A peaceful moment

When she is uncomfortable, she's really, really uncomfortable (and we often can't figure out why!) but when she's relaxed, she's really, really relaxed! (The foam cylinder in her hand is a perfect size to help keep her fists from clenching so tightly.)

A day in the garden

The summer before we met and brought home Bobbi and Mira (but after we'd started the process) was a sort of idyllic year as far as our yard and gardens were concerned. Gardening has long been a hobby of mine, starting with a bleeding heart that my grandparents got for me and my parents let me plant in a little foundation garden behind our house and moving to a little 10x10 vegetable plot that my dad dug up in the back yard as we got older. When I was twelve we moved and I got to help my parents design the landscaping for the bare naked yard (brand new house) and my dad double-dug two beautiful 5' by 20' veggie garden beds that I thoroughly enjoyed. I can't remember at all what degree of success we actually had with the garden, but I DO remember how much I loved the planting and watching things grow.

Matt comes from a long line of farmer/gardener/yard-putterer stock. The almost-one-acre yard that we live on is what's left of his grandpa's truck farm from which he used to take produce to the St Paul Farmer's market. Our current vegetable garden is about 2000 square feet, and was the "kitchen garden" on Grandpa's property. His grandma (who I never really got to meet because her Alzheimers was quite progressed by the time I met Maty) had been an amazing flower gardener, and the yard is still full of all of her old beauties - peonies, iris, and many other treasures. We still get fruit every fall from the old apple and pear trees that his grandparents planted, and raspberries in the summer from the ones they used to eat off in the summer. One of our favorite things to do together when the kids are in bed (or during the day with them!) is putter in the garden - weed, plant, move, plan.

That summer before the girls came home was almost too good to be true. The weather was great, I wasn't pregnant (so the ground didn't seem like it was a mile away!) and Gloria was a content enough baby that she was happy to just be around, but didn't feel the need to be constantly held, so we spent many delightful hours outside. Oh yes - that was the year our neighbor worked at a garden center, and all summer long was bringing home off-casts that didn't look good enough to sell, but just needed a little TLC to be just fine, so we had a great influx of interesting plant material - everything was simply ideal. (I blogged a bit about it here.)

The years since then have been not so good in the gardens. Yes, we've gotten out there a bit, but it's been a sacrifice that I've felt that something that means so much has been taken away. This year, however, has come in a way that it feels like a smile of delight from a Father who knows me. There is so much that inspire worship when you're out in the middle of what he has created!!

With yesterday's incredibly beautiful and mild weather, on a whim we brought Mira outside. It's not super easy to get her in and out of the house (oh, I'm so ready for that ramp we're dreaming about!) but earlier this spring we reshaped some of the hillier parts of our yard so we have a more wheelchair friendly path to the back yard for Bobbi, and decided to try it for Mira!

Here she is in the shade of the huge crab apple tree (which every year shades more and more of the veggie garden!) where she won't get a sunburn, but can still feel the wind in her face.

After a while, Bobbi decided to join us, too, which is a pretty common passtime for her these days. Sometimes she'll bring her Bible out to read if it's not too windy. Sometimes her iPad if she's close enough to the house to still get wi-fi, and sometimes, like today, she just comes out to see what we're up to! Matt put her to work watering the gladiolas.

Here you can see Matt hilling potatoes, Reuben settling down with his iPad (at least he's not wandering!), Mira all wrapped up in her blanket, and Bobbi leaning in with the hose.

Lest you miss this, let me bring to your attention the joy that it is to have Bobbi contributing to this venture! It's a joy to have her interested, it's a delight to have her contributing meaningful work to the well-being of the garden, and such a great way for her to get to see in real life how God has designed all of these systems to work! She, remember, helped Dad cut the potato sets, so she's been involved to some degree already with the garden, but to have her out there working with us is fantastic. It's one more little thread that is getting woven into our lives as we live life together. Starting from sixteen years of none of those connections makes these interweavings that much more significant.

And for the record, Krassi did not come out yesterday. But's he's been out plenty of other times this spring! He still really only has his one ASL sign ("I want!/Mine!") but he gets a lot of mileage out of that one. We can ask him, "Krassi, do you want to go outside? Or do you want to stay in the house?" Once he knows the two options, I'll ask again with a pause in between, and it's usually not too hard to tell which one he's looking for! So he's not left out, here's a photo from a few weeks ago. I love how great he looks lounging in these chairs! He gets up there from laying on the grass all by himself! In and out and in and out all afternoon.

The new chair is here!

We all really love the new RED color. First of all, it's just plain fun, and secondly, I think it's not accidental that the girl who came home with favorite colors of gray, black, and dark blue three years later wants red. It looks good on her!