Why gardening is dangerous and iPhones are cool

I thought a day in the sun breathing air that doesn’t consist of wall rebounded virus spittle would be good for us. I may have been wrong.

I really want to bring these kids up with a healthy respect for nature, understanding where their food comes from and having the know-how to produce a fair bit of it themselves. So in an attempt to kickstart our journey into the world of permaculture and provide the fresh air and sunshine that we are told will cure all ills I decided to have a gardening day.

Using my intermittently nonexistent and husky blues singer voice and a fair amount of general pointing and hand flapping I got the kids set up with garden tools and working away at a patch of earth. And for a brief sun filled moment I felt on top of things this week. That is till Lilly started screaming. I must shamefully admit that at first I didn’t believe anything was terribly wrong with her, lately she has… um… how to put this… been developing her talents in the dramatic arts. And I’m afraid as she had dropped to the ground rocking, covering her face and calling out “aarrh, aarrh, aarrh!” a performance I have witnessed many times recently, the first words out of my mouth was a scold for yelling so loud when the baby was asleep. I felt a little bad when she brought her hands down and they were covered with blood.
I don’t panic in an emergency, I’m quite calm. In fact I panicked more before when I thought I was worrying about sound waking a baby. I rang Glenn thinking this was going to end in a trip to the hospital and pressed a clean tissue against the wound. While talking to Glenn on the phone I cleaned the wound and quizzed the kids on how it happened. Eli had been digging with the spade and Lilly had been nearby weeding, just as he went to thrust the blade into the dirt she spied the hand fork and dove in front of him to get it, placing her face directly on top of the bit of dirt he was aiming for resulting in a spade to the face.

I applied pressure to Lilly’s nose thinking yeah right he’s chopped her nose off with a spade what’s pressure going to do but when I pealed back the tissue and took a second look the clean edge of the cut had knit together. I couldn’t decide what to do, a minute ago there was blood pouring down her face now it didn’t look so bad. I tried describing the look of it to Glenn on the phone but my breaking voice wasn’t making the decision to come home or stay any easier so I took a photo with the phone and sent it too him so he could see for himself. See with the iPhone you can be right in the heart of the disaster no matter how far away you are.

Did I mention I like my new phone, the picture was clear enough for us to come to the conclusion together that it just needed a bandaid and not an afternoon in the emergency ward. A head wound that was fixed that easily is a first for our family and I’m not saying the iPhone had anything to do with that but it sure took the edge off a moment of panic and helped me to feel less alone while I was figuring out what to do. plus I wrote all this on the iPhone too, how cool is that.