[Mrs. Bubble] has the yogurt culturing in the sun, the milk for the ricotta heating on the stove, the jars for canning sterilizing in the dishwasher, the veggies for pickled peppers and chow chow relish icing in the sink... Think I'll head out to the garden and do some Fall planting while I wait for the jars (oh, better get the milk off the stove first!).
A friend of mine from high school (shhhh, it's been more than 25 years...) commented and asked me this:
[Mrs. Bubble], do you have a full time paying job outside of your home??? How do you do all this cooking, planting, baking, canning????
I love the question. And I love the answer. NOOOOOO Blissfully, happily, fortunately, wonderfully, thankfully, OMG, NO! I have not worked outside the home(stead-to-be) for two full years now. Mr. Bubble has not for almost six years. There was "that time" when I worked in corporate chaos and Mr. Bubble stayed home with the girls. I am ever grateful that we were able to have a full-time parent at home and pay our mortgage (here in LA County) and I try to console myself that my stint doing something-I-so-don't-believe-in doesn't mean I'm morally bankrupt. I did something I was, right or wrong, good at. And there were fruits.
But now, we, or I, have taken a GOOD LONG DEEP BREATH. And I have dedicated myself and my family to finding a sustainable, sustaining path. We are working on becoming self-sufficient. We will probably never quite get there. But we choose as our model the family life that prevailed before WWII. The war era marks the time when men (and lots of women) first left the homestead to find work in factories and offices to buy food they didn't grow, to pay for houses they rarely spent time in, to provide for children that others took care of. I am not being judgmental -- I understand the economics of modern living. And I also understand the insufficiency, the under-appreciated-ness, the Stepford-ness, the what-some-would-call drudgery that can characterize being a stay at home mom. I have been a career woman. A career mom. I get it. But I'm over it. And I march proudly back into the garden. With my naked, un-preschooled "preschooler" in tow!
What we are planting for Fall.
Daddy's strawberry arbutus looks great!
Down in the Bed of Chaos, pumpkins are ripening...
Eggplant are growing
This pumpkin first appeared on the scene last week -- look how fast it has grown!
The tomatillos are producing like mad (can they talk to the tomatoes?????)
My blackberries are few, but LARGE!
Some dang animal got this - the first really big ripe tomato for a while!
As I walk through the beds, I put little treasures in my pocket!
Oh, this is my NEWEST pumpkin! We'll check on it in a week!
So do you ever, in your garden, just look up and say, "I have never looked at this angle before! Wow! That is good!"? Yeah, this was me today!
Another "ahah" moment today! My onion seeds have sprouted!
My rainbow chard always makes me happy!
And this little yellow zinnia is so cute.
But mostly, these days, with Alex in school, I have "Eve" and her (my) garden!
Mr. Bubble comes home.
The figs grow.
5 comments:
Love love love those pics of (eve). :) I love staying home and being domestic too. it so much more rewarding now that I have worked away from it. I try not to take it for granted now.
Jaimey
Great post Marlyn. You really do seem to live in "paradise"! I love staying home too, but am seriously struggling with the motivation lately. I need to get my butt in gear. I bought 2 gallons of raw milk this week for yogurt and whatever else. ;-)
Great post. :-) And oh how I love those nekkid pics!! GReat perspective--
Thanks my beautiful friends! You all inspire me!
Marlyn, thanks for sharing this link with me. I, too, love the naked pictures and how the leaves of grass are ever so strategically placed to cover the nakedness. Brilliant! I have always said that I could never be a SAHM--feeling as if women that stayed home didn't really have much going for them if they didn't have something else to do, like a job or career. But, of course, that thinking was poor, incorrect, and downright ignorant. Today, I believe that if a woman finds joy of working outside the home, great. But I'm beginning to see that it's not ideal spreading yourself thin like that because you're really not giving 100% of yourself to your children. Being gone for 10 hours, only to reconnect for a couple hours with your children at night, while rushing to make dinner....clean up....is totally unfair to the children, and unfair to a working mom. And then when the beautiful weekends roll around, you spend a majority of that time trying to get done all the things you have had NO time for during the week because you're gone for 10 hours. Which means, then your children STILL aren't getting your full, undivided attention over the housework. Anyhow, must I go on? LOL Consider yourself blessed, and who needs that damn corporate job when, in the end, when you're on your death bed, all that a woman is going to think is how well she took care of her family, not how good of an employee she was.
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