Going Against the Flow: Term One: Week Eight ~ Saying Goodbye, Heavy Work, and Injuries

This ended up being a short week for the boys as far as structured written work was concerned. Again, no photographs of our written work, but as you read through our week, I think you'll see why I failed to photograph the more mundane aspects of our life.

Sunday morning one of the 4 o'clock flowers had several blooms so I took the opportunity to photograph it.

We spent a good portion of Monday saying good-bye to a dear friend of ours. The elderly gentleman who lived across the street from us at our old house died earlier this month. We had been friends since the first week after we moved in, back when Monster was only three years old, and Monkey was a 4 month old baby. Mr G had a sweet old bull dog that the boys adored and we got to know each other during the times that he allowed the boys to visit with her. During our COVID lockdowns I walked Mr G's new dog and also checked in on him occasionally to make sure he didn't need anything. About six months ago his health really started to fail. Two of his three daughters live just a few suburbs away, but I offered to check on him a few times a week and we made sure he knew he could call us in an emergency. Just after we moved he rang me to say that he was in hospital again and this time it was cancer. Although he had surgery to remove the tumour, tests showed the cancer was advanced, and then he developed a lung infection. Thus he made the decision to cease all treatment and let God take him home.

It was absolutely lovely to be included in the funeral. Not only did it give us a chance to say goodbye, but we learned so much more about his life. We knew from photos on the wall in his house that he was a runner. But at the funeral we learned that he ran marathons and ultra marathons. He held the record (until just recently) for most marathons run by an Australian (309) and his fastest time, as far as his family could find, was 3 hours 29 minutes. He also donated just shy of 300 litres of blood (about 78 gallons) and was an all around lovely, decent, wonderful man. I wish I had known him more, but I am so thankful that I DID know him, and that I was able to help him out and also get to know him better these past few months.

Monday, we got home from the funeral late in the afternoon, and I needed some time to process so Munchkin and I went for a walk. I took the opportunity to photograph these flowers once again and the results are MUCH better than last time.

This week we finished reading two longer length books. The left photo is a wonderful compilation of Australian poetry put together by the amazing Jackie French. We read this book several years ago, but Munchkin was too young to remember it. This counts as part of literature for both Monkey and Munchkin and was the beginning of a year long poetry study that we will be doing.

The right photo was an EXCELLENT (and very detailed) look at the way the Aboriginals assisted the early colonists as they attempted to learn about and catalogue the flora and fauna that was all around them.

The autumn weather has been quite lovely so I've been able to spend some of my late afternoons and early evenings reading on the front veranda.

I HAD to include this quote by former president of the US James Garfield.

Munchkin and I are reading a WONDERFUL book all about the history of food and this quote was in the section about peanuts! People who know me well know that I LOVE peanut butter and whilst 2/3 of my boys will eat peanut butter, they don't love it nearly as much as I do.

We finished two junior non-fiction books this week. One specific for Munchkin (left) and the other covered curriculum content for both boys.

Munchkin spent some time this week creating a hieroglyphic secret code for his best friend.

All three boys helped their father out moving MANY pavers. It is good for them to have heavy work to do.

I found this beautiful creature (which I assume is a fly) hanging out on the stack of pavers. I was surprised at how close I was able to get to it without it flying away. I have never seen one of these before and the colours are amazing.

The two older boys attended youth group Friday night.

About 7:30pm I received two text messages from Monkey.

One was this photo and the second message was five thumbs up emojis.

It turns out that during the games he crashed and burned - quite literally.

It required larger band-aids than we had in stock so with some advice from my mum (Nurse Grandmama) we applied antibiotic ointment and large gauze pads, taped everything down and put the wrap on to keep dirt from creeping in.

Plant update:

The tomatoes are doing really well.

Something snacked on the coriander (maybe a cat or a possum) but it is still growing.

What a difference a new pot and some water did for the aloe vera. The right photo was taken last week just after I put it in the new pot. The left photo was taken Saturday and as you can see it has improved greatly. I'm glad because it is always good to have an aloe plant around.

This sad stick in this pot is all that is left of the beautiful sunflower plant that was growing. We have NO idea what happened to it. I advised Munchkin that since the stick is still green we'll watch it for a week or two and see what happens. Thankfully, if it doesn't start growing, he has more seeds, so we can try again.