With seven people living on a part-time income, we have to use our resources efficiently to feed, clothe, and entertain ourselves.
We don’t have a mango tree, but our kitchen has processed at least a hundred pounds of mangoes in the last several weeks. Several of the families for whom I teach music have given me a bag or two of mangoes at each visit. I made eight small jars of chutney and froze them. I think we are down to four jars. I had only eight jars, so I made smoothies with leftover mangoes. And with the mangoes that I didn’t use to make smoothies because there were too many, Dad sliced up and put into our beans and rice. He added curry, green peppers, and other spices. It was delicious. And we are still collecting mangoes because some trees give two (or three) harvests. Some trees aren’t ready for the harvest until weeks after the first. So every week, there are two or three families that are giving me bags and bags of mangoes.
As the babies are growing out of their old clothes and into Taylor’s clothes, I’ve been putting away their baby clothes. I’ve also been noticing stains and rips in both sets of small and medium clothes. So I’m cutting them. Yes, cutting them with scissors (and it’s wearing out my scissors!). I’m making my first freehand quilt. I’m just cutting pieces and sewing them back onto an old bed sheet that I cut into square foot blocks. They are coming along nicely. I was thinking of making a larger patchwork piece and using it as fabric for clothes, being that it used to be clothes. Perhaps it can serve as the skirt of a dress.
Last week was the first week of summer for the public school children. We at the Greenleaf School took that week off for catching up on housekeeping and play. Ty saw that one of his favorite television characters, Curious George, had made musical instruments using things around the house. Ty made a guitar out of a milk carton and rubber bands — It was more like a lyre than a guitar. He used Taylor’s kitchen pot lids as cymbals. And he asked me to help him make a water xylophone out of beer bottles. THAT was difficult. All of Thursday morning, I was tapping glass bottles with a spoon and adjusting the water level in an attempt to play a major scale. And all afternoon, I was suffering a headache from the high-pitched dinging. Albeit, it was worth it. The boy learned a bit about musical instruments.
The question is not, “How do you do it?”
The question is, “How will you use it?”
