Saturday, September 10, 2011

So much for the preparations for winter, whew, we've had a heat wave this past week. My word! Temperatures in the 30C/102F range, heat wave.

After the week priors freezing and this heat wave, my garden is pretty much decimated. Ugh. Fortunately, the gladiolus are still blooming and are suprising me at their resilience. They are blooming places that I wasn't certain if they would get enough sunshine to survive, little alone bloom.

But that is much like life.

I've had a really tough time with APS this past week or so....I can't sleep for the pain and it makes it hard to manage anything little alone a garden.  I also homeschool my children and so it is a delicate balance between my bodys' need for rest and their need for stimulation.

Much like those gladiola corms I planted....I knew where I was putting them was a tough area for growth. A lot of shade, only a couple of inches of growing room, poor clay soil and only the western sun from 2:00 pm on.  But I did what I could do to mitigate the challenges of the area. I improved the soil and drainage. I stapled trellis netting to the landscaping shored up railway ties, and kept the area free of weeds.

Now one might question "why would you plant those corms in an area that had so many challenges" but my thought process was that if weeds could grow and flourish, why couldn't a cultivated flower?

Much like my choice to homeschool....(be forwarned if you publically school your children).  Why would I choose to homeschool knowing that my body has so many challenges to overcome?

We live in a horrible school district with unwaivering administration and teachers that blindly follow and blame the administration for their short-falls.  Unfortunately, I know first hand as my husbands' mother, sister and aunt are all teacher for the public school system and there is never a shortage of their bitching and complaining, self deflecting behavior and refusal to take responsibility for anything conversations at family get togethers that over the years I've been able to watch on the outside what the inside mechanations of the education system of this town look like. Holy run on sentence.

And like that poor, unimproved planting sight, weeds have flourished in this school district.  And if weeds can flourish in this district, why can't children of a cultivated education flourish in this area?  I know what the challenges of my planting site are....

  • solid clay soil aka unweilding public school
  • little growing room aka large class sizes and little opportunity for individualism
  • very shady aka "the other" influences
  • little and late afternoon sun aka little enlightenment from the adults entrenched in a negligent atmosphere.

So I did what any good gardener does with a challenging spot.  I enriched my basic foundation, prepared the material, selected the best and healthiest specimens to plant, and continue to nurture their minds to fruition.

But this past week was a tough, tough week. And I was questioning my "planting spot", wondering if I was holding my children back by homeschooling from my bed.

So I prayed. I read scripture. I prayed some more and still wasn't getting any direction.

Then I reached out to my friend, Mary Siever, to see if she knew of any homeschoolers with terminal/chronic illnesses or if a support group existed because I was starting to think that maybe enrolling my children into public school. Wow, I must have been having a bad day.

She was so very kind and accomodating and immediately put the word out.  On one of the pages, I noticed some homeschooling links and clicked on called Hip Homeschooling Moms and browsed through the pages. It looked interesting so I joined. After a bit more browsing, I happened across a page called the question of the week.

Oh boy, the Lord sent me to this page and right then I knew what the answer to my prayers were. Here is the question of the week and the responses. My word, I knew I was in the correct place when Kelli from  Adventurez in Child Rearing responded to my post and UNDERSTOOD exactly my physical limitations. Tears rolled down my face as I felt so blessed that the Lord had lead me to this place "accidentally" and I knew definitively that we have made the right choice.

So I will continue to cultivate in difficult places and grow surprising results. But then again, anything is possible through the Lord.