The other day my husband and I went to the butcher to purchase our meat. It is a short drive outside our town and my husband knows how much I love the drive because it refreshes me. He took the side roads so I could snap some pictures. It seems that it strengthens me when I can visually refuel where my heart remains so wanting.
As we go through life we lean and absorb knowledge from others and it seems to me that I learned the most from those that farmed or those that were more settled than me. They may have thought I was not paying attention but I was.
Most of my life I have been a very busy person and by that I mean I do not sit down much and when I am sitting I am still doing something. I have always had a desire to be more steady so I could be really good at that one thing but there is so much I want to do that I get off track and never seem to truly master that one thing.
In the process I have gathered the knowledge but to get good at something then it just takes doing that one thing over and over until it becomes part of you such as making bread.
With the world as it is right now I find I must close out the noise and just make my bread, do my laundry,(or finally clean my stove burners) and care for my home which cares for me.
I thank my home for its shelter. If we just take care of what we have and not want for all the fancy things out there, we could end up with an easier home to care for later in life. I understand this now and we are trying to rid ourselves of things so this can happen.
I sit here this morning typing at my computer and it is very dark in my room as the sun has not risen and I can hear the rain as it hitting the aluminum roof on the garden shed out back and the patio behind our house. I think of how today the squirrels will hang upside down on the trees with their tails pulled over them forward making their umbrella. This picture was taken yesterday morning.
Some people will become moody or gloomy when it rains but to me it is a good time to finish projects because there is always something that needs attention.
I have written many articles and I cannot remember if I wrote about this but I will write it again anyway. When I was still working outside my home I would drive a certain route to work. I would pass by the same houses and places each day and part of my route went through a poorer side of town as some would think in those terms. There was this small wooden house with a porch across the front. Often the older woman that lived there would be out tending her flowers and her cat would be out with her. I loved the simplicity of her house and yard and I desired to have the time to be at home. All the while I was working and living life like everyone else to buy the new things that others had.
What I did not know is that wisdom was pulling me to notice that all I needed was simplicity. I did not need to be aiming to live as others. We should never ignore our senses of what is truly that we only need less to make us the most happy. I am not saying that living in a big house is wrong but have you ever noticed that people will tend to congregate in a small room inside a house or rather sit in uncomfortable chairs in the kitchen to be around others that are cooking?
If I can make an example, we take three houses and set them next to each other. Each one is the very same. It is a wood frame house, two bedroom one bath, small kitchen living room and laundry area off the back.. A very small simple house. It has a fenced yard. We introduce three families, each one given a house. We come back twenty years later. What do you think you will see?
Well, the way the world works and this is my example I see that one of the houses was remodeled and had a large room added to the back. A shed had been built out back and it had another small building next to it. It was painted a different color, it needed some work done to the front porch, a ladder was next to the house as they were working on a new remodeling project and several cars were parked there. There was quite a bit of clutter and the yard could use a good cleaning.
The other sold their house to purchase a bigger house. They rented out the house and was in need of repair. The yard was not kept and the fence was broken.
The other house had been well kept, it looked freshly painted. The grass was very green.. A porch swing was added to the front porch and it had a well tended garden. Which would be your house? I know which one I wish was my house.
What is it that drives people to leave something of great value behind? Great value is that simple well tended place.
Just a note so this article is not sad seeing these old places.
When I look at this house I do not see it as poor and abandoned. I see it as a house that once sheltered a family and curtains in the windows. Meals cooked on a stove. I think of children laughing and dogs barking. For some reason the owners parted and many houses sit waiting their time to once again return to the earth as does an old fallen tree. This house can still be given a chance by tearing away the decay and salvaging the parts that still have some life. A new house can be built on this very spot. It is not for me to change the outcome of this house it was my pleasure to imagine the life it once had. Living like the past is not like living in the past. We take away the good things from the past, not the bad.
Knowing what I know now, I would have kept this house well tended because I know there is nothing more valuable than land and soil to grow our own food. We do have our own city yard so my job is to make our tiny garden as productive as possible.
The best part of life is that today is a new day.
