Why a Day at the Farm Is Worth One Year of Therapy

Today the kids and I headed to the farm for a visit. The farm and visiting my grandparents makes me happy. Like deep down in my soul. Happy like I was when I was Lily's age. (Sorry for the sappy, Mamaw.) Anyway...we went to the farm today. It's about an hour and 40 minute drive, so we don't go for the day very often. Today's trip there was so eventful that I saved a future blog post just for talking about the drive.

However, this blog post is about the day that saved me a year in therapy.

I spent an hour and a half weeding in Mamaw's garden. She has a huge and magnificent garden and I never have time or energy to work on my own garden at home, so it doesn't feel like work to me. More like therapy. I love working in the garden. I don't know how to explain it. I never understood the activity until I was an adult. I never understood why my mom would work so hard in her garden...I would think to myself that she should just sit and have a cold Pepsi or something. Now, I totally get it. I could have spent my whole day there if I hadn't had the children with me.

Drew and Mamaw took a lovely nap together. Usually when we are out and about I have to have the "nap fight" with Drew. He really doesn't fight it much...but, it just takes a long time for him to fall asleep and usually when we are out and about, I would rather not be in the bedroom waiting for my 2 year old to fall asleep. So, anyway, he and Mamaw had a nice rest while I weeded the garden.

Drew and Lily get to see where we come from. The farm, where my grandparents live, is the farm that my Papaw spent a lot of his childhood. And my Mamaw went to high school near by. I'm pretty sure my grandpa said that they met when he noticed her "nice legs in her tennis shorts" one afternoon soon after he graduated from high school. (I could be wrong about the timing, but I know it involved nice legs and tennis shorts.) Anyway, my mom spent all of her summers on the farm because both of her grandmas were close. There is so much to learn on a farm and I am so glad my children get to have the experiences they do when we go there. Like: 1. taking a ride with Mamaw on the Ranger to get the mail. 2. gathering eggs and feeding the chickens. 3. checking the vegetable garden to see if there is anything ready to eat. 4. playing with the dogs. Lily had a wonderful time playing with their millions of dogs. She stayed busy all afternoon ordering the dogs around. Patient dogs. 5. watching a giant tractor being unloaded from a giant trailer....by an old man, in overalls, with a gun (yes, a gun. i guess he just had it in the tractor. so after he parked it, he came over with the gun to say hi.), an old man that I'm pretty sure I saw zip his fly as he walked up to say hello.

A big bowl of comfort food. For lunch on this day we had a Heim tradition. We had pasta with tomato juice. However, the magic of Mamaw is that she didn't actually have tomato juice; so she made "tomato juice" with what she had in her cupboard. She turned it into a magnificent meal with what she had on hand. There is no one on the planet that can whip up a meal like Mamaw. She uses whatever is in her kitchen and it's ALWAYS GOOD! I had 3 giant bowls of the noodles as well as some fresh fruit salad. Yummy. There is nothing like a meal from Mamaw's kitchen.

Sipping iced lemonade on the veranda (back porch). The conversation flows easily with Mamaw and we had a lovely chat out on the back porch while the kids played on, around, and in the cellar. Who actually has cellars these days? Just another experience that my children are getting that they could get nowhere else. Anyway, while we sipped our cold lemonade sweet Julianna crawled for the first time! Pretty awesome.

One last thing. If you are a farm regular, you will know who I am about to talk about. Mamaw, however, doesn't want me to mention his name on the blog because "we just don't know who is reading." So, the guy who lives across the street from the farm; he's called "The Squire". That guy was doing his yard work in his Speedo. Yup, that's right. On the western plains of Kansas the neighbor nicknamed THE SQUIRE was wearing a SPEEDO in the middle of the afternoon OUTSIDE OF HIS HOUSE!

Can you see why this place is heaven on Earth?
(Again, Mamaw, sorry for the sappy.)