problem, that we’re missing out on something, that we’re going to be in trouble when the kids leave home . . . but fortunately I never have.

I realized that I just want to take care of him forever and ever. He doesn’t have to develop things to communicate with me about. If he decides to, great. (He has been trying to listen to talk radio more because he knows I love it. That’s pretty sweet of him.) But I won’t decide that he’s neglecting me if he doesn’t.

He loves it that I bring him and his friends iced tea when they’re forging knife blades, and that I fix them lunch without him asking me to. He loves that I do little things for him, and don’t nag him about the things that are not finished around the house. He isn’t requiring things of me that I cannot give.

Is this super boring and only exciting to me? . I feel pretty freed up. To enjoy my home, pottery, gardening, sewing/embroidery (currently), taking care of my people, and stop worrying that my relationship isn’t something else. I could sit by this man in comfortable silence for a long, long time, and be glad for who he is and that he’s there with me. Done!

Once upon a time, I had this dream. A picture of how I longed for life to be. I wondered what it would be like to take walks alone with a husband and be able to talk about anything and everything without stopping until we got home. I thought how wonderful it would be to have a man be interested in everything I had to say and encourage all my future dreams and aspirations in life. To have him share his own dreams with me and speak in detail of all that he hopes to achieve during his lifetime.

Imagine a man who delights in your happiness and actively encourages you to make time for yourself. Who seems to appreciate all you do holds you in high esteem and almost seems amazed and certainly proud of how you manage your life.

I can remember longing for a man like this. A man of a cheerful disposition who enjoyed making children laugh. I would think of a man who is kind but firm, never controlling but aware of sadness or concern in his woman. Oh those times I felt so overwhelmed by keeping a house up to standard. I am not talking about just the cleaning and the washing but even finding a spare penny for a tin of paint. Let alone the energy to put it on the walls. The times I just longed for someone to come along side me to help, to take the strain, show an interest. I would dream of a husband who listened enough to offer to take time off from his own busy schedule at work to help with decorating. I dreamed about a man who looked forward to going away together as a family and helped plan holidays with enthusiasm.

Once upon a time, I lived in these dreams but I was already married to man who appeared not to notice his family much care about their happiness. The clouds were so dark over his own head he was unable to see out beyond them. However, neither could I abandon him to his darkness that threatened to engulf him entirely. I slowly and painfully faced the possibility that those dreams of love, affection, attention and all else that encompasses a truly blessed marriage where lost in my decision of a youthful naive marriage. As much as I longed for my own happiness, I could never bring myself to tear my family any further apart and give up those dreams as fanciful as they once seemed.

Of course, there are more to those dreams but I prefer to keep such tender thoughts in my head. Those things only a married woman should dream of with her husbands face in the picture. I wanted to remind myself today, that actually all those dreams I held onto over the years have come true. Actually they are so real, my real life today. Perhaps no one will ever know when the rest of my dreams come true! Love Phillipa

Well it seemed like a funny title at the time. However, seriously as I was outside this morning giving the darling chucks and ducks fresh water and pellets, one poor girl decided to have a fit and flop into the water. Part of me is worried the other half of me knows she wasn’t right for weeks hasn’t been laying and has always seemed all together weird. Therefore, for now I will just keep an eye on them all. The other ladies are laying like you wouldn’t believe so surely there can’t be much wrong with them. Time will tell I suppose.

There is no rowing for me this morning, which I am a little sad about/ it is mothers Day over here and I am doing Sunday lunch for my parents. So I don’t know what time Kristian will be arriving, but I’m sure it will do them all good to see each other Kristian and my Dad particularly seemed like they wanted to get together I guess that is a real blessing.

So how this morning I wish there was something I could do to bring a happy marriage to my door so much quicker? Perhaps I always expected too much emotionally from Kristian but already I am missing the warmth and comfort of my friends from last week. Relationships seem to be so easy with everyone…expect my own husband. Why is that? I dream of one day my husband just being happy to hang out with me to want to go places just with me, what does that feel like? I wonder what it is to have a husband actually say they’ve missed you and discuss doing something together. For the life of me, I can’t think of a good reason I stayed with this guy, just as I can’t understand why I never seemed to leave even before we married. AS if some invisible glue attaches me, come what may, through tears and sadness I would never leave. I thought about it, tried it, made plans to do it more times than I can count my engagement ring was more of a ping pong ball than a piece of treasured jewellery. From day one, this guy turned my head and heart upside down and back again, it was always hard work.

Fast forward to now and I still don’t get it? Often signs of love seem to leak out from the corners as if they want to escape but know they don’t have permission to leave. Things that I might interpret as love, care or affection are always verbally denied as being such. It is as if it is a crime a sin something to be so ashamed of to actually love another person. I love to love people, I love to see them smile when you say something good about them you have noticed. I love to give presents and hugs appropriately simply because it makes the world, our world, my world a better place. I love to talk about my live life and emotions just as much as I love to hear about someone else’s, I love to be close to people and enjoy drawing closer. It is warm and such a blessing to my heart. Why would a person starve themselves of all that? Oh don’t answer I have 20 years worth of theories.

In truth, I have so much more than I lack. I can soon draw my mind to how the Lord has poured out his blessings on me to fill the void and bridge those gaps. How I have been blessed from the very beginning of my life to uphold me for such a time as this. God knew it all and planned accordingly. It almost seems unfair in a way to know that one day a loving marriage with sharing and togetherness will be mine, it is being formed, growing at a steady rate. My marriage is indeed a parsnip. I did indeed need to learn patience.

I am so sure this morning that whatever each one of us is going through. God knows exactly what he is doing, whatever has comes against either by our own hand or some other means, God is on the case. He has the remedy for whatever ails us. Those disasters are the furnaces that form us and our loved ones into the very treasure he can claim back many more of his beloved children with. How amazing is that? We are only the pebbles on the beach, unique and precious for sure, but only pebbles among thousands of others. That are washed, shaped, bashed about and honed to be just what we are required to be. Love Phillipa

I don’t get all worked up about end times or rapture or any of that stuff. There are more practical matters right here at hand and, if we have everything else in order, then rapture and end times will take care of themselves. And trials and tribulations? Life’s full of them already. I spent a month at Vanderbilt University Medical Center children’s hospital. In the hallway right outside Mary’s door, I heard a family discuss with their son’s doctor whether they should take their son home for a nice Christmas and a peaceful death or stay in sterile isolation waiting for a bone marrow donor. What could you possibly tell this family they’ll have to suffer that is worse than what they were living through? Persecution? Famine? Earthquakes? The moon turning to blood?

We are assured we will be given enough grace to endure anything. Remember that story you tell about the martyr who held up three fingers, Connie? And what if you wind up dead? Ooooo, scary old death. Death is the doorway to heaven for a believer. “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?” What can the believer possibly be afraid of? (I am preaching to myself here… I am such a fraidy cat!)

I like what Phillipa said, that should the established church be brought down, God can build a new church of faith and love with no denomimations. I think I especially love the imagery of “new thing where old thing used to be” because of a word given to Mama when I was on drugs.

Mama was terribly grieved and she begged the Lord for a word of comfort. She opened her Bible and her eyes fell on Haggai 2:9 and she knew these words were in answer to her prayer and she claimed them, as me being the house. “The glory of this latter house shall be greater than of the former, saith the LORD of hosts: and in this place will I give peace, saith the LORD of hosts.” The next time she saw me, she was so excited, “Baaaahbra [Mama has an old-timey Scarlett O'Hara Southern accent] I know you will not die and someday you will be whole again.” (A few months previous, I was found lying beside the road, overdosed on drugs, and then rushed to a hospital so you can see how Mama was always worried sick.) At the time, I thought Mama was full of baloney but everything did eventually turn out quite alright.

As Christians, we are new creatures in Christ, new things from old things, and through Him we can be new again and again and again, day after day, stumble and get up after stumble and get up. I’d a whole lot rather talk about that than trials and tribulations and horsemen of the Apocalypse. That is real life live-it talk instead of “what if” and interpretation talk. (Not saying anybody who likes that sort of thing is in the wrong, just saying it’s not my cuppa.)

Let’s see if I can do it this way–blogging righ to happyhousewifery.all the ladies have wonderful blogss. I ‘m on the stupid laptop that skips.

love, aNNIE