family

garden magic

/ Rachel Fenton / 1 Comment

This year, we haven’t been able to give as much attention to our garden as we would have liked. Between all of the construction projects for our house, different full-time and part-time jobs, death in the family, and the demand of our adorable baby, the garden was one of the first things to fall off the priority list.

Freshly harvested cherry tomatoes

However, we did manage to get some things in the ground, and despite infrequent watering, blistering heat, and haphazard pruning, we have a small harvest. The earth’s resilience always astonishes me.

My father Jim set up an irrigation system for our small orchard and blackberry patch. It’s working well, though our elderberry bushes are still struggling and we aren’t sure why. But the trees that haven’t succumbed to pests are producing fruit.

pictured above: our pluat harvest (hybrid of plum and apricot) and two of our fruit trees

Some things we’ve left alone, like this artichoke. It will return again in the spring, and instead of enjoying it on our table, we’ll enjoy its purple bloom until it hibernates for the winter.

Watering the garden is one of the surest ways to calm Michael when he’s having a hard time (and if I’m honest, it calms me too). It’s become a morning ritual before his nap time. I wrap him close in one of my slings and wander among raised beds, hose in hand.

He gazes calmly at each plant as we pass by. I show him the different vegetables and pluck the buds from our basil to keep the leaves from turning bitter. He grabs for the water and grins when it slips through his fingers. We look for lizards sunning themselves on the side of the house, or for moths pressed against the fence.

I try to see the garden through his eyes. Too often we forget about the simple magic of a seed sprouting from soil, a little icon of resurrection.

As I walk through our wild garden, I’m reminded of the Garden of Eden and what we were made for as humans. In a way, gardening is an echo of Paradise. Yes, Creation is fallen and we struggle with weeds and pests and drought and death. But still, we work with our hands and by the grace of God, the earth provides an imperfect bounty for us.

We can focus on the shriveled vines or the overgrown tomatoes or the pest-ravaged cherry tree. If we want to look for glimpses of death, it is never far off in our broken world. But death is not the end of the story. And here, in between the sun-kissed leaves and ripening fruit, I see glimpses of Paradise.

in which stubbornness is a virtue

/ Rachel Fenton / 3 Comments

We are nothing if not a stubborn bunch. Throughout this whole process of preparing the prefab house for us to move in, my father and husband (and to some extent, my mother and I) looked at the list of tasks that needed to be done and thought: we can totally do this ourselves.

Pros: we’re saving a lot of money, and we’re learning incredible skills along the way.
Cons: we are finite human beings with a limited amount of time and energy.

I continue to be in awe of my father, Jim. He’s a retired clinical psychologist, with no formal training in any sort of contractor or construction work. And yet, so far he has managed to (with my husband Jake’s assistance):

  • Plan out and dig the trenches for both the gas and electrical that we’ll need for the house (the electrical trench just passed inspection and the gas trench is being inspected today! Praise God!)
  • Lay the wire (cable) for electric and pipe for gas
  • Wrestle the wire into the meter box and the panel (Oh, and he hung a 200 amp panel because our house came with a 100 amp one!)
  • Connect the gas line to the house and prepare it for inspection / connecting to gas by pressure testing it
  • And probably more that I’m not able to remember right now

All the hard work is paying off. We have only a handful of things left to do on our end: build the steps, finish the painting, lay the floors, install the counters, and pass all inspections. Now we are backfilling the trench, and getting ready to build the front and back porch steps.

There is much outside of our control — so I focus on what I can control. We purchased the tile for the bathrooms this weekend, and I got paint for the starry mural I have planned for Michael’s ceiling. I have been chipping away at the painting — the master bedroom wall is finished, and the kitchen needs a last touch up coat before I declare it finished. It’s encouraging to see physical glimpses of the final product: the stack of tiles in the bathroom, the color on the walls; the boxes of flooring.

Slow, steady, stubborn progress.

Speaking of…

Michael is six months old, and has inherited the family stubbornness. He has unofficially begun crawling. He alternates between an effective army crawl and a stubborn, seal-like belly flop. Both are often punctuated by a screech. We’re not sure if it’s elation or frustration, and frankly, he isn’t sure either. We were hoping he wouldn’t become mobile until our house is finished — Pennet Melangell is the opposite of baby-proof. It’s full of nooks and crannies where kids and dust bunnies can hide for ages without being found. I will definitely be kept on my toes for the near future — nothing is safe from his curious grasp.

Michael has perfected his Spider-Man stance.

We still don’t have a move-in date, and PG&E gave us the disheartening news they probably won’t be able to get to our job until late September — a whole year since we placed our work request with them.

So we’re digging in our heels against discouragement and rolling up our sleeves. There is much we can focus on, though we won’t be able to live in our house. We’ll focus on the summer and fall’s gardening and preserving, and getting the new coop ready for our chickens. As difficult as the last year of waiting has been, it has been very fruitful. It has taught all of us that stubbornness can indeed be a virtue.

Pax Christi,

Rachel