Wednesday, January 27, 2016

From My Commonplace: On Tending

"I have abandoned the 'no work' principles of letting nature do all the work.  I tried that, and I ended up with a nightmarish wilderness, a horrific mess which I found painful just to think about, let alone actually get out and work on. This year, I have gone back to traditional methods and used hard toil…the result is that the small vegetable garden is a delight to work in and I look forward to my sessions in it, rather than dreading them as before…gardens need a lot of tending."  p. xvi
 
~Tom Hodgkinson, Brave Old World
 
The author is speaking of gardening here, but it occurred to me that one could draw a lot of parallels to our task as parents in raising our children as well.  Something I've been chewing on anyhow…
 


 
My Bookbag This Week:
Devotional: The Daily Office Lectionary Readings and Prayers from The Trinity Mission, The Cloud of Witness (Gell), A Sacrifice of Praise (poetry anthology, edited by Trott)
Theological: Wisdom and Wonder (Kuyper)
AO Book Discussion Group: Paradise Lost (Milton)
Personal Choice: The Scent of Water (Goudge)
With my Hubby: Pride and Prejudice (Austen)
Family Read-Aloud Literature: The Story of the Treasure Seekers (Nesbit)
 
*I am also reading Scouting the Divine (Feinburg) with a women's group at church and Charlotte Mason's Volume 6 for a local CM book club, but these meetings are infrequent and so I just read the brief section assigned as our meetings come up.  They aren't really part of my regular reading rotation as the rest of these are.
 
** Yes.  My hubby is actually reading Pride and Prejudice with me.  And enjoying it....


 
 
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4 comments:

  1. Smart Jen, I thought about educational methods too, and why not, parenting too.

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  2. Smart Jen, I thought about educational methods too, and why not, parenting too.

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  3. I see you are reading from A Sacrifice of Praise! That's one of my desert island books. I lent my copy out once and bought a new one while it was out because I needed it. :)

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    1. Yes, I think you may have been the person who I first heard mention it. It was on my wish list for awhile, and I found a lovely (inexpensive) used copy and bought it with my Christmas money. It has been a lovely addition to my devotional reading to add a poem or two each day. :)

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