Creating miracles everyday in Newfoundland
As you probably noticed, I’ve been quiet lately. And if you’ve been a follower of my blog, you notice that I naturally go through quiet, reflective periods.
I’m in one of those times right now.
Drawing in energy.
Reflecting.
Growing.
Nurturing myself.
Rooting in my home.
Purging.
Growing, growing, growing.
Our latest “everyday miracle”…
Mel and I were discussing one night last week how we haven’t had any blue jays in our backyard and we would love to attract them in.
Sure enough, the next evening, we were treated to the presence of not one, not two, but eight blue jays in our yard, taking turns eating from one our bird feeders. 
(We didn’t do anything different to attract them in, but they must have gotten our message to visit us nonetheless!)
Our new favourite thing to do is go to the museum, called The Rooms because the one building holds the museum, the provincial art gallery and the provincial archives. Alex, our three year old, would rather go to the museum than go to playgroup, the park, the beach, the playground. To him, the museum is the best thing in the world. We went to the museum for the first time about a month ago when my mom was visiting. We were so impressed with it that we got a year’s membership for the family and we’ve already gotten our money’s worth as we’ve been going once or twice a week since then. It helps that the museum has some exhibits that cater to kids, like puzzles, computer interactive exhibits, stuffed animals, kids books, etc. Last month, they even had an exhibit that allowed kids (old and young) to use ink stamps on a Newfoundland map that was mounted on the art gallery wall.
One of Alex’s favourite exhibits is the seabird exhibit because you can hear the sounds that different seabirds make. Since birds are also one of my favourite things, we both thoroughly enjoy the exhibit together and are learning what puffins, gannets and murres look and sound like.
The Rooms is a beautiful building with huge windows that overlooks the harbour and has a beautiful view of St. John’s and Signal Hill. I’m thrilled that we’ve found this treasure in our city.
I bought some tulip, daffodil, iris and crocus bulbs for the garden. As I was planting them, I had the brilliant idea to plant them in our lawn. It’s another step to “naturalizing” our lawn. Here’s a link on how to do it.
After I planted a bunch of them, I found out that I planted them too shallow (they need to be planted about 2-3 inches deep), so I guess I’ll see how the first batch will turn out. Tonight, I purchased 70 more bulbs to plant in the lawn. I’m excited about the thoughts of crocuses blooming all across our lawn in the spring. We already have a few crocuses that have been planting around one of our trees in our front yard, which was a pleasant surprise this last spring, but the more, the merrier.
The iris and tulips were planted in our flower bed, the daffodils will be planted near the house on the edge of the lawn and the crocus will be planted throughout the lawn. I love digging in the dirt, so I look forward to doing this! This is my first time planting fall bulbs and I look forward to being rewarded in the early spring by all of the brilliant colour. I also love that these are all perennial flowers that will grow back every year. Yay!
My clover planting experiment that I mention here worked out okay. I didn’t plant the clover seeds at the best time and it took longer than I thought to germinate and grow, but now I see that clover is starting to grow in large patches all over the lawn. Spring is the best time to plant, so I’ll sow more clover seeds in the spring. We still have a lot of dandelions growing in the yard, but they are smaller Fall Dandelion, which I’ve learned to tolerate. We’ll mow it before they set seed and that’s about all that we’ll do with it. When there were less of them, I tried picking the heads by hand, but there’s too many of them so it became futile (and I was also starting to wonder if it was causing them to send up more heads).
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about living an extraordinary life.
That we are all meant to live extraordinary lives.
It feels as though I’ve hit a bit of a plateau in my extraordinary-ness, and I’m wondering where I’m supposed to go from here. What is my life calling? Have I been following it? What makes my heart sing? Have I been doing it?
I started this post a couple of days ago and I have a feeling that I’ve been comfortable for awhile now, and now it’s time to grow (again). I’m fighting it a bit because sometimes it’s difficult to grow (it’s uncomfortable). It feels as though something new has taken root and is ready to sprout. I think I need to let it come out as it wants to express itself.
I’m in a quiet time right now.
Feeling the effects of last week’s full moon.
Going inward to find the gifts.
I’ll return when the time is right.
Namaste.
Alex started his own bedtime ritual — “making special wishes”. He asks us what our special wish is, and he responds with his special wish. I have to admit that often Mel and I aren’t very imaginative with our special wishes (we normally wish that Alex will have a great sleep and wonderful dreams). Alex’s wishes range from being a crow to staying up later to playing with his cars. Tonight’s wish was to tickle his daddy.
“Grammie Rosie” has been visiting for the last week. They shared special wishes one night and Alex’s special wish was for “Grammie Rosie to stay”. She certainly will be missed by all of us.
I found raspberries in our backyard today that I didn’t know were there. It felt like an “everyday miracle” because I’ve been talking about how I want to grow raspberries in our backyard, and lo and behold, there’s actually a raspberry bush already growing there. They were behind our shed.
I bought a flowers of Newfoundland book and I was identifying some of the wildflowers growing in my yard when I found the raspberries. hee hee!
Yesterday Alex had an oral peanut challenge in the hospital passed it with flying colours.
In case you don’t know what’s involved with a peanut challenge: the person is fed 5 doses of peanuts, with 15-20 minutes between doses. The first time, the patient is asked to simply hold the peanut and then rub it on their lips.
So that’s 15.5 peanuts in a three hour period.
We were very close to cancelling for the second time , but I “checked” in and got the message to do it, and we did and it was a complete non-issue.
Mel was extremely nervous and anxious, but I was reassured by the message I got before the test that it would all be alright. And, I told myself that it was in as safe a place for anything wrong to happen, and if anything wrong did occur, at least we would definitely know that all of the precautions around peanuts were justified.
It also helped that my mom was visiting and present for the challenge. She helped to keep Alex happy during the three hours, playing with him, and keeping Mel and I calm as well.
The peanuts didn’t even affect Alex’s eczema or anything. The weird thing is that his skin actually looked better today than it did before the peanut challenge.
It’s a complete relief, and feels like a complete miracle. To put this in perspective, this is the boy who in the past has been reactive to everything (including things like rice and chicken). We are very thankful. Extremely thankful. Overjoyed. In awe and disbelief.
It completely changes our whole perspective and paradigm and I feel like Alex will eventually outgrow his sensitivities to most things.
As I mentioned here, we’re slowly starting to introduce other foods at home, but it’s been a very slow process because his skin has still been pretty reactive. I think since June, we’ve reintroduced: rice (but not rice milk yet), broccoli and raspberries.
Now that the peanut challenge is over, we’re encouraged to feed him peanuts once a week, and not over do it. We bought some organic peanut butter and my husband enjoyed his first peanut butter and banana sandwich in years. Sometime over the weekend, we’ll give Alex a bit of peanut butter on his glutenfree bread and see how he does!
This is our first summer in this home and I am loving getting to know our neighbours. I have met at least one member of each of the houses on our cul-de-sac. I love feeling part of a community. There are many retirees on our street, many couples who have been on the street for 30+ years. Some younger families have also started to move onto the street, including one couple who is expecting a child at the end of August (a potential playmate for Alex in a couple year’s time!). There are also some older boys (ages 8 to 11) who Alex enjoys chasing on his tricycle.
Alex loves meeting the neighbours as well. If anyone is outside of their home when we are outside, Alex makes a point to go over to talk to them. Everyone on the street knows Alex’s name. One of the neighbours has a swing set in their backyard for their grandkids and Alex has a standing invitation to use their swing set.
I love our street!
I was thinking today that everyone should be so blessed as to be able to do what they love and also be remunerated well for it.
My passions include nature, the environment, accessing body and soul wisdom, yoga, dancing, moving my body, writing, and analysing things. And, I am able to indulge in many of my passions on a daily basis.
Mel’s passions include working with his hands, creating music, exercising, biking, hiking, running and being in nature. As an electrician, he is able to work with his hands. He is currently building his electrical business as “A Better Electrician“ and I know that he will be successful because he is an excellent and highly skilled electrician who works with integrity and is meticulous in his work.
What are you passionate about and how could you do more of it? Even if you aren’t necessarily passionate about your job (and, if you are — consider yourself very blessed), it’s great if you can create time for your passions during your offtime.
It’s been a beautiful, sunny and dry summer out here in Newfoundland. I didn’t realize that it could be so dry out here! So dry that there’s actually a total ban on the outside use of water, including the watering of lawns, vegetables, shrubs, trees, etc in Mount Pearl, St. John’s and the surrounding area. In addition, Mount Pearl has a year-round conservation order, which limits the times that one can water their lawn with a sprinkler, etc.
I’m glad that the Mount Pearl takes water conservation seriously. I think installing water meters on all of the homes would help too.
We’ve been thinking a lot about our water usage in the last few weeks and have done a few things of our own.
1. Rain barrel — we’ve been looking to purchase a rain barrel to help with the watering of our garden. They run around $100, so to be frugal, Mel made one for us out of a plastic garbage bin (new, of course!), mesh screen, a water spout and silicon (came to about $20 total). Mel plans to make around 3 of these for us!
2. Flexible gutter spout extension – It’s a plastic thingy that extends and flexes, which you can use to divert the water from your gutter to your garden or into the rain barrel (rather than the water just draining onto our driveway, as it was doing previously). $20 at Kent’s.
3. Low flow showerhead - We had this on our last place in Calgary, but I’ll admit we didn’t bother to replace the showerhead until yesterday. They run about $14 at Canadian Tire.
4. Selective toilet flushing – For a while, we’ve been practicing the “if it’s yellow, let it mellow; if it’s brown, flush it down”.
5. Low flow toilet – We had one installed in our last place, but we haven’t purchased one yet for this home. We plan to do this soon. They are currently on sale at Kent’s for about $150.
6. Use of greywater – This one is new for us. For a couple of days, we put a large bowl in the bathroom and kitchen sinks and when the bowl filled up, we used the water to water our flower and vegetable garden. You can also save the water in your bath, bail it out and do the same thing. When we started doing this, we realized how much water is used in our household without a second thought.
You can also use greywater to flush your toilets (i.e., pouring greywater down the toilet to flush it). We didn’t collect enough greywater to try this, but I heard that this works.
Anyway, these are a few of the simple things that we’ve been doing to conserve water. I know that there are many more — feel free to share your stories.
Happily, it’s been a rainy weekend out here and the earth and plants are all breathing a sigh of relief. I look forward to seeing how our rain barrel worked!
We saw the movie “One Week” last night, and I loved it.
The movie synopsis:
When confronted with his mortality, Ben Tyler (Joshua Jackson) impulsively buys a vintage motorcycle and sets off on a road trip that starts in Toronto and ends up on Vancouver Island in the town of Tofino. Humourous, profound and extremely moving, One Week uses the great Canadian landscape as the backdrop to the story of a man and his life’s journey. In the search for himself, he finds out what makes this country, and his life, so beautiful.
It was a beautiful tribute to Canada and to life itself.
The movie asks the question, ”What would you do if you only had one week to live”, or “What would you do if you had one week to change your life?”
I’ve gone through many metamorphases in my life, and I’m happy to say that currently I wouldn’t change much in my life if I knew that I only had one more week to live.
It feels as though there’s no unfinished business to attend to.
All of the important people in my life know that they are loved.
I have been forgiven and have forgiven.
I would probably spend a lot of time with loved ones and in nature.
I wouldn’t need to go on a road trip, or fly anywhere.
I’d be content to just be here.
After spending hours picking the seed heads off the dandelions off of our front lawn last week (4 grocery bags worth — yeah, a lot!), I thought that there must be a better way.
I researched on the internet environmentally friendly solutions and came up with seeding our lawn with white dutch clover.
As Life in the Slow Lane puts it,
Clover is great, because you don’t need to:
a) cut it
b) water it (clover has much deeper roots than grass and will remain green throughout the summer)
c) fertilize it (clover is a nitrogen fixer, simply put it introduces nitrogen into the soil thus fertilizing the soil on it’s own).
d) clover’s deep roots tolerate soil compaction more readily than grass (don’t worry about aerating it).
The only thing about it is that it’s not originally native to Newfoundland (it’s native to Europe), but neither is Kentucky bluegrass (also native to Europe), which is currently all over my lawn.
So I’ll be replacing a non-native species with a non-native species, but at least it’s a non-native species that has all of the advantages that are mentioned above plus has pretty flowers! I’ve also read that the clover will outcompete dandelions, which is my hope.
A potential negative that I’ve read about is that clover attracts bees, but that’s a positive point for me (well, I guess it depends on how many bees we’re talking about!).
Some people view clover as a weed (like my dad, who was shocked to find out that I was choosing to seed our front yard with clover), so it’s not for everyone.
As I mentioned before, I’d like to eventually have the entire front lawn a relatively maintenance-free, naturescaped area, so I see this as a stepping stone towards my vision.
I bought some seed from the local Farmer’s Store on Topsail Road. I bought too much seed, in fact, so I probably have enough seed to last us a lifetime (they say it takes 2-8 oz to seed 1000 sq. ft, and I purchased 3 lbs of seed). In addition to the White Dutch Clover seed, I purchased 2 lbs of Red Dutch Clover seed, which grows taller (up to 18″ tall), so I think I’ll plant it in our “wild area in our backyard”, and will see what it looks like before planting it throughout the front yard.
Anyway, I’ll keep you posted on how it goes. I’m pretty excited about it. I basically just sprinkled the white dutch seed over the existing front lawn and watered it, so I’m not sure if it’ll take. (They say the best time is early spring or late summer / fall and to rake it into the ground). I’ll let you know how it goes.
For more details about benefits and how to, see: Plant a Clover Lawn, and Establishing White Clover in Lawns.
I noticed today that about 100 or so (probably more) baby spiders hatched on the window pane (on the outside, thankfully!).
Alex and I are very much enjoying watching the little baby spiders.
When I pointed them out to Alex, he mentioned to me, “Oh, so cute”. And, I agree.
This is the first time that we’ve had our very own garden and I am loving spending time in it.
Digging around in the dirt.
Breathing in the fresh air.
Talking to the trees.
Mixing up our compost.
Admiring all of the snails.
Picking the dandelions.
It feels like our own bit of heaven in our backyard.
Slowly we are putting in our touches — we have two bird feeders so far, a finch feeder and a millet/black sunflowerseed feeder. We’ve had American goldfinches, black-capped chickadees and dark-eyed juncos visit so far. Eventually I’ll put out a suet-feeder too.
We had some perennials come up in our front garden, and we’ve planted some more perennial seeds. The nice thing about gardening in Newfoundland is that it rains so often that you don’t need to water the garden at all.
We eventually would like to landscape the entire front yard and transform it into a xeriphytic / naturescaped area. No more lawn. But, we’re going to take our time to do it. In the meantime, the front lawn has been completely overtaken by dandelions. There were so many dandelions that going around with the dandelion-picker was pretty futile. I tried to go around and pick all of the yellow flowers before it went to seed, but again the dandelions won. I kind of feel like dandelions are so hardy and good at growing, they deserve to take over the world. (Though I also admit that I also feel a bit like a bad neighbour with all of our dandelion seeds spreading across the neighbourhood). I picked a few of dandelion leaves tonight and will try eating them as a green — I hear that they are very nutritrious for you. If you have any tips on how to “control” dandelions in an easy and non-chemical, let me know!
In our backyard, there was a very small vegetable garden that was started by the previous owner. Very small. As in a wild onion plant and another plant that we haven’t been able to identify yet. We’re slowly extending the vegetable garden and planted a couple of tomato plants, sage, thyme, peas, tomato seeds, and pepper seeds. I’ll let you know how it goes. I’m pretty excited about it. I don’t know anything about gardening and I’m also pretty lazy about it — I want to see what will grow with minimal effort and will grow more of whatever grows well over the years.
Eventually I’d love to turn most of our lawn into a vegetable garden. But, again we’re starting small and will slowly build. It’s pretty exciting…
Alex enjoys his time in the backyard as well — digging in the dirt — he calls it “his dirt”, pushing his toy lawnmower and riding his tricycle around.
We purchased an old-fashioned push lawnmower — the non-gas / non-electric type. Mel’s been doing the mowing and he says that it works pretty well. You need to exert a bit more force than with the electric/gas type, but it’s non-polluting and quiet and does the job! We highly recommend it.
Something is shifting… On Friday, Alex got retested for allergies (pricktest) and EVERYTHING that they tested for came back negative (i.e., no allergies) — including many things that he had previously tested for as positive. They didn’t test for a few things for which his blood work (RAST test) had came back strongly positive (milk, cats, fish and wheat), but everything else came back negative (and they tested him for about 15 things, including mixed nuts and eggs — things that he was reactive to in the past)… I’m still in shock about it! We’re slowly going to reintroduce some of the foods that came back negative in a systematic way to see how he reacts when he ingests the food.
It’s a bit odd because 8 weeks ago, they did blood work and all of the things that they tested for came back strongly positive, but now everything is coming back negative. (Maybe the blood was showing the historic signs of allergies and the prick test is showing that currently, his system is no longer as sensitive?)
In any case, I am still in a state of shock, and also complete awe.
They are actually going to get him to do an oral challenge of peanuts in the hospital next month. The truth is that I have a lot of calm about it, so I feel as though everything is going to be okay.
We are now going to be working closely with a dietician to start to systematically reintroduce other foods back into his diet. We’re starting with rice this week.
I am in utter awe about it all. It feels like a big HUGE MIRACLE. I am utterly thankful.
One of my most recent joys has been hanging up laundry to dry on a clothesline. It may sound funny, but I get a lot of joy and satisfaction from this activity. It’s enjoyable to spend the time outside, it saves energy and money, and it’s good for the environment. I love it.
It’s new to me because I’ve never had a clothesline before (well, actually one of our places did, but it was when Alex was a newborn and the last thing that I wanted to do at the time was to spend extra time hanging up clothes out on the line).
Anyway, now that I’ve started to do it, I love doing it. And, I also love the fact that many people in Newfoundland also hang their clothes out to dry. I love that it’s part of the consciousness out here.
It’s a quiet time for me again.
Inner reflection, pulling in energy.
Enjoying the sun.
The wind.
Home.
I will return when the words come.
Namaste.
