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Tuesday, April 24, 2012

The New Word

It's been a few days since I've posted on the blog. Well, in my defense I can say it's been a busy weekend and it was a busy week at work.


I love this space, because it's mine and mine alone.
As every mother knows, we are always sharing ourselves with our husbands and children. Whenever Mamma says: "I'll just put my feet up for two minutes", maybe while the sauce is already on the stove and you don't need to be watching it anymore, here comes the little one: "Mammy will you help me color Scooby Doo?".
The husband is nowhere to be found, or busy with his own things, so the feet-up-plan goes out the window, and you have to search for the Scooby Doo page first, which is somewhere in the pile of coloring pages printed at school and brought home (on purpose, to fulfill the moments when you wanna just put your feet up for a few minutes), and then get the pencils and then help with the coloring :) 
It doesn't matter, I am really glad to do whatever it takes to make my son happy, even if it means no time for myself anywhere in sight for the next 10 years.
I like being busy, I like working in the home, I like setting an example for my son; nothing falls from the sky, but everything comes from your hard working hands. This is what I was shown as a child and this is what I want to show my son.


Well, to come back to this post's title... I have today, learned a new word! And I love it!!! After living in an English-speaking Country for six years, I did not expect this to strike me the way it did. 
The word is Resilience. I love it! It signifies being able to withstand or recover quickly from difficult conditions.


We live difficult times, and I believe more difficulties are just around the corner. For all of us, regular working class people. There is a financial crisis that has spread everywhere, our wages do not depend anymore on our abilities but instead depend on a system many of us do not understand. So many persons lost their jobs in the last 4 years(23 million people in Europe are unemployed at present), and things do not seem to be getting any better. At least, the economy is not recovering. 
I believe we have finite resources on the Planet, and this means the economy cannot grow forever. Here is why the word Resilience struck me this morning: we should create, at least in our homes, which is the only space we can control ourselves, a Resilient System. Or at least, as resilient as possible.
This is what our garden looks like at the moment. This is another step I am taking towards resilience. The first step was the stockpile, which is relatively easy. This is a step forward.
Next week we will get a new polytunnel, the one we had "abandoned us" on the 4th of April, torn by a very strong wind. Now we know better, and will install the new tunnel in a different way.


The wooden boxes in the picture contain the vegetables that will not suffer any damage in the event of a frost. Far right are the carrots, then there are oilseed rapes at the back and mixed salad leaves on the front. Next to them, in the back, 4 strawberries plants and on the front, the spinach. On the left, under the plastic box, more salad leaves, parsley and, invisible in the back, 2 artichoke plants. They are my favorites. I can never find artichokes here in Ireland, I'll be soooo happy when I can just eat my own :)


The polytunnel is necessary for beans, pepper and aubergine plants. They are delicate plants and must be in a protected space. And our sitting room does look a bit like a garden centre at the moment, so the tunnel is definitely needed.


In another corner of the garden I have peas plants, those would resist anything! On Sunday I also planted 3 raspberry bushes. Well, they are more raspberries sticks at the moment, but I trust them to become bushes soon.


Saturday was my gardening day, my son was very happy to help me build the wooden boxes and then plant the seeds. He checks every morning on the germination of the seeds we have inside and reminds me to water them. He's a great little boy.


Well, all of this to say that if the worse should happen, and both of us lose our job and we only had the unemployment payments to live on, we would still make it and not go hungry for a long time. We would still be able to pay the mortgage and eat proper food for a long time. Resilience is truly a great word, and it is something that helps me feel safer. There are so many things I cannot control, so many fundamental things, like the stability of our jobs. So what I can control I want to control.


In the meantime, I cook from scratch every single day, I avoid bringing in the house processed foods and things with just too many ingredients on the label to be even considered food. I know is comfortable to shop and I do so with pleasure, but I'm always careful what's inside the nice package.


I think we need to prepare for rainy days all the time. We need to learn from our parents' and grandparents', who fed entire families with very little and just worked very hard all their lives.

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