The weekly “little of this, little of that” feature here at Like Mother, Like Daughter!
We have now reached peak “I'll just leave this here while I go deal with those other things” time at the Manse; my yard looks like Ma and Pa Kettle* had a spree with all the plastic.
I have carefully edited the plastic buckets and other truly objectionable detritus in the pictures, but things still look pretty unkempt.
Yesterday it was time to remove the plastic sheeting from my DIY greenhouse — you can see how I made it here on IG, and here.
It was hot in there, the plants needed to be planted, and in the back of my mind I am itching to get that bed back to plant my potatoes in!
If I were a gardening guru I'd be able to take pictures in which you could figure out what the heck is going on.
As it is, I think I need a horde of interns to help me make things barely presentable. If you want to come over and help, you are welcome! Actually, just send your teenagers.
So right now the greenhouse is storage in the garden.
Soon I think I will put the shelves behind the compost bins and try to clean the heck up.
Garlic doing fine; beans struggling in the background there but really, it's just now June and I have to remind myself not to be impatient!
Here is the herb garden with the many plants that still need to find a spot.
*Are you familiar with these characters? I haven't seen the movie but the book The Egg and I is quite funny (as are all Betty MacDonald books) if a little disappointing in the denouement — a light summer read if you are looking for one!
On to our links!
- Do you want a short and sweet explanation of the concept of Natural Law — for yourself or your high school student? The ever-lucid J. Budziszewski has this handy page for you.
- I always love thinking about Dickens and his world view. Doing Justice to Good and Evil: Barnaby Rudge
- If you didn't listen to Amy Fahey on children's literature, make time to do so this week! Not only does she helpfully guide today's parents on the matter of books, she makes the important argument for simply being in nature.
- Along the lines that she (and we here at LMLD, particularly in the Library Project) suggests: Turkish Garbage Collectors Open Library Full of Discarded Books. Be like Turkish garbage collectors!
- Tonight my husband will be speaking tonight at St. Francis of Assisi School in Litchfield, NH — if you are in the vicinity, come here him on the subject of Why the Catholic Revival will begin in New England. This talk is a continuation of the series sponsored by the Center for the Renewal of Christian Culture. You can find the talks archived on that site.
- IVF is wrong, very wrong. We must be honest about this, no matter what the consequences, and they are very grave. In My dad was a sperm donor. My lack of identity reflects his, by Elizabeth Howard speaks honestly about what it has meant to her to be conceived this way. I would even take objection to the term “donor” which attempts to paste a positive connotation over a vile — and monetarily compensated, not donated — act.
- Amadeus is a favorite movie around here; Alex Ross sets the record straight, or at least brings out some ambiguities of the legends surrounding Mozart and Salieri.
From the archives:
- We almost just don't have a pattern for how summers should be when we are not part of the frantic popular culture than just can't imagine life without every moment scheduled and filtered through a screen. Here is my post on the subject.
- We have lots of wedding planning ideas — search the blog — but here's a classic post about being unstressed.
- Do you have the growing sense that the family Rosary is something you want to do, but you just don't know how to go about it? Here's a post on how to start — and there's a chapter about it in The Little Oratory as well.
Today is the feast of Justin Martyr. It is worth it this month to take a glance at the calendar — lots of feasts coming up! I believe that if we live this time between the Ascension and Pentecost with a fervent love for the Holy Spirit, and take care to keep the Pentecost time with a closeness to the liturgy, we will call down a lot of grace; surely we need this now more than ever!
While you’re sharing our links with your friends, why not tell them about Like Mother, Like Daughter too!
We’d like to be clear that, when we direct you to a site via one of our links, we’re not necessarily endorsing the whole site, but rather just referring you to the individual post in question (unless we state otherwise).
Kate says
We used to have a huge vegetable garden when our kids were still home and we had many helpers (or forced labor). Also an orchard and extensive landscaping. One day, with two remaining at home, my husband and I took a good look at our exhausted, stressed selves and decided we needed to hand everything over to someone else or let it all go. We sold the property and moved to a smaller place. Now we have a small vegetable garden about the size of our bedroom and that’s all the garden we tend. We live in a beautiful area, so we don’t really feel the need for much landscaping. The mowing is still never-ending (but there always seems to be a teenager around willing to use a noisy cutting machine).
I have fond memories of “Amadeus” (as inaccurate as it is). The first time I watched it, I was pregnant with my first child and felt his first movements during the music of the movie. Thirty years later, my son is a professional musician (but is not a fan of Mozart).
Jo says
Dear Leila,
I am a practicing and evolving Catholic….I understand totally about IVF. I have a beautiful daughter diagnosed with severe PCOS and another who “may” likely deal with infertility…..
If responsibility with IVF is taken …and I mean responsibility with extra embryos….can and would this be better? I speak from a heart of potential loss and possibility or no grandchildren… I will not be upset by your response…I simply want dialogue and am always interested in your truthful and sound opinion.
Thank you for your insights and wonderful posts…
Jo
Leila says
Dear Jo,
I understand the longing for children and for grandchildren.
First, please urge your daughters to run to NaPro Technologies and this resource: https://naturalwomanhood.org/learn/treating-disorders/
Second, no, IVF is NEVER licit. Think about it: the unborn child left in the freezer is the final horror. Taking the marital act and putting its results in a petri dish can never be acceptable. Just think of what the man must do to produce the sperm. This act alone, condemned in Scripture and natural law, can only lead to serious disorder in the family. The man’s self-worth, the woman’s respect, all gone. Most of all, the blow to the child’s sense of the fittingness of things, including his own existence; this sense is grounded in the knowledge that our parents conceived us in love, an ACT of love. More here:
http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p3s2c2a6.htm
Cirelo says
I totally agree that NaPro and diet/lifestyle changes are superior to other more invasive fertility treatments. And I’ve had friends who’ve had miraculous stories of healing after addressing fertility issues through NaPro. I highly recommend also the Marquette online forum (sorry, behind a paywall) for the ability to troubleshoot fertility issues online with a qualified doc, as well as getting a lot of completely orthodox information on fertility treatments. I’d also recommend “Real Food for Mother and Baby” by Nina Planck. Who has a lot of information on supporting fertility through diet, including the husband’s diet (also important!).
For the sake of discussion, I was wondering if anybody had any thoughts on this other treatment, GIFT (gamet intrafallopian transfer), I’ve heard some Catholics say is still licit because conception still takes place in the woman. I don’t believe you have the loss of embryos either. But it is interrupting the marital act, though I’ve heard of people who have this procedure with normal intercourse. This article is a cursory overview: https://www.webmd.com/infertility-and-reproduction/gift-and-zift#1
Any thoughts on this other lesser known treatment?
This article describes some clearly immoral paths to fertility such as egg donation and IVF/ZIFT, but I’m curious specifically if anyone’s heard of GIFT and has talked/heard/read any thing about it’s moral failings/virtues.
Leila says
Dear Cirelo —
To understand why GIFT is not morally licit, I will give some links. I understand that you are just wondering, so I am not really addressing you specifically but everyone who is interested. I would like to preface the links by saying that we have to take care not to become legalistic. I think usually that term means to people “don’t get hung up on rules” but actually it means “don’t use rules or rationalizations to arrive at the conclusion you were hoping for.”
Instead, people should remember the PURPOSE of the marital act, which is the one-flesh act that expresses married love in an intimate bond and brings about new life. NOTHING can replace this act and its goal, which are a pure gift from God, who owes us nothing. Also, people should be sensitive to whether they are intuiting that something is not right and not let doctors or technical language confuse the issue. Usually people can tell that something is not right.
To understand this better, I recommend reading this instruction, Donum Vitae: http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19870222_respect-for-human-life_en.html
and this article by Germaine Grisez, which explains the causes very well: http://twotlj.org/G-3-52.html#Note193Return
and this one by John F. Doerfler — if you want to do this the easy way, skip down to p. 55 and use the references to the text above (the numbers for the paragraphs) to understand his conclusion that GIFT is wrong.
https://epublications.marquette.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=2230&context=lnq
The bottom line is that the technology gives the appearance of not interfering with the one-flesh act, but in fact does interfere.
(cont’d)
Leila says
(cont’d) Why does this matter? Because, besides the fact that we have to use our bodies in the manner they were intended to be used, in justice to the child, he must be conceived in his mother’s body by a one-flesh act of his parents. That act can be assisted but not replaced, and we can’t hide behind semantics or we are doing him an injustice. Justice of course is a virtue, a good. We must always act for the good, or else we are acting for evil. Not only is that wrong in itself, it will result in evil consequences, some of which we cannot foretell. And in the case of the child, we are calling down those consequences on someone other than ourselves. No, let’s realize that the child is a gift, and if for some reason that gift is not given to us, we must not obsess but must be peaceful with the Will of God.
Cirelo says
Thank you, I appreciate the links!
Dixie says
Jo, I had PCOS and I have four children (the fourth is kicking me in-utero right now!). As scary as PCOS can be made to sound, most people with PCOS are able to have children in the end. The thing to do is to find a doctor who will *treat the PCOS* and not mask it with the Pill or jump right to illicit technologies. There is SO much that can be done to treat it, from lifestyle changes that actually make a huge difference, to using supplements and diet to combat excess androgens, to licit hormone therapy (like taking progesterone in the second half of the cycle) and medications like Clomid (which improves your chances of having a strong ovulation) and Metformin (which combats insulin-resistance, which is at the foundation of PCOS). There are no guarantees of fertility but there is so much a woman can do to work with her body! A Creighton NFP instructor should be able to help your daughters find a knowledgeable doc (they usually specialize in something called NaPro), or you can look a doc up a onemoresoul dot com, or you can start just by getting Sara Gottfried’s book The Hormone Cure and reading about PCOS. There are many who have to carry the cross of infertility, but many more who are actually “subfertile,” not infertile, and can conceive and carry a child with the proper support. In my case, once I had my first child the hormones regulated themselves and we have been very fertile since then. I will pray that your daughters will be blessed with improved health and, someday, children. God bless!
Dixie says
And please understand that I am not trying to minimize the reality and hardship of infertility…I just mean to encourage and give hope. The PCOS diagnosis can seem devastating; try not to be devastated! It is just the beginning of the journey 🙂
Leila says
This is so helpful, Dixie. Fertility is not binary. The truth is that there is a LOT of money to be made in the “fertility industry.” Many young couples today don’t get pregnant right away; maybe they ask the doctor about it and the doctor defaults to “referral” mode — so off they go to the clinic.
I have heard many stories of young couples who try for two months (after being on the Pill or other disruptive method) and then boom — right to IVF.
There are so many factors. We must work with nature and real science to get on track.
And if, in the end, infertility is the cross, the couple must bear it with good will. They will find that there is a reason for it. I know that sounds smug, coming from someone with lots of kids, but I have observed it all around me. There are children to be rescued, sometimes right under our noses. Let’s obey God and be at peace.
Donna L. says
I am in deep appreciation of everyone who is talking openly about this!
We were married for 6 years before we were able to have our first baby~it involved lots of learning, Creighton method, dietary changes for both of us, a great book*, and hundreds of prayers.
We truly felt a deep sadness each month that went by without a positive test. It is a tough and sometimes lonely road. Some say infertility–but we were dealing with “sub-fertility” looking back on everything we didn’t know at first. .
People who didn’t know would ask *when* we were going to start our family–we wanted to right away, but God had us wait for some time. His Will be done
I will offer our intentions for a family rosary for all of the Moms, Dads, Hoping-to-be Moms & Dads and Grandparents who are faithful to Our Lord’s way…
*{The book is called “Taking Charge of your Fertility” by Toni Weschler which I often recommend to those who have confided in me about babies taking time to arrive on the scene–with the caveat that it is NOT Catholic at all–and there are big chunks of it that recommend ABC and other illicit things.}
With that said, many of the tips and ideas about diet, changing undergarments for cooler temperatures and correct timing were a Godsend for us–we went on to have 5 beautiful children–from my *advanced* Maternal age of 31 years old for our first baby to 44 years old at the birth of our youngest
Keep the faith, be peaceful, but use the brains, research and ideas of others who have come before you. Thanks be to God!
Alice Torrence Baldwin says
Darn, we were in Boston (from So. California) area last week for daughters graduation . I would have LOVED to come help garden and i had a teenager to help (torment) also! Its always easier and more fun to clean up for someone else than my own mess/garden.