When I was a child I made Mississippi Mud Pies. If you thought this post was going to be about some kind of a dessert, it is not.
I am talking about real mud pies from the Mississippi Delta. I had my wooden table made out of a board on top of blocks and a stick for a spoon. I had a real kitchen made from limbs that had fallen from trees. All you need for a real kitchen is to pull the limbs to a flat area and form them into a square or rectangle, just remember to leave a space for that door. I made the mud pies and fed them to my imaginary friends and I served them on plates made out of leaves. The conversation was always wonderful.
I had an imaginary monkey and I would hold his hand to keep him out of trouble. Sometimes I would hold him on my hip and sometimes I would let him play in a tree and when he came down from playing he would sit down at my table and eat stick bananas.
I did love imaginary play and I was the kind of child that really did not need toys to be happy because life was happy, all you had to do was imagine.
I have written before how much I enjoyed walking down a dirt road and listening to the sound of my shoes crunching on little pieces of gravel. I loved the sound and the rhythm of walking and the soles of my shoes crunching. I was happy and maybe it was because there were no distractions and noise came from birds, wind going through the trees and the sound of shoes walking on different surfaces.
When my husband Charles was a child he made mud cannon balls and mud forts and would play with his soldiers and his mud and dirt forts for as long as his parents would let him play outside.
There is still the child inside of me and this helps to keep life interesting. Life can pile on us some heavy burdens but if we keep carrying the burdens we can break down. We need to set them down and let them go so we can be in a better mental place.
I only say this because there is so much going on all over the world, some very bad things that we cannot do anything about. When I say all over the world that includes our country but all over the world is important because we the people are all over the world. We are humans, we are humanity and I like to think that most of us have empathy and kindness.
We can do something to bring happiness right where we are in our own home. If everyone would just start with their own home this can make big changes and even though we know not everyone will do this we should not let this stop us. We also can make changes with our presence and attitude when we are out and about. I am personally tired of seeing frumpy, frowny people and I had to look in the mirror first to discover that I was becoming one too.
To update things a bit, we are still working on the new efficiency apartment. Charles has just put in a new closet door in the master bedroom of the efficiency.
We are still trying to place things from the downsizing and we are trying to find the things we did place. ugh!
I will start painting the master bedroom today and Charles will help me late this afternoon to finish up.
Some of the things we neglected in the garden are doing better than the vegetation we were trying to keep alive. I guess this means the roots dug deeper to find water. This bushy plant in the picture above is lemon grass.
We thought the turmeric and ginger were not going to grow this year but they decided to take their time. The leaves should be much larger but I am still encouraged.
We have a giant aloe vera, I guess it decided it liked the soil I transplanted it into. I still have a large pot full that need to be thinned out and transplanted.
The compost bin that was 3/4 full has composted down very nicely. Charles turned it this past weekend and now it is new soil ready to top raised beds and fill into new pots.
The perennial figs and plums, blueberries and pear trees and bushes have done well without our help and why I like to have a more perennial garden.
We are still working out solutions to reduce the flow of water and less use of paper products. Water is a precious resource and Charles and I do not take this lightly. We do not want to take more than we need. I have been reducing plastic but this small red plastic bucket is so handy I have kept it.
The washing up area (for bathing) in our bedroom is working much better since I changed things around a bit and added a second wash pan. I have found I prefer the enamel pans and one pan is for the soapy water and the larger pan is for rinsing after soaping our body.
In the past people often bathed this way and a tub bath was only an occasional bath. We all should at least practice bathing this way should their be a disruption in electric and water. The pumps could go out or something happen to the water.
To bathe in a wash basin we remove clothing as we would before stepping into a shower only we are going to wash with a cloth and water and rinse the same way.
Soap our entire body.....
Then with the clean water bowl rinse off the soap. Just swish the rag and squeeze it out and wipe down the body and keep doing this until the soap is removed. You can get very clean this way.
I wash my feet last and step one foot at a time in the bowl. First in the soapy water then in the rinse water.
Once finished I take the water out to the yard and pour it on the bushes and trees because I use a real natural soap which will not hurt the environment.
Then I bring them back in and wipe them clean and stack one inside the other with a cloth in between. Now it is ready for the next time. Much easier than cleaning a tub or shower.
This works very well if everyone has their own bowls, towels and soap in a home with a large family and one bathroom or an off grid cabin.
We also have an outdoor bathhouse that we use to take what we call bucket baths. i have posted about this in other posts. This works very well in the summer.
I will be going back through the kitchen cabinets soon as my goal is a simple kitchen. Gadgets and pyrex and fire king bowls are getting too heavy for me to handle so I am lightening up the kitchen. Now I understand Fannie Bell's Kitchen and when I get this organized I will post about it.
There has been no time or energy for knitting lately but fall and winter will be here before we know it.
To live a simple life is probably the most determined thing I have ever done and what I consider simple is probably more simple than most people and to have Charles on board makes it less complicated. He loves the old fashioned life and he has now carried that over to his small work shop.
Living an old fashioned simple life is so fulfilling because it has so much purpose. It is isolating for some people to live a simple life because others may think one strange to not want modern things of today. I personally think them strange to want them since I know how much happier we are and how living with less expenses can relieve so much stress.
This post is more of a ramble but what was put in my mind today. I hope it helps in some way. Grandma Donna
