Adults follow paths. Children explore.

Neil Gaiman

I have a very bad habit of wanting everything to be “perfect”, and I have very little time to wait for this perfection that I am well aware will never happen. It’s a vicious cycle, and I have tried many ways to step off the merry-go-round that usually just leads to frustration and chaos, but I’ve never been successful.

As some of you may know, we went through some tragedy and a few health scares to get our littlest family member here. She is our rainbow baby and will almost certainly be our last baby per my doctors pleading after her traumatic arrival to this world. She was 4 weeks early via a very necessary c-section that went less than perfect. After she was born, I had severe health complications and she had some hills of her own to climb. Thankfully today we are both healthy, happy, and enjoying each and every day.

Because she was 4 weeks early, she is technically a “preemie” although she weighed extremely close to 10 pounds when she made her entrance into this world! With the premature label comes constant monitory of her development both physically and emotionally. We’ve had referrals to several specialists for her development, but she has always fallen short of actually needing it. Basically we walk a constant line between needing intervention to keep her on track, and her being a typically developing child. Her first birthday is coming up and I have found myself very discouraged that she isn’t crawling yet. As in, she won’t even try and has no interest in crawling at all. She is the happiest little thing, and has not a worry nor a care in the world. It’s me who wants her to crawl. Why? Because it’s normal.

This past week, I spent a lot of time trying everything I know how to do to get her to at least try crawling. She just laughed and went right to her tummy. Then something happened. She adapted. She has started scooting all over the house, and FAST! I set her down in the living room and before I can walk to another room in our house, she is right behind me or beating me out of the living room. She sits on her bottom and pulls herself around with either her arms or her legs. It’s caused me to do some serious reflecting about perspective and adapting to surroundings. She doesn’t really need to crawl- she gets where she wants to go, she has the biggest smile on her face, and she makes her way to the toys and things she wants. (I know some believe there is something missed in development if crawling is skipped, but there is also a ton of evidence that it’s just fine to skip.)

What Does This Mean?

During my reflecting I started thinking about how I could apply her determination to my own issues I have experienced here lately. My begonia seeds didn’t germinate because my greenhouse is cold. I was upset about it and beyond frustrated because I waited so long to get started on my plants this year, and begonias were my first try.

I thought about buying a big tent greenhouse until we have the cash set aside to fix the wholes and patch up the greenhouse that is here, but then I remembered a time when I bought one of those tents, spent hours upon hours planting seeds, only to have it blow away with all my seedlings a few days later. No joke, there are probably flowers sprouting all over our old yard this spring!

Reflecting on my little gals scooting around the house I thought to myself “How big of a tent greenhouse do you need?” No big honestly. I have shelves and I can use them to maximize my space. The greenhouse that came with our property is really quite large, so I have decided to purchase a smaller pop up greenhouse and put it inside the big greenhouse! It may not work, but it will be easier to heat, protected from the wind, and offers just one last chance to grow from seed right here instead of having to purchase plant starts. Adapting.

As the summer goes on we will start fixing the large permanent greenhouse for use in the coming seasons.

The Garden

This lead me think big on the garden space we have. It’s massive for a backyard garden and I have every intention of making it bigger… of course, right? I also would love to have one of those Pinterest gardens that people swoon over. I have a secret… those beautiful gardens are not cheap at all to set up. We are at a time in our lives were we can pay our bills, and everyone has everything they need, but we want to pay off what little debt we have left, so we are budgeting pretty heavily. This means I will most definitely not have a Pinterest garden with drool worthy raised beds, irrigation lines, and aesthetically pleasing pots in every blank space. At least not this year, and honestly probably not next year either.

What do I have? A huge flat area to put a garden big enough to feed my family fresh produce, enough to preserve, and probably enough to set up a small farm stand, which is my dream. I also have several different types of pots that were either left here on the property, or came with us from our last home to grow my root vegetables in. They are not pretty, but several of them are more than big enough for potatoes, carrots, onions, and so on and they hold dirt. The best part is they were free!

Fruit Trees in the Orchard

I do have a hard time calling our fruit trees an orchard because they are literally scattered all over the property, not located in one area. We have a little over five and a half acres, and from the road clear to the back there are fruit trees speckled into where there was once landscaping. Apples, pears, peaches, plums, figs, and I don’t even know how many cherry trees.

The problem with all of these trees is most of them are very sick and malnourished. They barely had any leaves when we finally got to take ownership of the property, and some still have their little plastic cones on them from when they were planted. They have started growing into the plastic, and they are just kind of sad.

Guess what else they are? Free. They came with our property, and I knew I wanted fruit trees so to say I was excited to find them all over here is an understatement. We left behind a big plum tree and a couple of beautiful apple trees when we moved, and I miss them. When I discovered all of these fruit trees at our new homestead, and I saw how sick they were, I talked with David about taking them out and buying new ones this Spring. The problem with that is fruit trees are not cheap to purchase, and they take some time to start producing any amount of fruit.

In the spirit of adapting and persevering, I have been researching and reading so much information on how to nurse these little trees back to health. This is giving me the opportunity to learn so much! Things that will apply to our homestead for many years to come.

This place still needs so much love and attention, but everything we have done here has been met with gratitude. We cleaned up some brush, and the grass that has grown in the empty patches is beautiful and lush. When I found the fig tree it was on the brink of leaving us. I watered it daily for about a week because it’s in a pot that is entirely too small for it, and it perked up it’s leaves and even produced some tiny figs right at the end of the season. This place just wants to be loved, and we are here to do it… on a budget with what we have.

2023 will be the year we learn how to get where we are going, no matter the means of transportation we use… even if we scoot.

~Tara