Saturday afternoon, I took Shiloh and Noah for a walk around the neighborhood. They've been cooped up in the house all week. It's been increasingly difficult to get out during the day with the current nap schedule at hand. Normally my mornings involve loading kids up to drop one or two of them off at school (depending on the day), getting home, intending on doing SOMETHING to get out and about, and before I know it, Noah is having a meltdown and it's naptime. The lovely time change we just went through didn't really help much either. So now he's tired earlier, and well, you know... So the story goes.
So yeah. We've been feeling cooped up for the last few days. It was so nice yesterday, I thought I would just take the kids for a walk around the neighborhood and stop by the community garden to see if the few sweet potato plants I planted this past Spring would be worth digging up. Shiloh was riding her tricycle and I had the dog and Noah to manage, so the short walk to the community garden area seemed like a good stopping point to give them some space to roam, check on the sweet potatoes and see if my plot was getting any sun at all.
I have had a really hard time with the adjustment to gardening now that I don't have a yard of my own. In the Spring I was so excited about the option to have my own community garden space provided by the HOA here (for new-ish readers, we moved into a condo last December when we were
scheduled for foreclosure on our home which thankfully we ended up selling). I
planted a full garden there and -- long story short -- watched it do nothing because there was an exorbitant amount of shade from the surrounding trees. I mean, basically nothing grew. It was extremely depressing. So then I transplanted as much as I could into containers and tried
growing stuff on my front patio. And hey! For what it was, some stuff grew... and it was better than what I would have gotten in the plot. Then come fall I spent money to amend the soil in my containers and then
planted a fall greens crop... Well obviously the sun's position in the sky had changed. And my patio, walkway, everything I have access to is COMPLETELY SHADED. So nothing has been growing. Again. At all. So when I made it down to the community garden area and found my plot bathed in sunlight, my afternoon quickly changed course.
The kids enjoyed just poking around in that area... it's pretty safe and away from the road so they just played with sticks and ran around. I dug all the sweet potatoes out and moved all the leaves out of the bed. When the kids were done, we made the walk back up to the house, and then I proceeded to harvest the sweet potatoes I'd been growing in the containers since Spring, load up all the pots I had into the back of the 4Runner, and drive on down to try to transplant everything into the ground in the 20 minutes I had until I had to get ready for work.
And that's what I did. I don't expect anything to really grow now that it's so cold, but the thing about greens like collards and kale and cabbage is that they survive the winters here in GA, and in the Spring they grow again and you can continue to harvest until it gets too hot and they bolt. I don't have a ton of stuff in the ground, but it's something... and as long as I am growing something and always learning, that's enough for me.
And just a side note, with the issues I've had with my garden this year, I've realized how much of who I have defined myself to be is wrapped up in that little hobby... not a HUGE part of who I am, but some, and it kinda hurt my pride -- all of these issues I've had this year and not having the kind of yield or success I've had in the past. It made me realize that once again, I was attaching some sort of identity to how successful my garden is, like it validates me in some way... This little hobby IS important to me, and I DO want to have each year better than the next - because I am wanting to learn more so that one day, if God provides a way for us, that we can have a much larger garden... maybe something that would feed more families other than just ours...
Which leads me to my next topic... something I've NOT been dealing with really -- hope deferred. Sometimes it is so much easier not to feel... just to keep plodding onward, instead of dealing fully with the reality of our existence and how it affects us deep down inside.
I've spoken a few times about the opportunity my husband has been given through his mentor to secure capital for a new company as a sort of investment broker. He has been successful at it, and the few commission checks we've received over the last year have been what we've lived on in conjunction with my income from the restaurant. It doesn't mean we have been super secure financially but it has taken the edge off. Wrapped up within this opportunity is a specific deal he helped bring to the table that involves a potentially significant investment, the commission from which would absolutely change our life. If the deal goes through, we would have more than enough to get our own place and start over - which is exactly what the goal was since moving in here.
When I pray and ask God for this, my prayers are simple..., "Lord, bless the work of my husband's hands, bless Gary and Reva for their faithfulness, and Lord, PLEASE... please... I just want a yard." That's it. My dreams aren't very complex or self serving, I don't think. All I want is a home to settle down in, where I can get my son into a good school, have some yard that gets good sunlight to grow a nice sized garden in, have some chickens, and to just live. The American Dream, I guess. That's all. And the ability to go to the beach once a year, and drive to the mountains when we want to, etc. That's it. And I don't even ask for that. I just want a yard and that's it. We hope for land, maybe 3-5 acres. But I would be willing to settle for a yard at this point, just one to turn the kids out in. And I was kinda hoping this would happen by Summer so we could get Dakota out of his current school.
This particular deal was looking very promising and looked to close before the end of the year. We were anxious and excited, hoping that would become a reality for us. We began to dream and plan a little. Then Hurricane Sandy happened, then more delays, then we got the news that this wasn't going to happen for 3-6 months.
I shoved it off like it was no big deal. After all, when you live on commission only you stop getting excited anymore about the next big thing. I hate to say that, but it makes it easier when disappointment happens. But if I was honest with myself, I was truly disappointed, and when the disappointment would well up inside, I realized I really needed to process it and be honest with myself. What usually happens when things like this fall through, I start to think about Plan B and wonder how we can make our dreams happen any other way. It's totally possible. Except it means bag Plan A, which has so much time and energy invested in it, and doesn't really mean a long term future for us, rather is just a short term plan to get us more financially stable. We can't live here forever...
To dream is to be vulnerable. It is to allow yourself to hope. And to hope is to be exposed, which can be very scary when you've had your hopes dashed over and over again. To be exposed means that we can choose whether or not to fall on God in our brokenness when this happens, or to stop feeling and stop being emotionally open. We can go either way and it will make all the difference. There is so much self examination going on lately about whether or not I am really learning all the God has for me to learn, whether or not I should even consider this a season - I mean, what if nothing ever changes? What if this is our life for good? What if the economy tanks again? What if there is nowhere to go but down? What can I do about any of this? It's completely out of my control. It is so hard... desiring something that you know is reasonable and good for your life and your family, and knowing that it may not ever happen... or if it does, it seems difficult to achieve. And I know I shouldn't expect things to miraculously happen... and that it is more than right to expect to have to work super hard for something, it's just daunting at this moment.
Anyway, I don't know if I am getting anywhere with this. I just wanted to share some of my thoughts with you about some of what I've been pondering lately. Things are okay, and God has been taking care of us, so I have no reason to believe that he won't continue to do so. And I am sure there is more that we can do to cut corners and be more frugal... sigh.
Thanks for readin'.
