I thought my moments were full before. I thought that my days were planned for me before. Not like this. My latest morning routine is a little over the top. I wake up - early - I go downstairs to our scary gym and force myself to work out. I then go back upstairs, have a coffee (best part of my day), read, pray (beg God for help daily), catch up on world events, maybe blog, and then get my warmest clothes on and go off to the vines to prune the concord grapes. I hang out down there with the birds chirping (it is so beautiful, I have to say) for an hour or two, depending on how cold and wet I get, and then come back to wake up the family. It's not even 8:30 by this point. Some are awake, but most are asleep.
We then attempt our "regular" day with chores, school, eating, etc. By noon, I'm wiped, so I may lay down if I get a chance for a few minutes. Then I hear the plants calling. My little greenhouse is ALIVE. I was getting a little worried because my plants were getting "leggy". From what we had read we didn't have enough light even though I had them in a south facing room with lots of light. It wasn't enough. I didn't know what we were going to do as lights are quite expensive, but yay to RM for doing some research. He found some grow lights form a cannibas operation (haha) for a really decent price and they are PERFECT. They light up the room like it is 12 noon all day and they are warm, too - 1200 watts of light. Crazy. The plants are super happy now and after transplanting some of them they are now growing really well. So that's what I do for the next few minutes - I go through the "greenhouse" assessing which ones need water, which ones have sprouted, which ones need to be transplanted, etc....it's kind of fun to see how much they grow each day. As I walk by the laundry to the plants, I throw in a load, take out a load, fold a load, call a child to help, and end back up in the kitchen. I look at the clock and realize - yikes, I better start dinner!
More kids are called and somehow we get dinner on the table - who knows how, but it always end up almost exactly at 5. If I'm later than 5 kids' stomachs start growling at me. It means they always want food later, but that's fine, 5 it is. The evening can be more plant stuff, or imagine this, sitting down for a few minutes.....I've started doing more garden research during this time as I have a lot of questions myself. Needless to say, my bed is screaming for me by 9. Last night I was in bed, probably fully asleep by 9:30.
So a full day, every day. It makes me wonder - What did I do with my time before this garden????
Meanwhile, my son is back at it starting to study full time again for his second round of taking the MCAT. He was feeling so discouraged about having to take it twice, but it turns out the stat is that most people take it 2 or 3 times! We're already starting to see a huge change in his attitude and his approach to studying and I think he'll do great. This past week I had a follow up appointment with the surgeon to see how I was healing up. I had no questions at all about the surgery, I just wanted the appointment to be over so I could talk to him about med school. He had a med student with him in the room, too, so once the appointment was over, I asked if I could ask him about the best approach to med school, taking the MCAT twice, which schools to apply to, etc. The surgeon was happy to talk and then the med student, you could tell, was dying to talk to me, too. As soon as he started to talk, everything he said sounded awfully familiar. He had mentioned he had a youtube channel on how to get into med school, how to study, etc. I asked, "Are you out of Mac?" "Yes....?" I said, "I think my son follows you on youtube..." Sure enough, I called my son just to see if it was the same guy - it was. I had just met a very famous "youtuber"! My son LOVES this guy and does everything he says. He couldn't believe I had met him - hilarious - the world of social media is so weird! But this young med student had told me to tell my son to reach out to him. They are now in contact and have a funny little rapport. He's been very helpful and to my son it was just the encouragement he needed. Kind of what I wrote before about God speaking to us in our language. It meant nothing to me as I'm not a social media person, but everything to my son, who is.
The funnier thing is - I now am a social media person. I'm hardly good at it, but now have the crazy instagram and facebook pages for our farm. Very funny. My kids laugh at me as I try to learn to navigate it.
The reason I go off to the vines each morning is because I want to make the trees and vine balls again. The funny thing is I thought I would be making them for Christmas, but I'm getting orders for vines balls for garden decorating! I love this! I have to prune like a crazy person because the vines are starting to bud, so there is pressure!
Ok, off I go......
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