Defying Convention

I am not the rebellious type – truly, I’m not.  I don’t mean to break the rules of conventional wisdom; somehow, it just seems to happen.  I notice this at times when I am sitting in Sunday school.  Like all the times I have heard that when things are going well, we tend to forget the Lord, and then as soon as things begin to go badly we are “stirred up in remembrance” and turn to Him.  “I’m just a freak,” I find myself thinking, mostly because I know secretly that I am prone to feel more spiritual when things are going well and get a little agitated (spiritually and emotionally) when things are not going so great.

Gardening has proven to be no exception to my weirdness.  I have been trying to garden for about five years now and I had decided in the beginning that I wanted to be as organic in my approach as possible.  The pests in the area were delighted with this decision and I have struggled every year.  Having been told that garlic pepper tea was an excellent deterrent I whipped some up to deter pests.  Compost tea and other organic amendments (including some primo bunny poo) have been added to enhance plant health and growth.  Yet, once again, this year my tomato plants looked terrible; they looked so terrible, in fact, that I threw up my hands and decided to forget it.  They were a lost cause and I would save my money and my time by doing nothing more than watering them and letting nature take its course.  It wasn’t long before one of Robert’s “experiments” actually started taking over one of my tomato plants:

Logic would tell you that a plant that looks that terrible and that has been that neglected wouldn’t produce a thing, yet I am amazed every time I venture outside to see that those awful looking plants keep churning out these cute little tomatoes:

Meanwhile, my Cherokee purple tomato plants have grown big…

….and have produced tomatoes that are badly cracked and not so pretty.  Who would have thought?

Our living situation has also defied conventional wisdom.  (And before I start, let me say that yes, I know that in these times I should just be grateful that I have a house.  The logical, spiritual part of me knows this, but it is the irrational, upset part of me that is writing this particular post today).

I have been begging Robert for some time to consider moving…out of Texas (way too hot);  then okay, not out of Texas , but at least out of the metroplex (way too crowded);  then okay, just to a house with a bigger yard and some windows.  I just hate the house we are in.  There is very little natural light in the house itself.  The yard is great if all you want to do is have barbeques and then go inside, but if you want to garden you are very limited in space.  And our newest wonder of wonders happened this weekend when we discovered that what we thought was a clogged kitchen sink turned out to be our 40-year old metal pipes going bad.  Replacing them is going to mean tearing up something in the kitchen (floors or walls or both), and the repair is probably going to eat into any money that we had to buy some land somewhere.

“I know you want to move,” Robert has told me (even before this weekend’s fiasco), “But moving is just logistically impossible.  There’s just no way to do it.”

Really?  Logistically impossible?  How many new families have shown up in church recently?  From other places?  And how many of these people are even in our age range?  How many families that we really liked have recently moved away?  To other places?  Some of which are not even in Texas?  Why are we the only family we know who finds it logistically impossible to move?

Since we have once again defied all trends and happenings, I have been working on trying to make our cluttered, smothering, dark little house more bearable.  I recently went on a cleaning/packing spree.  The back of Mom’s little Honda CR-V was loaded completely with a donation for Goodwill.  I will be sending this little stack of items to our local 4-Paws animal rescue group  for their annual garage sale:

Mom and I even have rented a little storage unit in which to put some items that we don’t really use but aren’t quite ready to get rid of yet.  This also defies the wisdom of most organizational gurus who would say if you have to store it, you really don’t need it.  However, I don’t want to be too heavy-handed in my de-cluttering efforts just now.  I’m hoping that if I can get to the point that I don’t have to move two things out of the way to reach the one thing that I actually am going for, I might like our house a little more… because it has become clear that I’m going to have to…(sigh).

On a lighter note, it seems that The Most Beautiful Child in the World has a knack for defying convention, too (although as she gets closer to being two,  Mandy probably would say “defiant” instead of “defying”).  I saw an example of this yesterday evening during a visit from Mandy and Paisley.  You see, my little Nestlé bunny loves being in her run so much that when it is time for her to come in for the night, she runs away from her mother every single time.  Said mother has threatened on more than one occasion to leave her out for the owl, but after lots of chasing, Nestlés mother finally reels the errant bunny safely in.  Well,  you can imagine my surprise last night when I witnessed Nestlé happily stay in place while Paisley walked up to her!  Nestlé even let that little curly-haired girl pet her:

And then pet her some more:

Is Paisley a bunny wrangler or what?  The kid who is allergic to animals seems to be the one who has a special way with them!  Doesn’t that just defy all?