Welcome back to Blogville my friends, thanks for joining me today. I am drinking a lovely Caribbean Chai tea as I write today’s blog. I’d like to offer a warning to gardeners out there as this is a story about carrot failure/success (lol) but it is also much more about what I learned. 

I have a half barrel in my front yard that came from my husband’s family. For generations this oak barrel held many wines made by his grandfather, his uncles and his father. Sadly, just like many other traditions, these activities have been lost as these family members left us. Those are incredible family memories for my husband, so, many years ago when we moved into our then new home, my neighbour kindly cut one of those barrels in half for us. I repurposed the barrel by filling it with soil and starting a new tradition; experimenting with planting different seeds in my new ‘garden’. 

My father, an avid gardener, thought this experiment was not only hilarious, but destined to fail. When I planted purple potatoes I thought my dad would fall over laughing, that is until I sent him pictures of my fall harvest. Sure there were only 8 or 10 of them but they were healthy and pretty good sized. Each spring he started asking what the big experiment would be this year. After dad passed, I would think of him every time I planted, tended, and harvested (most of the time) something new I had tried growing in the barrel. 

Lately, my young granddaughter has been helping to choose the ‘crop’ and prepare the barrel to plant seeds. It is wonderful how she takes each tiny seed in her little hand and places it gently into the soil. Each time she visits she looks in the barrel to see if there are any new sprouts. If an errant ball, frisbee or badminton birdie launched by her brothers or cousins happens to land in the barrel, the guilty party is given her best stink eye and a warning to be more careful. She will then rush over to make sure all is well in the barrel.

This year we planted heritage carrots, the multi-coloured ones, in our barrel. They really weren’t doing well and as she inspected them she found the ones that were growing, were only growing on one side of the now somewhat tipped barrel. She inspected the carrot tops and suggested to her grandfather that the barrel was ‘too tippy’. So my husband and our young grandsons heaved and pushed and finally lifted that barrel until she and I were able to shove an old patio stone under the sinking side of it. She inspected the crop, and announced that things should be better now.

In all actuality carrots should be planted in a garden, not a half-barrel, if you want them to do well. So what did we find at harvest time the other day? We found 16 of the tiniest carrots I have ever seen. The biggest one was just the size of my palm and the smallest, just slightly bigger than my thumbnail. What did my granddaughter see? As she pulled each one up she marvelled at it’s colour, she had never seen a yellow carrot! Or a red carrot! She was enamoured by the fact that they were the tiniest, most colourful carrots she had ever seen. Her narration of the size or colour of each carrot that she pulled from that soil reflected a pride in her crop that only a child could feel. 


I noticed that when she plucked the first carrot, with the excited vigour of a young child, and saw how tiny and fragile it was despite the large green foliage above ground, she immediately reigned in her harvesting technique and began tugging ever so gently and with such care. It was incredible to see that level of caution from such a young child based solely on what she thought the carrots needed. It was a proud grandmother moment for sure.


As I watched her caring for, and then harvesting her little crop so carefully, I suddenly thought about adoption and that barrel. The ‘natural’ place for carrots to grow is obviously in a garden, but I saw in my granddaughter great pride in what these little carrot seeds had achieved while living in a different environment than most carrots. When I witnessed the love and care my young granddaughter  invested in these little carrots, I felt it was much like the love and care my adoptive parents gave to me, and it was enlightening. Since the carrot seeds weren’t planted in their ‘natural’ environment, she instinctively felt they needed extra care and attention; just like children in adopting or kinship families. 


We need to stop telling adoptive parents that they should raise their adoptive children ‘as if born’ to them, because the truth is that they were actually born to another set of parents. Instead, we should simply advise adoptive parents to do their best raising their children, and like all families before them, seek support from their extended family and their community because parenting is a tough job.


There is much research today about the negative impact of adoption on the adoptee. While I concur with much of the research, and agree in principle about the impact, I also wonder about the impact of not having been adopted. If adoption didn’t exist, I might have grown up in foster care or group care, eventually aging out and being abandoned by the ‘system’, much like the unplanted carrot seeds left behind in the the little packet. 


Though the trauma of adoption has stunted my emotional growth in many ways, my parents always took great pride in who I am and in what I could accomplish, just like my granddaughter is proud of her little carrots whose seeds she rescued from a little packet and gave them a chance at life. I believe that so many feelings of self-worth and self-image are impacted, even mitigated, not by how you were valued when you were born, but by how you were valued by those who nurtured you.


As always, your comments are welcome here, or by sending me an email at ldeiulisauthor@gmail.com. ‘See’ you next time.

Welcome back to Blogville, thanks for joining me today. As I write this blog I am sipping a ginger turmeric tea blend, a perfect autumn warmth. 


I woke up this morning at my usual time and wondered if there was a storm outside. It was dull, more like early evening, when just days ago the morning sunlight found the careless cracks in the curtains and yelled at me that it was morning. I should have seen it coming when more and more leaves crunched under my feet after having put on their glorious bright wardrobe before they fell. Oh no, it looks like fall is here!


I am captivated by the fact that the magnificent and colourful display and subsequent falling of leaves from their tree branches is called abscission, so close to the word adoption. 


It is true! According to my web search “When temperatures drop below freezing, the abscission layer hardens more rapidly, cutting off the leaf's connection to the tree.” (Jim Leser Cedaredge Tree Board 2019.) That quote somehow not only reminds me of children awaiting adoption, but it also reminds me of the treatment of birth mothers, especially in the 1950s and 1960s. 


Like the colourful fall leaves on the trees, many birth mothers may have been once warmly admired and even envied by their community for who they were, maybe for their beauty, or their talents, perhaps even envying their bright futures. But when those same youthful girls or women found themselves unmarried and pregnant, the temperature dropped and often they began feeling a distinct separation from their community. Many found themselves abandoned by their own families, the birth fathers, and the birth fathers’ families; talk about a temperature drop. The once beautiful leaf admired by many, dropped to the ground to dry up, often to be walked on, and then suddenly disappearing from the lawn.


I am reminded of what the first frost does to the leaves when the abscission layer separates the leaf from the tree. Suddenly, like those leaves, the birth mother finds herself separated from her support system; the birth father, her friends, family, and community. These women, like fall leaves, are suddenly transitioned from the spectacular autumn colour show to an irritating pile of leaves needing to be removed from the lawn, or left untended to be buried under the coming snow. So, like the fall leaves, a birth mother is either removed from her community to a home for unwed mothers, perhaps even a far away relative, or she remains at home where she is buried by a thick layer of shame in her community. Coincidentally, birth mothers were often referred to as ‘fallen women’.


The truth is that each of us likely has an unwed birth mother in our family tree, though perhaps on a slightly less colourful branch. Perhaps on a branch hidden deep within the tree. In addition to the unfortunately typical reactions to unplanned pregnancies, such as families shipping birth mothers off, or communities shaming them, there were a couple of other options. For example, in the past, many couples who found themselves expecting an unplanned child were hurriedly married before the pregnancy became obvious; noting the many ‘premature’ births in those days. Somehow, if the birth mother married, her unexpected or unplanned pregnancy did not impact on her reputation, as if marriage removed the tarnish. It would appear that nuptials, entered into voluntarily or not, magically negated the community’s view of pre-marital sex. 


If a quick wedding was not an option, many families created cover stories. A common cover story was where the actual birth mother became ‘sick’ or she was ‘needed at home’ and her own mother would then pretend to be expecting a child. This resulted in grandmothers raising their grandchildren as their own birth children, while the true birth mother was demoted to the role of sibling. Family birth records and government registries are filled with altered birth certificates and claims of premature births; which reminds me of those earlier mentioned layers of fallen leaves whose colour has faded and they have been buried by the heavy burden of snow.


I feel that the role of the birth father was kind of like the role of chlorophyll as it relates tree leaves. While dating the birth mother, the birth father expended a lot of positive energy, therefore creating a sweetness to the relationship.  Like the change in seasons, an unexpected pregnancy often created a drop in temperature and reduced the ‘chlorophyll in the leaves’, so the relationship’s sweetness often started to break down. Finally, though there may not be any obvious signs that chlorophyll once played such an important role, it is clear to all what the leaves have been up to. A significant difference is that while the chlorophyll simply goes temporarily dormant, the brightly coloured leaf is completely removed from the tree. 


It is important to note that many birth fathers were never made aware of the pregnancy, therefore not being given a chance to plan for their own infant. In many instances, society and the birth parents’ families often took over the decision making without offering options to, or considering the wishes of, the birth parents. To me, the difference is the unequal burden of responsibility on the birth mother as compared to the birth father, when both were equally involved in the conception. I would like to think that, if given the opportunity, many birth fathers and/or their families would have taken responsibility and raised those unexpected babies with love and acceptance. 


Thank you for joining me in Blogville. As ever, your comments are welcome here, or by sending me an email at ldeiulisauthor@gmail.com  Remember, you can follow me on Goodreads and receive notifications of my new blog posts.