Pretty in Pink at six months

Every day we are grateful for the gift of this tiny girl.

Mercy can't sit up on her own yet, which is all the more reason to sit and cuddle her.

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Mercy's six month birthday

Six months always seems like a big milestone to me! Mercy was six months on May 21st. She is faithfully living up to her second name and giving us lots of Joy! Her delight and smiles when we interact with her are incredibly sweet.

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Dave's 34th birthday

It was fun to make a chocolate beetroot cake for Dave's birthday on Saturday. I wanted to continue with the challenge of making a cake with ingredients from the garden, and we don't have much left at the moment! Thankfully Dave said the cake was deliciously decadent.

You can taste the beetroot a little, so this cake is only for those who like beets. I reduced the amount of sugar in the cake to about 180g, and replaced corn oil with sunflower. 300g beetroot is about 3 of medium size.

The icing was simple. Just melt a 200g block of dark chocolate with 1 cup of cream and pour some over the cake just before serving. Use the extra as a sauce.

Dave's birthday was cold with lots of snow on the mountain. Thankfully the next day was glorious and we spent lots of time outside. Mercy enjoyed her first swing.

The season is beautiful with glorious bright orange leaves on the tree at the front of our home. I am enjoying the reduced intensity of vegetable gardening in late autumn. In the picture above you can see cauliflower plants, lettuce, some lonely last tomato plants with fruit slowly ripening, and some kale. We have enjoyed harvesting broccoli as well as silverbeet, beetroot, carrots and spring onions planted in summer.The gem squash and pumpkin we harvested in April have been great as some of Mercy's first solid foods! We also have tiny seedlings of broad beans, peas, turnips, silverbeet, spinach and broccoli. Our chooks are still laying although a reduced amount.

Birthdays are a great time to reflect on God's providence in a person's life. Dave and I face uncertainties in the next few months as Dave's work contract is coming to an end. It is faith building to think about what God has done in Dave's life so far and the way he has provided for us. 

Here are some things to be thankful for about Dave and his 34th year . . .

He is a loving and attentive Dad to a tiny boy who loves him and likes to "sit together" and "talk together"  - often about the moon and sky.

 

Dave has been delighted with his baby girl and her baby ways, and patient with disturbances to sleep and schedules. 

 He does things with the children that I wouldn't do, like getting out the jolly jumper . . .

and pushing an excited boy high into the sky!

Dave is always an encourager as I seek to help him through keeping our home, caring for the children, and more! He takes pleasure in all the growth in the garden and in our family culture. He has been faithful to continue to pursue spiritual growth even when he doesn't feel like it. His gentleness yet firm conviction is anther admirable trait. He is not one for online love letters, so I'll leave it there, praising God for Dave's life!

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Celebrating two years with family and friends

On Saturday morning we had a little party for Natey with family and friends. I made him an aeroplane cake. Last year I used our own lemons to make his first birthday cake. I decided to continue with using something from the garden for the cake. This time we had carrots so I used those to try the carrot cake in Margaret Fulton's Encyclopedia of Food and Cookery. It turned out really well and it all got eaten! Here is the recipe:

3 cups flour
2 cups caster sugar (I used ordinary white sugar and reduced it to 1 1/2 cups)
1 1/2 tsp bicarb soda
1 cup undrained canned crushed pineapple (I used unsweetened)
2 cups grated carrot
4 eggs
1 1/2 cups salad oil ( I used sunflower oil)
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup chopped nuts (since this was for little people, I substituted chopped sultanas)

Sift flour, suar, salt and bicarb together in a large mixing bowl. Add pineapple, carrot, eggs, oil and vanilla and beat until combined. Stir in chopped nuts or sultanas. Spoon into greased tins. The recipe recommends 20cm ring tins, but I used a loaf tin and a casserole dish to make the appropriate shapes. Bake in a preheated moderate oven (180 C or 350 F) for 1 hour or until a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean.

I made the cake earlier in the week and got it out the night before to ice, so that made it easier to shape as it was still partially frozen. The icing is cream cheese with vanilla essence and sugar (approximately 2Tbs sugar and 2 tsp vanilla to each 125g of softened cream cheese). We made the mistake of decorating with M & Ms the night before and the colouring all ran, so I had to do a big patch up job in the morning.

We are grateful for each person who came to celebrate with us. Here are some more things we are grateful for from Elnathan's second year of life . . .

* First prayers and songs (Happy birthday, Jesus love me, twinkle twinkle, Celebrate Jesus)
* Nate's ever expanding vocuabulary and surprising conversational abilities. He already talks in sentences and is starting to communicate his own ideas.
* Love of people and exitement when we have visitors or go out together
* Elnathan has become "company" for me during the day!
* We can point him to Jesus when he struggles to obey.
* Having a toddler has helped us enjoy Mercy's babyhood to the full.
* He has been so well, learnt to walk and climb easily, and has nearly all his teeth now.
* Positive spirit toward Mercy Joy.
* Helpfulness in picking up toys.

It is encouraging to reflect on all the blessings. I aim to praise Elnathan more than I correct him, and find that this helps me as well. It lifts my sprit as I also remind myself of all the progress and the good things that God is building into the little life in our care. Natey truly is a gift, as his name declares, and each day at nap time I say a prayer thanking God for this gift and blessing.

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Elnathan's Birthday Morning

We had a stack of pancakes for breakfast with two candles on top.

We had a very sweet little sister on her garden quilt.

We had a pleased little boy saying "zoom zoom" with his new duplo airplane.

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A time to stop blogging regularly

It is a comfort to know that God has created a time for everything, as Ecclesiastes 3 expresses so beautifully.

 To everything there is a season,

      A time for every purpose under heaven:
       A time to be born,
And a time to die;
      A time to plant,
And a time to pluck what is planted;
       A time to kill,
And a time to heal;
      A time to break down,
And a time to build up . . .
      A time to embrace,
And a time to refrain from embracing . . .
      A time to keep,
And a time to throw away . . .
      A time to keep silence,
And a time to speak . . .

Maybe God had busy mummies in mind when he inspired the writer of these verses! There is a time for everything, but not all at once. A couple of months ago, I realised that one person working full time and another person combining chronic pain and motherhood were going to have a hard time keeping up with two babies, a large vegetable garden and two lots of cloth nappies! The baskets of washing were mounting, and Dave doing a pile of dishes in the evening was becoming a regular occurrence (we don't have a dishwasher). It has been a huge blessing that God has provided a couple of teen girls who are willing to work cheerfully in our home. We employ each girl once a week after school for a couple of hours and it eases the workload.

Still, my opportunities to concentrate when I have two hands free are limited and unpredictable. There are many things I would love to do with that time. Often I will begin to imagine what I am going to do with these quiet moments (think sleep, Zulu, cross stitch, patchwork, scrapbooking, blog, emails, phone calls, volunteering for Choices of Life, tummy exercises, sorting papers, finding songs and activities to do as a family, and on it goes) then I'll hear a "WAAAAA" that cannot be ignored! At times I have been frustrated, self-pitying, and even angry. Writing praise points at the end of the day has been a great way to recharge my attitude. Often the praise list took up a page or more! This is much more motivating than writing a to-do list! I aim to love the little years, and part of that is being content with fewer quiet pursuits. This is not the time to blog regularly.

"The Drew Patch" will remain online and I will post our yearly September newsletter here, plus some birthday pictures over the course of the year. Our newsletters are written each year after our wedding anniversary, August 18. I have counted it a privilege to be part of the world of online encouragement, especially with this template designed by Hannah of Graceful Designs. I want out lives online to be a testimony to the abundant grace of God, so that anyone who drop by will see His work in our lives. It is God who has answered my mother's prayers in surprising ways, shown me his mercy in suffering, answered my prayers for a husband and given us the happiest of wedding days, revealed to us the gospel which is God's answer to racism and all other sin, made us passionate about avoiding a wasted life, and gives me the strength each day to keep trying to be a fearless mother.

As I have watched my babies grow, and the garden's summer beauty fade, I have felt sorry that Mercy's chubby hands will thin out and soon the corn plot will be empty. Part of me wants to hold onto the baby fat. God has reminded me that He gives in abundance. My tiny baby will grow up, but there will be other babies even if not my own. The tomatoes will die off, but there will be another year. I will not blog regularly right now, but there will be other opportunities to share and to write, and lots of wonderful blogs to read. Even when God does take all our earthly blessings, it is only to give us something better! Better than a baby's laughter, a sweet home grown corn cob, and the timely encouragement of a friend, yet somehow the fulfillment of all that is good here on earth. God first gives us Christ, and then He gives us all good gifts!

Thanks for reading, commenting, and praying!

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Summer crops near their end

This afternoon we were thrilled to still be harvesting some lovely heads of corn. Our staggered planting has worked well this year, giving us fresh corn for nearly two months. We ate these with guests tonight after cooking them in foil on the braii with some butter, salt and pepper. Delish!

Maybe Mercy Joy is thinking "Hmmm . . . should I start solid food?"

"What do you think?"

One of the challenges of autumn is deciding when to pull things out to make way for new crops. Today the patty pan below got pulled out, as it looked like it was coming to the end of its life. I am learning to be more ruthless.

It is always a challenge to find space for winter crops because summer plantings like squash, pumpkins, and tomatoes last well into autumn. The broccoli and beets pictured below were planted as seeds in January to replace spring crops of peas and broad beans. They will provide food in late autumn and winter.

Today we bought seedlings of parsley, coriander, celery and spinach, which we will need to find space for. I like to grow from seed, but it has been challenging this year due to lack of space in the garden and the many threats to seed pots from toddlers and chickens :)! There have been many successes (broccoli, kale, turnips, silverbeet) but some notable failures, particularly cauliflower! We are still getting heaps of tomatoes, and the vines pictured below will probably be taking up space in our garden for another month. Nate is enjoying a tomato in this picture. He is still learning to choose the red ones, a good lesson in colours!

Here is our bowl of food after wandering through the garden some more . . . chives for potato salad, our last patty pan for the braai, capsicum and radish for a green salad (and lettuce still to be picked). There are lots of tomatoes hidden away below there too - this week has been busy again working out how to use those! We have frozen some plain (peeled, diced and cooked), and others made into a sauce.

That is our garden in pictures for this week. How is your garden going? Are you nearing the end of summer/autumn crops like us or starting a fresh spring? I am so grateful to God that we can look forward to the seasons each year and the different crops they bring.

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