Tag Archives: faith journey

The Truth Behind Country Living: Weeds and the Reality of Free Range Chickens

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We were doing so well. Spring had us thinking we were ahead of the game this year. Things looked cleaned up and projects were on task. Sigh. Fail. Again. You know those great Instagram posts of the pretty summer .porch with chippy paint and rusty pails with random chicken eggs in a rainbow of colours next to a few beautiful wildflowers that look so romantic? It’s a lie. Country people will tell you the chippy paint is because we have no time for painting and we forgot the pail so it got rusty in the rain and your wild free-ranging chickens lay random eggs everywhere now instead of neatly in the nest boxes and it’s a daily game of hide and seek to collect them… and the wildflowers are really weeds that grow like crazy and take over any available spot except for the places you sowed the wild flower seeds hoping the pollinators would be happy that you thought of them….

Romantic? It’s a lie I generated with A.I!! Pretty though, isn’t it?

There are always two sides of the story friends. I love my house. I love my chick birds. I love my life and the adventures it brings. Yet, today, I am feeling a little bit on the other side. The dream has been crushed and it’s overwhelming and hard and not fun anymore. Part of my trouble is my own head. I get inside it and romanticize. Now don’t get me wrong… we do the work. We try. The hubby does his best, and I have good intentions, but most days I get home from work too exhausted to care. Everybody is safe and fed and clean and that’s enough. Yup, we keep it real here at mittonmusings.

I watered the “garden”. It is now a patch of thick thistle weeds and grass with a few stagnant tomato and pepper plants. I have 4 strawberry plants flowering which likely the wild birds will get before we get any fruit. Peas, beans, and any form of salad ingredient have been snatched up by the chickens and stubby bits of cucumber vines are choked out by more weeds. It’s a disaster! And I am sad. We tried to pull the thistles. Now I think I am going to try chaos gardening. Who cares. Let’s see what grows among the weeds.

I suppose thistles can be pretty too. Perspective.
Photo by Orhan Akbaba on Pexels.com

New found friends have a beautiful garden. Perfect rows. Ne’re a weed to be seen. He has blueberries! Blueberries! I didn’t think they grew down here, only up north, where it was colder. Okay, so they are retired and spend all day out there. Okay, they did research and planned and dug and tilled and worked for the last who knows how many years to achieve this greatness. How the blueberries were dug in trenches, fertilized and babied for four years before a single bloom. Still. I am grumpy there is no country property fairy. Instagram lies.

Ah friend. Is my musing simply a rambling of complaints? Partially. Hey, it’s my blog, I am allowed to vent. Still, it’s self talk as well. A reminder that God never promised life would be easy. We were chatting the other day about the angel who stood guard at the gate of the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve got kicked out. Do you think they “drove by” every now and then to see him? To wish for the paradise? Or did they keep far away, ashamed to ever cross the barrier? Warning their children like Peter rabbit’s mom at McGregor’s garden gate… that’s where disaster struck, kids. Stay far away from the edge.

So what’s my point? I suppose it is simply this. Life here in our fallen world is harsh. Things are not fair. Time steals. Instagram really does lie. A.I is going to make it harder and harder to decipher Truth. Our children’s children will continue to struggle. Yet God is bigger and stronger than anything we can complain about. Weeds choke out wisdom. The Bible says so. Things get squeezed out and our minds get infiltrated with doubts and struggles and sadness. We go through seasons, like the natural world does. Eventually, something grows. Perhaps the wild flower weeds are the only thing, but it’s still growth. My chickens have been well fed by their foraging. It’s all about perspective. I’m learning. And I guess that’s where I must focus for this week. Thanks for coming along on the journey, friends. Let’s meet again soon to encourage one another one more time.

Embracing Resilience: Life Lessons from Dandelions

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Welcome back to a little calmer week in the Mitton Household. Perhaps calmer, but no less busy. Unfortunately, the weather didn’t cooperate with all we wanted to accomplish this past weekend, but here we are nonetheless. It has certainly been a wet, dismal few days. And here we are back on a Tuesday post! Back on track (at least for now! lol) Last week, we decided to sit with a little theme on “The Humble Dandelion”. Consequently, we’ll jump right in with my thoughts: Dandelions are seemingly very resilient!

Despite the rainy weather, we did get a little break in the clouds on Sunday… just enough for me to plant a few pots of annuals in our otherwise full front garden. The hubby cut the grass. As I sauntered down the side steps of the porch, I was struck by two things: One, a huge dandelion with about 4 blooms growing out of the gravel of the paving stones, and two, how many dandelions were back after cutting the lawn! Resistant and resilient!

I’ve heard it said that grass lawns started as a sign of wealth. Pick a non useful, time consuming -to- grow crop, like grass, and flood your front lawn with it to prove yourself worthy to the neighbours. Who came up with that plan? We should have just let the wildflowers and weeds alone and filled our yards with colour… the yellow dandelions are there anyway! And they even grow in the poorest soil (in my case gravel!) of the side pathway. In abundance! I haven’t pulled it out yet… just because. Just because it’s showing me that yup, I am here and here with a vengeance!

And since we’re using A.I. why not generate an image…this is not my path… and dandelions have leaves too! 🙂

Let’s explore it a bit more, shall we? Admittedly, A.I. generated some interesting thoughts on the “resilience of dandelions”, so, although not my own thoughts, they accompanied my musings so well, I thought I’d share. We already talked about their persistence. Those little blooms can get mowed under and still pop back up, seemingly unharmed. They can withstand the harsh environments! Dandelions are certainly adaptable. Perfectly manicured lawns are dotted with them occasionally when the owners slip up, and open fields, rocks, hills and my gravel pathway see the spring returns of the weed. They’ll grow anywhere!

I suppose blooming in adversity and taking root in difficult places coincide – demonstrating their ability to adapt to harsh environments, they easily overcome adversity. Plus, dandelions seemingly have the ability to find solutions to said adversity, and bloom and grow even in challenging situations. Persistence. Perseverance. Adaptability. Do you see where I am going here? Of course you do. Obviously, we can take a little lesson from the God-given weeds. The humble yellow flower.

Take chances. Make mistakes and get mowed under, but rise to the challenge and pop up again, unfazed. Our environments should not dictate how we bloom for Jesus. The rocky soil may be tough, but we can do it. Do you work or play in a “ungodly” place? Do you hear the words and struggle to remain holy in an unholy environment? If God can give the little dandelion a place to bloom and flourish every spring, then He certainly has plans for you to “bloom where you are planted”!

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It’s a simple concept. Perhaps even a Sunday School lesson, not one fit for an internet blog post, but if A.I. can pump it out, then I suppose it is worth thinking about at least! So, go ahead. Pluck that weed out of your pathway, but pause and think about how it survived there in the first place. God helped that little seed float on its way. Perhaps blown in the wind by some little puff from a toddler delighting in the parade of white seed parachuted away by a huff! Then it floated and settled not where it was comfortable or easy, but where it was rocky and harsh. Yet, it survived and thrived! Now go out and do the same, my friend, do the same!

Sounds of a Silent Saturday

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Welcome back, my friends. Apologies for skipping out last week… just wasn’t there. It was Easter and I was certainly musing, but I didn’t get a chance to sit down at the computer to write about it. So it’s going to overflow into this week. It’s my blog, I’m allowed. It’s been an eventful week this week too … two words: baby chicks! Therefore, I am a little late in posting. But: it’s my blog, I’m allowed.

Okay. Here we go. I want to invite you in to the middle of the night at my old farmhouse. I have very few neighbours. It’s not the big city. We have one streetlight, so that permeates the absolute darkness of, let’s say, three o’clock in the morning. I’m lying in bed awake, as some women of my age do, listening. The chubby dog takes up half the space I have allocated myself and I pull the remaining covers up over my shoulders. It’s chilly, but that’s okay. The dog snorts. I hear myself and the hubby breathing. My eyes are closed and block out the streetlight. I listen again.

Photo by Kseniya Budko on Pexels.com

During the day, our old farmhouse creeks and we hear the wind outside. Our neighbouring cows are loud most of the time. The occasional car, truck or farm vehicle zoom past our front yard and kick up the dust – the dog barks at the slower traffic. Up until recently, Morris our rooster could be heard. (It’s a myth that roosters only crow in the mornings. That crazy bird yelled all the time at us!) However, I’m sad to report he’s been missing now for a few weeks. I’d like to think he was heroic and was “taken” fighting the whole time to protect his ladies. Even our buddy down the road commented he hadn’t heard him lately and kinda misses him. Enough about that sad event. Moving on.

Back to three o’clock in the morning and the snoring dog. Imagine you hear a gurgling like a giant belch emanating from some underwater jelly-bellied monster. That monster happens to be the sump pump located in the basement, directly underneath our master bedroom. It belches several times throughout the day and night. Earlier in the spring it followed a constant sound of rushing water as the spring melt emptied and got flushed back out by the sump pump. I’ve learned to appreciate the sound of the it, because it means my basement isn’t flooding. Like the sound of generators running constantly during our ice storm a few weeks ago. Thankfully, those have stopped now, and we are back to a general quiet.

Listen again. Hushed breathing. The cat jumps down from something upstairs with a soft thud. My new baby chick birds finally rustle. I listen to hear them as I’ve only had them a few days (yeah!) and I’m still at the new momma “please don’t die” stage. Somebody peeps very softly, and I say a prayer of thanks for signs of life in the middle of the night. They settle back down in their living room home with the soft red light of the heat lamp. Silence again. Gurgle belch. Hushed breathing. The furnace clicks on briefly, with a rush of pilot light flame. Otherwise it is pretty quiet here.

I’m a week behind in this muse, but I’ve been thinking about it since a comment I heard Easter weekend. You’ve heard of “good Friday”. You may have heard of “celebration Sunday” or “Easter Sunday” or even “resurrection day”, but this year, for the first time ever, I heard someone use the term “silent Saturday”. The day between Jesus’ death on “good Friday” and rising again on the third day… the day when all was absolutely silent. Apparently, I am late to the party on this concept, for google has lots to say about silent Saturday. Not so silent on the internet. Well fine. It was a new thought for me. And so, I share it with you!

One imagines Jesus, stone cold in a dark tomb. Obviously, corpses don’t say much. God the father did a lot of “talking” on Friday, but no signs and wonders happen to be recorded on the day in between. Jesus’ followers have probably gathered, but may be hiding out, keeping a low profile. It seems like it really was a “silent Saturday”. And it seems, with some reflection on my part, and the internet sparking my thoughts, a day of quiet reflection should totally be a part of the Easter story! Life is difficult. There will be hard days. Yet, life is also beautiful, and there will be many a day filled with joy and celebration. And we often need a few silent Saturdays, to balance it all out. To question why God seems to have abandoned us. Why He seems like He is not answering our prayers. Then to reflect on His faithfulness, and draw strength for the next step. Like me listening for signs of life at three in the morning, thankful that things are still “okay so far”.

So, thanks to that friend that happened to mention this phrase to me last week… it ignited a muse that’s spanned a week! Was it news to you? Even if it wasn’t and you knew this lingo way before me, I hope it’s been a good reminder to you, to appreciate a bit of silence. May you take the opportunity to hear the gurgle belch of a good sump pump and appreciate all you have. Be blessed, beloveds.