Tomb Sweeping Day

Ching Ming Festival (also known as Tomb Sweeping Day) is a yearly chinese tradition observed on the 15th day from the Spring Equinox. For most Chinese families (or at least for mine) the significance of this day is second only to Chinese New Year itself.

During Ching Ming, everyone goes home to visit their family graves to sweep the tombs, or in these days, tend to any underbrush or weeds grown up around the graves. Flowers, food, wine, incense and symbolic paper money is offered to deceased ancestors. The wine is poured into the ground and the incense and paper money is burned as an offering in the belief that it is our responsibility to provide for the well being of our ancestors in their afterlife. The food is offered but then removed and taken home for the family to share (they know that the dead can't actually eat it and the Chinese do not like to waste anything).

As a child, around the age of 10 or so, I became a Christian. It was shortly after this that I became somewhat confused and conflicted about this tradition. Never really understanding exactly what Ching Ming was about, when I heard the terms "ancestor worship" thrown around, it made me very uncomfortable with what my parents thought was so important. They, of course, wanted us to participate in the ceremonies surrounding Ching Ming.

It wasn't until much later, as an adult, that I finally understood the term "ancestor worship".  It is a misunderstanding of what is believed by outsiders, or a translation problem at best. The Chinese do not believe that they are worshipping a relative that has become some kind of diety. It is merely the expression of their honor and respect for their ancestors for whom they believe they owe most of what they have and who they are. For example, houses and land were passed down through the generations. So instead of describing what the Chinese (and actually many cultures around the world) believe as "ancestor worship," a more appropriate term would be "veneration of the dead."

It is filial piety, one of the virtues held above all else in the chinese culture; a respect for parents and ancestors. And speaking as a parent myself now, who can argue with that kind of tradition?

But now, I mostly just find the whole idea of it to be fascinating. There are many conflicting stories as to the actual root of this tradition. No one actually knows where it came from or how it got started. Whether it was some kind of knowledge our responsibilities in temples that got distorted over time or whether it began from inspiration, I don't know. The result is that there is supposedly very detailed information in the archives regarding our ancestry. Whether that information is available and uncorrupted by the communist governments  over the years, is unknown to myself. Not knowing the Chinese language and having parents who merely called their grandparents "grandma" and "grandpa" has made it very difficult for me to go beyond my own grandparents names for my genealogy work.

We heard an interesting story from Cecil Wilkes (of the old Victoria Ward) before he died.  He told us about a man who showed up in the Hong Kong Temple with an incredibly long list of ancestors that went all the way back to Shem (Father Noah's son). Christian later heard a story from a Chinese man that he works with about a man that came over the mountains "after a great flood" to settle in what became China.  It's apparently a common folk legend. The topic came up when a friend of his gave him a copy of The Bible, something he'd never seen before. He was reading in Genesis about the Great Flood and asked Christian what it meant, and related the folk story he and his village had about the man coming over the mountain after a great flood that covered the whole earth to settle China.

I don't know how that will help me in doing my own genealogy work, but now I dutifully go with my family to honor my ancestors and pray for some inspiration to help me further the work I need to do.

Spring

Spring seems to be here in full force now. The time has changed. The days are longer. The flowers are starting to bloom (and the weeds are growing).

We took advantage of the mild spring evenings to make our first paella of the season.

Boy, was it good! We haven't had it in a while and probably consumed a little too much in one sitting. But the good news was that the girls are eating and liking it a lot better than they used to. Caitlyn is even eating bits of the roasted bell pepper again.

The spring garden (or what is left of it is still growing well. We'll be able have some salad made from the lettuce we grew in our garden any day now (the day I get off my butt and make it, that is).
And what remains of our peas is still going strong. We got another meal of fresh peas and will keep praying for another! The gophers have peeped up here and there but have not gotten into any further mischief so far.

I am loving the fresh peas and despite the problems we had with them, I will definitely be planting them again next year. I may have to plant 50 next time though...

Anyway, it's time to start the summer garden already so I need to get to work.

Gardening

After all the rains finally dried up, I went out to discover a yard full of weeds and leaves covering all the grass (which also needed to be cut). I spent a good deal of time last week trying to clean up the yard. I was so sore afterwards. Who knew gardening could be so strenuous. Caitlyn usually came home from school to help me. She would help weed some of the easier to remove weeds and help rake leaves for otter-pops! She loves to ask for extra chores outside to earn a nice cold treat.

I also had to salvage what was left of our winter vegetable garden. We planted close to 30 pea plants. I am left with 4 or 5. The gophers or other vermin have been laying waste to my vegetable garden again. This time with a vengeance! They took the most mature plants that were already starting to produce peas and left me with a just a few of the smallest plants. And they just don't eat some of the peas or even some of the leaves, they take the whole plant. One minute it is there, and the next, it is gone.

We finally managed to collect enough peas last week to make a side dish of them and boy were they good! It sucks. We should have had peas coming out of our ears with the amount of plants we planted. At this point, I am hoping to still have enough peas again soon to have one more meal of them.

Late one night we heard a bunch of rustling noises in our yard and went out to take a look at what it was. We found not one, not two, but three very large raccoons. They climbed up the tree house and into our tree. One ran off when we went out there and the other two got up higher in our tree and I got a picture of one of them.

So perhaps I cannot completely blame the gophers on the decimation of my vegetable garden...this time. But I know they had a large hand in it because of the obvious telltale holes next to or where my plant used to be.

So I got out the bait, er...gopher food to feed my poor hungry gophers in the hopes that they will leave my garden alone but soon after, I lost a couple of more plants. Our neighbor lent us one of his gopher traps. We didn't really want to use that method. He had great luck with them. It was quite a scary contraption but the gophers were not falling for it. I have continued with my previous methods and they seemed to have the gophers temporarily at bay...for now.

Hopefully we won't lose our lettuce and what is left of our peas before we can harvest them.

Birthday Party

Emily's Birthday party was on Saturday. Her grandparents on both sides of our family came to help celebrate with us, along with her Auntie Marian.

I made Emily a "proper" birthday cake for the party. It was a three layer lemon and blueberry cake with whipped cream and lemon curd in between. Emily ate all of three bites and was done with her piece. Not that she ate her slice in three bites but that she took three small bites and didn't want any more. If it wasn't for our other guests, I don't know if I would bother with all the work of baking her a cake next time as she thoroughly enjoyed her rice crispy cake so much more!

More on Emily

Emily is our first born. Emily is our trial by fire into parenthood. She keeps us on our toes every second of the day and I have to say, it is utterly exhausting.

She is seemingly full of contradictions. She is our chatterer. She chatters on about everything and anything, all day long.

But she is also very shy.

She is our adventurer and mountaineer. She loves hiking and climbing rocks and she isn't afraid of getting dirty.

But she is also a VERY girly girl and loves princess anything and she loves to play dress up. She loves anything that glitters or sparkles (much to Dad's irritation as that stuff gets everywhere and you can never get rid of it).

She is our smart little academic one. She is easily the brightest kid in her class but a lazier kid, you will not meet. Getting her to do her homework (as easy as it may be for her most of the time) is like pulling teeth (so the saying goes...but actually, she's been plucking out her baby teeth by herself very easily). Of course she has the same attitude about cleaning up her toys and making her bed.

But she is wild and crazy with boundless energy...If we could only find some way to harness it (mostly to do homework and chores).

Emily's Birthday

I have not been very good staying on top of my posts this year. Emily's birthday was um, last Friday. She turned 7 years old! It was a busy week of cleaning, planning, and shopping to get ready for her birthday party on Saturday. After she got home from school, I dropped her off to spend some time with Dad at work. He took her for a walk at the Botanic Gardens.

Caitlyn and I stayed home to make dinner and decorate. Since her her birthday party was to be the next day, I didn't want to have to make two cakes in a row an opted to make a quick chocolate rice crispy treat "cake" instead for her actual birthday. We usually have her wait until her party to open her presents with the rest of her guests but thought maybe that it would be better to have her open ours on her actual birthday so that she has time to look at them and enjoy them instead of getting overwhelmed with too many presents at the same time and not knowing really what to look at first. So we asked her if she wanted to open them or wait. She said that she'd rather just wait (what a strange kid). But, as I already wrapped and got all her presents ready, we brought them out to sit next to her as we took pictures just to torture her (heh, heh). And what do you know, she caved instantly and changed her mind to open her presents on her actual birthday instead!
While Emily was distracted with her presents, Dad snuck in behind Emily and took a bite big bite out of her "cake."