Garden Raspberries 2022

Early in 2022, the raspberries had no leaves, and they were all in their original bed.

As the spring progressed, the leaves exploded (as they do each year) and I built the PVC support structure around them.

We had a huge harvest! We had to have friends come help pick and eat them.

They got taller and taller.

And they migrated into the adjoining garden bed. I put weed cloth in the path, or else they would have taken over the path as well.

And then, in the fall, the leaves turned yellow and a large branch fell down, dismantling the PVC pipes. The yellow leaves would then fall off, the plants would hibernate, and get ready to bloom again in 2023. :)

Family on Earth, Family in Heaven

When Uri was 13 months old, we went to California to visit family. My Nana was sick with cancer, but when I scheduled the trip a few months in advance I had no idea how quickly her health would decline. As it turned out, she was hospitalized a few days before we came, and then settled home in hospice care the day we arrived. Nearing the end of life is a time of grief, and there is something sacred about those last days together. It was meaningful to have my Nana, Uri's great-grandmother, lay hands on him and bless him one last time before she passed. It was special to pray together and to have quality time with her. The first couple days she was home on hospice she was alert and communicative, but very soon she didn't even have the strength to sit up, open her eyes, or speak anymore. 

I have experience with hospice care and I have training as a "home care aid", to assist with people who are bedridden or otherwise in need of special care. I was able to help care for my Nana while I was there, as well as passing on knowledge and confidence to my mom and sister who were among Nana's primary caregivers. It felt like such a divine appointment that the timing of my trip landed on the very day hospice care started. 

I believe Uri and I were there for about 7 days. When I said goodbye to Nana, she was able to draw on her reserves of strength to whisper a blessing and a farewell. She passed away a few days later.

Of course we didn't know that Uri would be joining her in heaven only 9 months later. Seeing this picture of them together on earth has a sacredness to it, yet it is marred by the presence of sickness and the condition of the fallen world. It is a joy to imagine them together in heaven. Nana is whole and well and playing with Uri with such joy. It is such a beautiful reality, and I look forward with great anticipation the day that I can join them there. Jacob and I walk out this life as a holy duty, but we look ever with yearning towards the day we will be reunited with our loved ones who have gone before, and when we will no longer see through a glass darkly. Praise the Lord that day will come.

Watercolor Art

I painted this picture and I really like it. :)

 

Snippets of True Education

Fitting a sphere onto a flat surface is always challenging, made worse when space is limited. But it's okay. Life isn't about perfection, and I'm pleased with how the maps turned out on the walls of my nanny-kid's playroom. Perhaps we should have at least cut Antarctica into strips to spread out along the bottom. Perhaps we should have double checked before we accidentally colored half of Russia red and the other half brown. Perhaps I could have gotten the sizing scale better if I'd printed everything all at once, instead of in segments. But it's all okay! Perfection isn't the goal. And education happens by degrees, it is never an exact science, and the goal should always be to be a life-long learner. 

My nanny-kid had some commentary while we were coloring and labeling countries.

"Oh I know about France, that's where that big tower is."

"Ah, Bolivia, that's where the piraña is from in my comic book!"

"Philippines... that's where the Abuela is from in Blue's Clues."

"My old nanny was from Brazil."

I haven't tracked down a picture of the Abuela from Blue's Clues or his old nanny yet, but the Eiffel Tower and the piraña weren't that hard to get printed and pinned to the appropriate country. 

Knowledge is pleasurable. Cramming for a test is not. Knowing a list of facts is dull. But encountering our world and beginning to understand our place and the place of other things and people within the framework of our globe is heartening. Ever since I was old enough to understand educational philosophies, I have always had a huge heart for living education; both for myself and for others. I marveled with Uri at all the life discoveries he was making as a toddler, and I wish I could be doing these types of projects with him. And the time will come when I'll do these sorts of things with Ocean. But in the meanwhile, I'm glad my nanny-kid and I were able to do this project together, and I hope it inspires some of my readers here as well. I believe even snippets of true education are far more interesting, memorable, and valuable than any compulsory rote memorization.