Back to my roots

I do live in Iowa after all. My first 20 years here was all about farming. I couldn't have gotten any closer to farming without actually being one if I'd tried. But these last 15 years of living in town have reallly taken me away from those roots. I'd forgotten how beautiful the harvest is. How frantic, (frentic) and crazy it really is. So today we did the Sunday afternoon drive to check it out. (those days are almost a thing of the past, gas prices being what they are!!) So here's what we saw:

Fall Plantings

Tonight was the night. I planted my tulip bulbs. In the dark. The rows won't be straight. They might not even be deep enough. (then there'll be no tulips next spring)That's because it's hard to see in the dark soil in the dark night. I didn't mean to let it get so late, but once i got started there was no turning back. And how can I even think of being in Orange City without tulips? Well, I suppose I could have waited until tomorrow, but this way we'll see what kind of random-ness we'll have in the garden in the spring. I will at least be conforming. (That's what my kids were worried about when we moved here in the first place. Somehow we might, ARGH, become to dutchified!)

Who cooks for you?

What's your favorite "I-don't-have-time-to-cook, but-I'm-hungry-right-now" meal? Mine is "Let-Ron-do-the-cooking". That's a guaranteed eggs of some sort meal. Tonight was one of those nights. Come to think of it, I have one of those nights at least once a week. He does a fair omlet, so I figure I should let him keep in practice. What do you think? In warmer weather, he grills. And best of all is camping. He cooks 3 meals a day, and might even clean up. No wonder I love camping!

Ordinary days

Without kids pictures to post, or clever sayings from them I feel like my days have slipped into sameness. Buster is my kid and I seem to be the only one who thinks he's cute, so I try not to make too many comments in that direction. I hate to live vicariously-i.e. talking about what my kids are doing as if that's really my life, when it's not. But that leaves a day like today. Ordinary. But then, I think that is what life really is. It's not those spectacular, fireworks and orchestra music kinds of days that make up most of life anyway. It's those ordinary ones, that start with a walk and a prayer in the darkness and starlight. That celebrate the answers to prayer that come 'today' in amazing ways. That slog through the routines of work and co-workers and customers. That mean cooking and cleaning and sitting and talking, the sleeping and the dreaming. So my day was like that. My tomorrow probably will be too. But I'll be back.

Dream Home Pt. 3

So after living in our country home for about a year, we began the remodelling. This, folks, was where I learned everything I need to know in life about tools....from sheetrocking screws to skill saws, to crescent wrenches, I could hand every single one of them to my he-man carpenter before he even knew what he wanted. (think surgical nurse to surgeon) Point to a tool and I know its name. We painted, wall papered, ripped off walls and ceilings, insulated, re wired, plummed, shingled, installed, built, and added on. After 20 years of that, and of hearing "Oh, should only take a week or so to do that" (multiply by at least 3) or "I can do that...fix that...put that in" my local carpenter was ready to build his own house. And his full grown family was elected to help. So we left a house that was completely remodelled, replummed, wired, with new kitchen, bath, windows and went off on a tangent that we mistakenly thought was better. Let me tell you, building a house is better left to someone else. You come in when it's all said and done.

Dream home pt. 2

So. On with the story of this dream house. Did I mention that it was 20 miles from the nearest town with grocery shopping? And we were on a gravel road that filled the house with dust all spring, summer and fall? There was a 'slight' crack in the foundation of the bathroom (that by the way had no bathtub or shower. That was in the half 'bath' in the basement) That meant that in the fall, hoards of mice would get into the house. We used to joke that we had to run a trap line to catch them all. Every night we could lay in bed and hear mouse traps springing all over the house. In the morning we would empty them and start the process all over again. We also had a pair of bull snakes nesting under the wrap around porch. Ron wouldn't get rid of them because they "eat more mice than a cat ever thinks about". So I had to watch where I stepped when I was out on that nice porch. The windows were also quite old and during the winter we could stand in the middle of the kitchen and feel the breeze of the north wind blowing through. There was no heat whatsoever upstairs where all the bedrooms were so cuddling was highly recommended! And one of the first things we had to do with the house was put supports in the attic to shore up the roof. Check out my pictures-kitchen, outdoors and the last was the eternal remodel at the very beginning. (More on that later.) You can see my lovely full kitchen after we had done some work to it. Yikes. I worry about my taste after looking at that picture!

Dream House

Do I watch too much HGTV these days? Ron claims my current remodeling ideas could only have come from there...thoughts of granite counter tops, wood floors and open floor plans have never been in my normal vocabulary so where else could they have come from. (sigh) It's true. I am a home voyeuer of beautiful million dollar homes knowing that will never be my fortune. I need to remember my real 'dream' home. And here's a picture of it, too! My very first house. It had a wrap around porch, huge open kitchen and dining room/living room combination. Four bedrooms up and one down. Even a bath and a half. We owned nearly 3 acres of land with our own barn, machine shed and corn crib, a grove full of trees and even an orchard. In our early search of a place to live we had been given positive proof that this place was where we belonged. I had absolutely no doubt that this was the place we were supposed to be living. This find was pretty close to miraculous. If not this house, we would have been living in Illinois someplace close to our parents and brothers and sisters. Instead we were living the dream life in Iowa of all places! We've been only in Iowa for over 30 years now and this first house was truly the dream house to end all dream houses! I'll tell you about some of the nightmares that went with it in my next post.