In 2008, we left our little Victorian house with neighbors 20 feet away on two sides. We opted for a change of scenery and a steadier, more rooted, pace to life. We felt so blessed to find a home in a nice neighborhood that already had a finished basement apartment. Mortgage eater built in--awesome!

What started as 4 baby chicks and an experiment at gathering eggs has blossomed, if not exploded. A handful of hens soon became 15. A year later some goats were added to the mix. The next season a couple of pigs as well as some raised vegetable beds.

The Mister of the House has made it all happen! I am forever at the crossroads of decision and what-iffing. Because our baby goats are over the land limit, they are not a permanent fixture. My heart smiled after the birth of the baby goats, when The Mister exclaimed: I feel like I should keep growing my herd!

Indeed our heart and our dreams are growing bigger than our single acre.

For our family, and our childhood love of nature that was lost with careers and bill-paying, we have grown so much by just having a little piece of our own dirt. It has seemed like a dream come true in so many ways.

And then I remembered something from long ago. Something I had yearned for to the depths of my soul, and had somehow forgotten. How is that possible?

Enter Mrs. Olsen into Florida jungles. It's 1997. I'm single right? Still in the middle of my schooling. No money. Wearing a dress for a year and a half straight while inviting sweaty southerners to come check out the message.

It was there as a missionary, where I was only known as "Sister Anderson", that I discovered the power of prayer. The focus of my new prayers? Maybe I sensed my student life would never catch up to real estate growth? Or perhaps it was me knocking on door after door of cramped, shut-up, rot inside with a television trailer parks that I desperately wanted to have my own chance someday with my own piece of dirt, and with a river if at all possible. So my prayer was this: Dear Heavenly Father, Please help me have some land someday. I will try to be a good steward. I love you. Amen.



Every day we'd hit the streets, preach the message, pray for the people, for our prophet, and for the spirit...and then I would add my petition. Oh and if it's not too much to ask, some land would be nice someday.

The vision was clear even as a newlywed I think. But we were still students, still scraping by and fixing up. I knew I had some time to wait. Then came babies, job changes, more school, and making ends meet, and the cloud of busy living pulled me from my once-clear-vision.

So when we moved to our little acre a couple years back, I was so caught up in getting rental income, recovering from my hormones, and wishing I knew how to garden that I had forgotten my years long petition to the Lord. It wasn't until just this year that I remembered that girl in the dress, winding through trailer parks and thinking how dirt could keep her grounded in the grown-up world. I wondered how I had forgotten that I had prayed for this! And with my remembering, came some thanking.

I forgot but you remembered. You knew I needed this, and brought opportunities to make it happen! You remembered even when I forgot! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

So with all this reminiscing of mission life, and remembering of former prayers, I was delighted with this recent quote from the LDS General Conference. Elder Dieter F. Uchdorf stated:

Every one of us is called to wait in our own way. We wait for
answers to prayers. We wait for things which at the time may
appear so right and so good to us that we can't possibly imagine
why Heavenly Father would delay the answer....We must learn that
in the Lord's plan, our understanding comes at the price of
patience....Often the deep valley of our present will be understood
only by looking back on them from the mountains of our future experience

That quote seemed so perfect for me at this time, especially with my burst of remembrance that brought me to my knees. But with that remembrance came a recollection of another sister missionary, indeed my very own mission companion who served with me for 4 months in Brunswick, Georgia.

Like me, Elizabeth wore a dress and became a sister in the sweaty south. Back home was Mitch, who sent packages on a weekly basis, and who cheerfully and faithfully waited until Elizabeth came home. Anyone who knew Elizabeth, knew Mitch. I served with Elizabeth while she was diagnosed with lupus. I knew that diagnosis would forever change her life, and wondered if the cheesy and cheerful mission packages would diminish.

They didn't.

Elizabeth and Mitch got married after she got home. They lived in the desert where the warmth kept her in better health. He took care of her and loved her.

And just last week he suffered a surprise attack of the heart with a clogged artery. He was gone hours after finishing a hike with his kids. He leaves behind Elizabeth 38 weeks pregnant with child number four!

I think of me and my old mission companion, one praying for a dream so long she forgets to notice its fulfillment, and the other biding her time as a nun just long enough until she can blaze into a dreamy love story with a great man.

The quote I found so perfect for my waiting for the land, takes on a new meaning when I think of the new life, the unanswered questions, for my dear friend who will have a lifetime of waiting to know the purpose of this detour.


Signed,

Lay awake at night counting the little things I'm grateful for and chalking this one up to one of The Mysteries of God

So I'm here to give a shout out to all amateur gardeners. The ones who love the pretty yards in Better Homes & Gardens but then get their water bill, have a newborn, or become temporarily addicted to saving the princess. I want to have a pretty garden, I want self-reliance, but I have always become burned out in July.

First my teepee. I have planted melons and beans along the base. Then the feathered ladies came for a visit. So then I re-planted melons and beans around the base. Hopefully my melons have enough time to actually give me some fruit. Let's just say that I hoped those chickens would eat my garden bugs but all they did was take dirt baths and pull up my plants. Oh, and scatter my straw.

So they got cut off last week.

Back to the teepee.

I have beans! That is all.


Does your landfill offer a truckbed full of bark for $7.50? If not, I feel sorry for you. As you can see it totally helped me create an inviting path right smack dab through the middle of the garden. And since I'm kicking it in high gear, I created a little resting area to enjoy the pleasing things of the earth. And in cobalt blue no less! And for just $16 at Wal-Mart (which I love to hate, or sometimes it's hate to love) how could I resist?

You heard me. Plastic adirondack chairs that don't need to be painted for 16 bucks. Nobody tell me these are bad for the planet please.



Back in the spring, our neighbors called and said they had some more baby chicks and did we want them.

Only if they're hens, we said.

Oh we are pretty sure we have figured out a way to tell. We'll give you all hens.
Three roosters later, we are creating the neighborhood wake-up call at 5:45 a.m. Plus those hens are running for their lives all the day long, poor little things.

But just look how those rooster feathers shine in the sun?


Hmmmm..what else?

Stinkin' cute goats that's what. They are so playful and cute. Look at those ears!

I was so excited to get a picture of a chicken on the bridge, that I totally forgot to take the screen out of the water. Darnit!



Why is there a screen on the water. Because of an exciting pond project which I will update you all on later. Oooh, be excited! I am.

And a last parting shot...


I'm tired. Good night!

There was a time in my life-my skinnier, single life, that I was a proficient nightswimmer. Large bodies of natural water: lakes, oceans, sometimes the eddies of a river, would unwittingly accept my sweaty armpits and oily hair as I checked the swim off as my daily shower. I'm pretty sure my sister Niki contributed her urine upstream from me a few times as well, bless her little heart. The girlfriends and I would sneak into the night, shed our clothes as we screeched off of docks or cliffs, and become mermaids at best, fish in the least.

Here's Sara and I taking clues that it will be a good night while we wait for Heather to come.

Heather wins!..and with glasses on no less! In the end, she chose french fries. Hmmm, maybe nightswimming may be a danger to my health after all?

Naaah.


Here's me timing my camera to see how long it will take to get a picture of Sara in mid-air jumping into blue.


Instead I got this. Oh well.



Aaaaahhhhh.


This is why I got the call this time. Heather is ready to POP next week and was delightfully weight-less in the blue.

My other highlight of this night (apart from the fact that I was nightswimming) was the reality that the last time I jumped through stars into blue (last fall) I was 30 pounds heavier! Still not ready for the public swim, but the salad a day plus consistent exercise is slowly but surely making a difference! Wahoo!

Thanks ladies! Call me anytime! Sorry we missed you Wendy and Rebecca (and even Niki).

Favorite nightwater picture ever here.

So once in a while, I wake up and say: Be Monica! Monica is my older, wiser, crafting-er sister. So last month, it happened! I actually conceived a project and then!...I actually started it. I didn't finish it mind you (we'll save that for 3 years later), but I'm happy with the progress so far. Plus I'm cheap. For 30 bucks here's the makeover taking place in the back.

Here's our outdoor firepit. See it? Way out there hanging in the flowerbeds? I really really need to get a winter cover for it. Because I never did, it was starting to turn a little rusty. For the past 14 months, I couldn't pass it without hearing a voice in my head that said: Cobalt blue.

I'm not even sure what cobalt blue is. But when I went to the store, I bought a special can of rustoleum paint that felt like cobalt blue. To them, it was "True Blue". That was about $6 bucks of my budget.

Rustoleum True Blue and I sprayed just the lid of the firepit. The rust-protection qualities of this paint are compromised if your project reaches over 200 degrees, so we left it on the top.

Next I went to the thrift store and started looking for something I could use to make some seating around the fire. This is the exciting and mind-numbing part of any creative project. Paused in the aisles, looking sideways at junk trying to find its potential, and risk the chance of bringing home more crap that sits as a memorial to good intentions. Fortunately, this run was fun because I found an old homemade clock cut from some funky log already sealed with 10 layers of varnish. Bingo!

$15 bucks for old-school 70's nature clock



We cracked it at the skinny edge to make 2 mini benches.

No nails or screws required! I simply rested the wood on concrete blocks. Five blocks total at $2 bucks each. Two blocks under the bigger bench, one under the smaller bench. The last two were upright as a decorative log holder.



And there we have it. Simple re-purposing with a firehazard of overgrown perennials, but at least an improvement!

$6 spray paint
$10 for 5 cinder blocks
$15 for old school wood clock / bench
______________

$31 makeover baby!







My ultimate goal for this space?

Clean, weed-free pea gravel so my cobalt blue shines appropriately. On the border? A wind-screen decorative wall. Maybe lattice work, with a suspended BIKE frame, also christened cobalt blue, with red clematis growing through its spokes.

I'll give credit where credit is due.


Inspiration from this book. For the bike part. Anyone got an old school rusty beach cruiser I can take off their hands?


On THIS page.

Now if I was Monica, it would happen July 2010. Maybe I'll get it done by May 2012.

Overheard recently here at Mrs. Olsen's house...

As a born and bred Idaho Girl, I was excited for a recent reunion away from the farm, over the river and through the woods to Island Park. Driving through southeast Idaho, the valleys are wide and plain. Plod further north and you get to beautiful Ashton, and right on the border of that town, you see the impending rise of the land, a major geologic shift forcing your transmission to growl. Within the course of a mile, the landscape transitions from wide sagebrush plains and winding rivers to forest. Don't think lush Oregon forest: ferns underground shaded by the massive outstretched arms of pinion pines catching oceanic gusts. It's just miles and miles and miles of tall, straight, narrow Lodgepole Pines.

These are the trees of Island Park and Yellowstone. These are the trees of my childhood trips to cabins and geysers. These are the trees whose cones stay sealed shut, never replenishing their seeds until they are set on fire. And thus, these are all the trees that burned and burned back in 1988 when I was just 13 years old. The let-it-burn process was natural, but soon became a crisis. Then the fire and smoke sent boyfriends away as firefighters, and spewed a billowing gloom for hundreds of miles that turned the moon red and had folks quoting end of the world scripture.

I could, and I did, sit in the passenger seat for miles with head crooked to the right, watching the assembly line of lodgepoles running past catching their brief dance with sunlight from above. And so it was that I turned to The Mister of the House, on our way to the Olsens-from-Utah Reunion and stated in my best neener-neener voice: Idaho is prettier than Utah.

Where else but an Idaho Lodgepole Pine Forest could you hide in the forest while dancing in the light?



And where else could you have a cabin by the lake, with dozens of trees between you and the water, and still have a view of the blue?

With the Olsen Clan came The Mister's grandparents, Grandma Darling and Grandpa Jack. Like me, Grandpa Jack is a born and bred Idahoan, and so that makes him extra special to me. After the recent passing of my last living grandparent, I am left to transfer all the last conversations, acts of service, collecting of garden knowledge that I wish the adult Mrs. Olsen was able to have with her biological grandparents onto my grandparents by marriage. Nothing could be easier, because they are beautiful people.



As a former Stake President, Seminary Teacher, Temple President, and professional counselor, there's something about associating with Grandpa Jack. With every person he meets, he genuinely loves them. Like other intimidating holy men, he has laser vision.

Or so it seems.

Both he and Grandma tell me over and over what a wonderful wife and mother I am. There are times when I look into their eyes, I look away in fear that they will see that I sometimes lose my temper, fart under the covers, argue with my husband, and cuss under my breath when my garden goes to weeds.

More than once I have left Grandpa's house and wondered (and hoped) if I could really, I mean really, be as good as he thinks I am. I'm not talking just about a good mom doing her duty to her kids and family. I mean really good. Like the kind of good that lifts, blesses, and makes it back to heaven. And this is not me fishing for comments on the blog okay? Don't you ever wonder these things?




Grandpa Jack often looks at my little Vanilla Wafer and comments how much he looks like Grandpa did as a kid.



And I hope that all the years of hard work, the love of mankind to the point of serving them for free...for decades, the faith, the endurance, and the pure love embodied by Grandpa will somehow transfer to my offspring.

Like my Idaho Lodgepole Pine Forest, Grandpa practices a transference of light. Who else can you hang out with over a weekend and bask in warm delightful love of God?

Here's some more photos from our weekend of fun:


More transference of light from Herm and Norma, who I love love love. Thanks for the cabin getaway!


Herding cats.


River run.


Cautious smiles from my cautious boy. On the river with Grandpa Herm-Daddy.


My favorite girl.


"Smile with your teeth"


My Idaho. My Trees. Perty sunburst.

Before the boat showed up to take us on a river run, here's how we played in the water...or near the water.


Oh sorry, Yellowstone spiritually claimed by Idaho. Better luck next time.


Old Faithful = excited tension.




For an extra two bucks, Rainbow Girl got to hide food for da bears!




Hiding spot under the rock.


Found by "Spirit"




People training. Mrs. Olsen wanted to edit this poster so the female had a thought burst that said: Is HE ever happy?! First he swaps our 10 pound infant for 3 shoulder bags, a picnic blanket, and car keys and now his panties are in a wad over a kid who's excited to see a bear.


Sorry folks. The tetons also spiritually claimed by Idaho. Better luck next time.




More transference of light. My beautiful momma.