First I want to share this beautiful flower that we have growing in our yard. We have several different kinds of mums and I do not know all the official names but this one is larger and beautiful. These three photos are stages of the blooms I took.
Starting to open...
I hope this brightens your day, it does mine.
I have been thinking about how much tending it takes to run a household and keep a yard and garden tidy.
If we want to harvest the garden.... We have to prepare the soil, plant it and tend it.
We tend to our laundry. Some of our work in the home has priority. Laundry is on that priority list.
Sweeping, vacuuming, mopping, dusting.... important to tend to to keep our home clean.
Our household runs better if we meal plan, have a food budget and make a grocery list. Many people do not do this and it can cause us to over spend on food.
We have had many extra projects lately and have been off our routine while painting and our meals have been off track and I don't like it at all. The good part about getting off track is we can get ourselves back on track with a little extra work or maybe even a lot of extra work. But we can do it.
Tending home can be hard work but our generations before us tended home without all the appliances and extras we have today and that thought keeps me grounded.
This week has been especially busy for Charles and I and Charles repaired one of our arbors this weekend. We like the whimsical look in our yard and when we use wood outdoors for these projects it will rot. Charles uses old wood as it gives them a new purpose. Gradually we are adding more iron as we can find it.
We are the yard with many paths and we enjoy walking under the arbors.
I always enjoy what he has created.
We had easy food again this weekend because of all the yard work extras. This is loose meat sandwich again but this time we added satueed/baked sweet potatoes
Tending to home means many things. It means cooking many of the same recipes over and over. Cleaning the floors even though we just did them two days ago.
It means making our beds, washing dishes, wiping noses and spills if we have little ones at home.
In the evening Charles and I read. We don't sit in front of a television. We changed the things we do to settle us and our home.
Tending home means tending to our pets as well and giving them what is best for them. They are completely dependent on us and would waste away if we did not care for them.
No matter where we live we are keeper of the home. We all have a part.
I have been very excited lately because we have new neighbors. The house next door has been vacant for several years and I have been praying for good neighbors ever since they put the house on the market. Now we have life back in a lonely house.
The reason the house sat empty was our elderly neighbor's health declined and she moved in with her daughter.
It has been sad for me to see the house sitting empty and knowing that many years ago a newly married couple moved into that house and made it a home. They raised three children and later had visiting grandchildren. Time went by and the elder head of the home passed away leaving a widow. She lived there alone for many years until her health declined.
A house does not need to sit untended, it will decay just like many things and I have passed by houses that do have people living in them but never tend to them and they too are decaying. The garden will decay as well if not tended to, how well I know.
Long ago neighbors would visit with one another and even help each other with projects. Often they bantered and there seemed to be more laughter.
We saw children playing in the yards and laundry blowing on the clotheslines. Mothers in their aprons calling their children in for supper. This is not make believe, this was really how it was.
It hurts my heart to see mothers, dragging their children in and out of their suv's going off and coming back with cranky children with their take out cups and straws and bags of take out food gripped in one hand and some electronic device in another while Mom is grabbing their stuff they haul back and forth to wherever it is they continuously go. People, I can tell you that it does not have to be this complicated! It also does not have to be this expensive.
Photo compliments of Sheri that tends to home and family....
In the past, the comparison of the family of today verses the past, the children would have been washed and in pajamas, the supper dishes would have been finished and the dish cloth hanging on the rack. The children would be giggling playing with a toy or reading books and settling as they soon would be off to bed.
Less things means more time. We need more calm in a world of hype and somehow get back to basics. We can do this one home at a time if only we don our aprons, roll up our sleeves, tend to what needs tending to the most and work our way through. I am not saying it is easy to take our homes back to an era that makes more sense. There is nothing pretend about this and to me it is the better option and quite honestly, it just feels right.
Grandma Donna