Cool Snap - September 30, 2020

 

Yesterday was such a beautiful, mild day, and the next few days are supposed to be mild, as well.  I am both loving this cool snap and dreading the onset of winter.

The odds are that it's going to frost on the butternut squash that I planted (late) before they have time to bear.

The butterbeans have tiny little pods on them.  Unless we have an early frost, I believe we might get a picking or two from them.

The turnip greens are up, thick as cat hair.

The tomatoes are still producing a little.

We picked a good bit of squash Saturday - enough for meals for Nanny and us for supper.  The okra needed cutting, but I put it off.  I was busy all weekend, then it rained Monday.  Maybe the garden will be dry enough today to do some work.

I watched the presidential debate last night.  It was a disgrace.

The Howler - September 28, 2020

 The Granddaughters and their parental units will be house-sitting for a great-aunt while she is on vacation this week.  The aunt has a big dog that mauls The Granddaughters' two little dogs, especially the tiny, worrisome sh*t-head, Dixon.  Guess who gets to babysit the little dogs this week.  Yep.

Dixon started his mournful howling the minute the family left my house.  When he finally settled down, we found him snoozing in my big schlepping bag, which I'd left on the floor behind a chair.  

At night, The Granddaughters usually kennel both dogs.  Come bedtime, I called them into the girls' room and told them to get in the kennel.  Neither of them complied.  Ollie, the bigger dog (who is barely the size of a dust mop), slouched down on his belly and looked up at me with his big, sad eyes.  I picked him up and stuffed him in the kennel, along with his yappy sidekick, turned off the light, and closed the bedroom door.

Five minutes later, the howling started.  We let him howl for a while, thinking he'd eventually stop.  We were wrong.

I said to The Husband, "I'm about ready to put their butts out on the back porch for the night."  He said he'd been thinking the same thing.  Instead, he got up and turned on the TV in the girls' room.  The girls claim they can't sleep without the TV on.  I guess the dogs feel the same way.  In any case, we didn't hear any more out of them for the rest of the night.

Writing Spiders - September 27, 2020

 About this time every year, our yard becomes a maze of spider webs.

In the front flower bed, a black and yellow garden spider (a/k/a "writing spider") has built a dandy web between two rose bushes.  

When the three granddaughters saw it, they let out three mighty screams.  One of them googled it to see what kind of spider it is, and if it is poisonous.  Somewhere in their searches, they discovered some creepy folklore: if the spider writes your name in its web, your days are numbered.  They told their mother this tale, and she has been creeped-out about it ever since.  

This morning, the oldest granddaughter thought up an evil plot.  She took a small piece of white fabric and cut out the letter "P" (the first letter of their mom's name) and tossed it into the web.

The spider immediately pounced on it and wrapped it up into a tight ball.  It's impossible to tell that it's a "P."  

So much for that trick.

But I just laughed and laughed about it.  :)  (You can see the wrapped-up "P" in the upper right corner of the photo.)

Yesterday, as I was reading on my Kindle, The Nugget asked, "Why do you have that [referring to the Kindle] all the time?"  

I shrugged and said, "I love to read."

She made a face.  "I don't," she said, as she attempted a head-stand on the porch floor.

I just finished Bob Woodward's new book, Rage.  A few days ago, I finished Michael Cohen's book - can't remember the title.  Having read several books about Trump, nothing in either book surprised me.

Tired of the subject (in more ways than one), I looked for something new to read last night.  I downloaded three books and started Deep South by Paul Theroux.  I'm loving this one, so far.  It reminds me of all the trips The Husband and I have made, towing a camper behind us.

When we travel, we deliberately avoid large towns and interstate highways, partly because it is a pain to drive through unfamiliar cities when pulling a camper.  (One doesn't abruptly change lanes or turn around after missing an exit when there's a 30-foot extension on the vehicle.)  Instead, as Theroux is describing in this book, we travel the back roads.  

One time, on a tiny back road in Alabama, our telephone map app advised us to get out and walk the rest of the way.

We take the less-beaten paths even when we are not towing a camper.  We have a rule against eating at chain restaurants, which has led to some of our most interesting experiences.  Last year, while on a business trip to Gatlinburg, we stopped in a little town - can't recall the name of the place off-hand, but it was east of Middle Tennessee - for lunch.  It was Wednesday, and the few shops and restaurants that we passed were closed up tight, reminding me of my childhood, when our county seat town used to close on Wednesdays and Sundays.  We finally spotted a little shop with a cute-sounding name - something like "Dumplin's" - that looked like a gift shop but had a chalkboard sign outside announcing lunch.  By this time, it was late for lunch, but we gave it a try.

It was a tiny shop, with shelves loaded with herbal oils and candles and cookbooks, and two little bistro tables in the front corner.  There was a piano on one wall.  The shop owners, a retirement-age couple, were sitting at one of the tables, having their own meal.  When we asked if we were too late for lunch, they happily stopped eating and fried us some hamburgers on the grill in the back of the store.  When the husband brought our foot, he sat down at the next table and asked, "Where are y'all from?"  The real question, though, was where was HE from, for his accent gave him away; he was not a native Tennessean.  It turned out that he had done some roaming in his life and had settled in Nashville at some point, hoping to make it big in the music business.  He'd done some drumming and stage-hand work at the Grand Ole Opry for a while.  His wife had run a catering business.  After a few years of hustling, they longed for a more quiet life and moved to this little town.  It still surprised him that people called him by name in the grocery store.

We haven't had a road trip since covid appeared.  Theroux's book has given me the itch to hit the road.  

School Day - September 22, 2020

 

Yesterday was The Granddaughters' first day in their new schools.  

Granddaughter #1 is in high school, and hers was the first face I saw when they all got home.  "How did school go?" I asked her.  "Fine," she said, and proceeded to show me her class schedule and tell me the highlights.  

A few minutes later, Granddaughter #2 appeared.  "I made FIVE new friends today!" she said, and rattled off their names.

Snaggle-toothed Granddaughter #3 was not far behind the others.  She has hated every day of school since pre-K.  "How was your day?" I asked.  "Good," she said, grinning.  "Did you make any new friends?"  She nodded emphatically.  I asked her their names.  She ducked her head and said, "Ummmm...I don't know."  Maybe she'll learn their names today.

Their dad, who doesn't start his new job until next week, had spent most of the day cleaning off the fence row along Nanny's long driveway.  He had run the weed-eater and the chainsaw, cutting down saplings and poison ivy that had long ago gotten out of control.  Nanny had hovered nearby most of the day, fearful that he would cut off one of his own limbs with the chainsaw.

I made a giant chicken pot pie for dinner.  The grown-ups finished off Sunday's purple hull peas, and the girls finished off the meat loaf.

After dinner, we sat on the back porch in the cool evening air until bedtime.  

It was nice.  :)

Sunday Dinner - Sept. 21, 2020

 

Yesterday morning, our 6-year-old granddaughter, The Nugget (worth her weight in gold), wanted to go visit Nanny.  I stalled her for as long as I could, hoping to give Nanny time to drink her coffee and get out of her pajamas.  Finally, about 11 o'clock, I relented.  When the middle granddaughter, Lou-Lou (a nickname that somehow evolved from "Cindy Lou Who"), heard the commotion, she wanted to go, too.  By the time we all got our shoes on, the oldest granddaughter, teenager Maddie-pants, put down her cell phone and joined the troop, and we set off down the driveway.

Nanny had her windows open, heard us coming, and met us on the back porch with hugs for everybody.

I went to the garden.

Squash needed picking.  Purple hull peas needed picking.  Okra needed cutting.  Nanny brought me some picking sacks and a knife to cut the okra.

The Nugget wanted to pick the tomatoes.  Though I would have preferred to let them ripen another day, I let her pick them.  The other girls joined us.  I handed them a picking sack and put them to work in the pea patch.  Despite my warning about itchy okra, the older girls snapped off a few pods and immediately started itching.  

With our picking sacks heavy, we walked back home.  Maddie-pants went back to the phone, but the younger two girls were all-in for shelling the peas.  Afterward, I told them that their purple thumbs made them real country girls.  The Nugget smiled a toothless grin.  (The child is missing so many teeth I don't see how she eats!)

Come suppertime, I served them up a garden supper:  fried okra, purple hull peas cooked with bacon, a squash casserole, sliced tomatoes, and meatloaf.  None of them had ever tasted purple hull peas.  Only Lou-Lou had previously tried fried okra.  They reluctantly tried a bite of everything and deemed it all somewhat edible.  I think that their having gathered the vegetables made them a little more tasty.

This morning, they all started their new
schools.  Maddie and Lou-Lou were excited; The Nugget, not so much.  They all went out the door with their backpacks, masks, and hand-sanitizers.  Nugget was a little weepy.  I almost was, too.  

To tell the truth, I'm a little bit terrified.  Schools are basically petri dishes.  

Now, everyone has gone about their days, except for me and the two dogs, Ollie and Dixon, both little balls of white fur.  Ollie is a sweet dog.  Dixon weighs about 2 ounces, and he is a sh*t-head.  Every time Maddie leaves the house, he howls - a mournful, high-pitched scream that sounds like a siren.  Maddie says he's her "emotional support pet," but I think it's the other way around.

The Husband has been threatening to squirt Dixon with a water pistol every time he starts that awful howling.  But yelling, "DIXON, SHUT UP!" seems to work fairly well - for a minute.

 

I was already at the the bathroom sink, washing my hands, when the toilet I'd just flushed made a gulping noise and seemingly reversed its engines.  I stood, watching in horror, as brown water rapidly approached the rim of the toilet bowl.

I was the only person awake.

Or the only person who admitted to being awake.

Thankfully, the water level stopped rising a couple of inches from the edge of the bowl.  I got the plunger out of the bathroom closet and pumped it up and down a couple of times.  Belching noises emanated from the bowl, and some of the water went down.  Figuring the problem was solved, I flushed again.  This time, the bowl came perilously close to overflowing - so close that the plunger, itself, would have displaced enough water to send it over the rim.

This was bad.  

What to do?

Long story short, I had to bail out the toilet with a styrofoam cup.  The only container suitable as a receptacle for what I was bailing out of the bowl was my garden picking bucket.  (It is now soaking in bleach.)   And then what does one do with a bucket full of nasty toilet water?  I made three trips to the woods to dump the foul stuff.  Finally, with the toilet bowl almost empty, I retrieved the serious plunger - the one that works like a bicycle pump - from another bathroom and managed to unclog the toilet.

About two minutes after I'd cleaned the toilet, sanitized the plungers and myself, and retreated to my chair on the porch, The Husband came out to the porch with his coffee.  I could tell that he was dying to comment or question what had happened, but he knew that if he said anything, I'd know he was awake throughout the whole process.

I'd known he was awake, anyway.

 What a day yesterday was!

I was like a cat in a cage for most of it.

My younger son and his family were scheduled to move home from east Tennessee some time this weekend.  Their plan is to live with us until they can find a place of their own.  Their actual date of departure depended on when the moving company finished packing up their house.  When we heard from them Wednesday afternoon, they were expecting to be here today (Friday).  

For the past couple of weeks, we've been making room for the five of them.  We have two spare bedrooms.  Both closets were packed full of junk, some of it left over from 20 years ago, and some from our older son, who just recently moved into his own place.  We threw away and stashed and donated loads of stuff until we had two empty closets and two empty dressers.  

I went to work yesterday morning expecting to go to the grocery store after work.  Mid-morning, I bit into a Milk Dud, and part of my front tooth came off.  This tooth has been cracked for years, but the dentists have said, "Just leave it alone."  A couple of months ago, a little bit of the enamel chipped off.  The dentist said I'd need a bridge.  I'd just spent close to $2000 on another bridge.  I could not face more time in the dentist chair.  I asked her to just smooth the rough edges and let me go, for now.

When part of the tooth cracked off yesterday, I looked in the mirror and found that I had a gap as wide as the Mississippi between my two front teeth.  If I'd say words that began with "F" sounds, air would whoosh out.  It drove me crazy.  I called the dentist office, bracing myself for beginning a long-drawn out procedure, but the office wasn't open yesterday.  

I came on home and did some googling, and found out that the problem might be fixed with "bonding," which sounded much better than tooth extractions and bridges.  I called another dentist that I've used in the past.  They said that they'd had a cancellation and could work on me if I could come RIGHT NOW.  So I jumped in the car and drove back to town.  Less than an hour later, the problem was fixed.

Meanwhile, we got a text from the kids.  They were an hour away!  I stopped by a grocery store to get stuff for spaghetti and meatballs, and hurried home.  Soon, the young'uns were pulling in the driveway.  We started unloading their stuff immediately.

My house is wall-to-wall stuff.  We'll eventually get it all straightened out.  Meanwhile, it sure was nice to go to sleep with a bunch of granddaughters snoozing under my roof!

Turnip Greens Planted - September 16, 2020

 

Every day, when I look through the screen door from my perch on the back porch, the potato plants in the tub get sparser and sparser.  (Is "sparser" even a word?)  Yesterday, three plants remained of the dozen I originally planted.  Today, the healthiest of the three is nothing but a stick.  Here's the devil that did it:

Who knew tomato worms would eat potato plants?

I just can't have nice things.

I went to the garden about 3:30 this afternoon to work on the turnip green patch.  Pulled up another wagon load of grass, and there's at least another wagon load still growing.  

For the first time this year, I almost got over-heated.  When it's seriously hot outside, I wait until the garden is in shade, but it didn't seem all that hot today.  I had on my red straw hat (which a hummingbird investigated for a few seconds) and long pants (to keep the mosquitoes from feasting on me like they did yesterday when I was wearing shorts), and I worked, bent over, with my back to the sun.  When I raised up, my world went sideways for a minute, and kept going that way for longer than I expected.  I carefully made my way to the refrigerator in the big shop, where I've stored some bottled water, and went back out to sit in the shade to cool off.  After a few minutes, I was good to go again.

I ended up planting a 2-feet-wide x 10-feet long strip of turnip greens.  If it doesn't rain tonight, I may plant another one just like it tomorrow.  There'll still be room for another strip, but I might plant lettuce in it instead of turnip greens.

Turnip Green Day - September 15, 2020

A couple of years ago, Uncle Jack told me that he always plants his turnip greens in the middle of September.  

Well, today is smack dab in the middle of September, so I went to the garden, intending to pull up the grass in the designated greens patch, till up the soil, and scatter the seeds.

It didn't happen.  The ground is too wet to be tilled.

I pulled up a big wagon load of grass, though.  After that, the top couple inches of dirt would have been loose enough to trap a turnip seed, except that I tramped it down with my boots as I worked my way across the patch.  If it doesn't rain tonight, I might get out there tomorrow with a rake and scuff up the soil enough to catch the seeds.

I could not believe how many worms I discovered.  Not earthworms.  Green worms.  Brown worms.  Gray worms.  Little curled-up c-shaped things.  In my mind, I heard my mother say, "Pinch it in two," as she said to me one day when I pulled a big juicy green worm off a tomato plant in her flower bed.  First of all, I can't stand to touch the things longer than it takes to un-velcro them from the tomato leaves.  They squirm something awful.  Secondly, I know what's inside that worm.  It's bad enough to step on them.  No way I'm going to pinch one in two bare-handed. 

But today, I was wearing my gloves.  I must've pinched/squished 50 of them.  They seemed to be right on top of the ground, not in the soil.  Or maybe I tossed them on top of the soil as I shook the dirt off the grass roots.  

The greens patch is where the cucumbers were, but I've seen those little worms all over the garden.  I sure hope I've made a dent in next year's crop of tomato worms, if that's what they are.  Or maybe they're cabbage worms.  They'll be eating my cabbage, broccoli and brussells sprouts soon, won't they?  

  

Final Tomato Canning (probably) - September 14, 2020

Today's tomato pickin' yielded 4 pints of canned tomatoes.  I expect that will be the last time this year that I'll pick enough to fool with canning.  

Once the tomatoes were in the canner, I set a timer and told The Husband, "When the timer goes off, turn the burner off," and I put on my mud boots and went back to the garden to pick the purple hull peas.  I've already shelled, blanched, and frozen them.  One fat quart bag.  

There are tiny white flies on the peas.  I wonder if they are responsible for all of the skinny, moldy, matchstick-sized pods that I pulled off and discarded.  I wanted to spray them, but didn't have any insecticide mixed up in the sprayer.  It was getting dark, and I still needed to cut the okra.  I ended up with several big hand-fulls of okra that wasn't too big.  I briefly considered bringing it home to pickle or freeze, but there were peas to shell and put up, so I ended up pawning the okra off on Nanny.  There'll be more.  

Speaking of okra, I finally got around to making okra and tomatoes.  As far as I know, I'd never eaten home-made okra & tomatoes, only the canned stuff, years ago, before I married.  I liked it okay.  It always surprised me that the okra wasn't slimy.  I half-expected my home-made dish to be a little slippery, but it wasn't.  (Maybe the acid in the tomatoes dissolves the slime.)  I basically followed the recipe I saw in a Paula Deen video.  Sautee some onions (I threw in two small pimiento peppers, just because I had them) in bacon grease.  When the onions get translucent, add the chopped tomatoes.  Paula used canned tomatoes; I used fresh ones.  Paula added a spoon-full of schmaltz, or something close to it, to the tomatoes; I used a spoon-full of chicken fat off some chicken stock I'd saved yesterday after roasting a chicken.  I seasoned the tomatoes with salt, pepper, and maybe a tablespoon of sugar.  Once the tomatoes had cooked a little bit, I threw in the okra and cooked it until the okra was tender, but not soft.  It would have been perfect if we'd eaten it then, but the other things I was cooking weren't ready, so I turned off the burner and the residual heat cooked the okra just a little more than I would've liked.  But it was still good.  Paula Deen says she serves it with rice, but I had squash that needed to be used, so I didn't make rice this time

As I watched the stuff cook, I was tempted to thicken it with a little flour or cornstarch slurry, but didn't.  The next time I make it - which probably won't be long (we liked it) - I might sprinkle a tablespoon or two of flour over the onions as they cook, which would make a little bit of a roux to thicken the tomato juice - make the sauce a little more like gravy - and serve it over rice.

Sewing on Sunday - September 13, 2020

One of my besties raises Golden Retrievers.   Her mama dogs are quite fertile, and have had as high as 13 pups per litter.  Once the puppies are mobile, my friend spends about 6 weeks doing nothing but cleaning up poop and bathing puppies.  Since she lives 300 miles from me, I rarely get to see her in person, and I've never seen any of the puppies (she doesn't need a visitor with all that going on).  I keep telling her that she ought to just let those bitches birth those puppies under the shed, but she won't listen to me.  <shrug>

My friend sends her puppies to their new homes with "goodie bags."  I don't know what all goes in them - probably pee pads and chew toys, stuff like that.  Last week in text messages, we somehow got on the subject of the goodie bags, and before the conversation was over, I'd volunteered to embroider her kennel logo on her goodie bags.  She said she'd ship me some blank bags.  They arrived yesterday, but we didn't check the mail until late in the day.  I started on them this morning.  Bag #3 is in the machine now.

My Great-Aunt Lee caught me doing hand embroidery one Sunday afternoon when I was a kid, and said, "For ever' stitch you sew on Sunday, you'll pick out with your nose on Judgment Day."  Maybe that doesn't apply to machine embroidery.  

I wished I'd had them yesterday.  Remember, I had planned to prepare the turnip green patch for planting this weekend, but it was raining when I woke up Saturday morning.  Since I had not made a contingency plan, I roamed around the house all day - from the couch, to the refrigerator, to the porch, to the bedroom, back to the porch . . . .  About 1 p.m., The Husband joined his weekly online ukulele jam.  I sat watching it until I noticed one of the ladies was DRINKING - at 1 p.m.! - and I thought, If she can day-drink, so can I, so I fixed myself a good-sized gin & tonic, grabbed my mandolin, and went out to the porch to practice.  I wasn't much good for anything else, after that.

We walked down to the garden, to get some tomatoes for supper and check the mole trap.  No mole.  Lots of new fire ant hills.  We dusted them until we ran out of powder.  

There were lots more ripe tomatoes than I expected, enough to fool with canning them.  I brought home just a few tomatoes to go with some we already had - going to try making okra & tomatoes for supper - but tomorrow after work, I need to pick and can.  

There were a few squash big enough to pick.  I saw a squash bug on one of them.  Time to spray again before they get rampant.  

The okra needed picking, too, but the okra rows are a SWAMP, and I wasn't wearing my mud boots.

Peas need picking.  

Making Plans - September 10, 2020

We walked down to Nanny's tonight before supper to stretch our legs a little and to check the mole trap.  The moles have been doing a number on her yard, and I've been trying to catch one for about a month.  I finally caught one yesterday, a big, fat, juicy one, and re-set the trap.  Nothing today.  

I did a quick garden tour while I was down there.  The butterbeans have finally started to bloom.  We'll be picking a few purple hull peas for another couple of weeks.  There are still a lot of small tomatoes on the vines.  I'll probably do something with them - spaghetti sauce, or something - over the weekend.  I've thrown away a ton of tomatoes that were like little water balloons from all the rain.  The squash are still blooming, but don't seem to be producing a lot.  The okra is still doing its thing.  I found a couple of carrots among the grass and tried to clear the grass from around them.  I hate to pull up the grass for fear of pulling up microscopic carrot sprouts or seeds that still might sprout.

I'm going to plant turnip greens this weekend, if it doesn't rain.  This will require more grass-pulling and tilling before I start planting.  But I love to run the tiller, and I need the exercise, anyway.

What will I do when the gardening is over?

I need to start considering some long-term plans, not just for gardening or exercise, but for how I'm going to spend my time in two years, when The Boss retires and I will be out of a job.  When that happens, I will lack two years and one month reaching my 30th year on this job.  Pension benefits top out at 30 years.  I'd like to find another state or county job to finish out my 30 years, but who knows if that'll happen.  I will be a few years away from drawing retirement when my job ends in two years.  

I gotta find something to do once I'm unemployed.  

Tonight on television there was a show about some business owners that run restaurants and coffee shops and such.  Those people had passion for what they do - feeding folks healthy food, creating comfortable spaces for the community to gather, giving back to the community.  I envy their passion, for I can't think of one thing that gives me that kind of "juice."  I dabble in lots of things, but am not particularly good at anything and don't get enjoyment from my dabbling beyond momentary relief from boredom.  

Can passion be cultivated, or is it an innate trait?  I don't know.

But I need to be thinking.

From the back porch - September 9, 2020

Do you know what these are?

No, not limes. 

 No, not green eggs. 

Hint 1: Primarily used for hurling at the heads of your siblings and cousins. ;) 

Hint 2: Seed pod of the Tennessee state wildflower. 

Yes, they're Maypop seed pods. The Husband found these dangling from a fence row as he was mowing the field Monday. As I sat here looking at them, I wondered why they're called "Maypops." Clearly, they are not present in May. I looked it up and found a couple of answers: (1) if you step on one, it may pop; (2) the plants pop out of the ground in May.

I vote for #1. 

* * * * * * * * * * 

My vision for a fall garden is not coming to fruition. Yesterday, I discovered what is happening to my sweet peas. Deer. I saw their tracks. Buttheads. They'll probably start on the purple hull peas next. 

Most of the broccoli, cabbages, and brussels sprouts have drowned from all the rain, even the store-bought plants. I found TWO carrot seedlings among the grass. I'm scared to pull up the grass for fear of dislodging any remaining seeds that might sprout. 

 * * * * * * * * * *

I got brave yesterday and went to a beauty shop to get my hair cut. Haven't had a haircut in a year. It's a short haircut. Hopefully, it will last another year. (I hate going to the beauty shop.) 

 * * * * * * * * * * 

Early this morning, I took the top off the Wrangler and intend to drive it to work. today It hasn't been driven in several months (tags expired in January 2019). I crank it, now and then, just to keep the battery up. When The Husband tried to crank it Monday, it just went "woomp." He boosted it with the battery charger, and it's alive again. I shall get new tags, first thing, when I get to town. Hopefully, if some observant Deputy tail-gates me and discovers the truth, I will be able to sweet-talk him/her out of a ticket with The Grandson Story. 

I parked the Wrangler two years ago, intending to save it for The Grandson.  He and I have ridden hundreds of miles in that Jeep, top down, radio blasting.  When he was still little enough to need a booster seat, he asked me, "Grandmama, can I have this Jeep when I get big?" I laughed and said, "If I still have it when you get big, you surely can."   I'm trying to make good on that promise. 

It needs a new transmission. When idling at a red light, it wants to GO, and if I don't switch it into neutral right fast, it will quit (but cranks right back up). I had a guy look at it.  He said, "Yeah, you're going to need a new transmission, eventually.  But I'd just keep driving the sumbitch until it won't go, THEN I'd put a new transmission in it."  Sage advice.   I've got three more years until The Grandson turns 16.  

It needs a new top, too. It currently wears its third soft top (this Jeep is 22 years old). The Brother-in-Law somehow came into top #3 for free, and gave it to me because it didn't fit his Wrangler. We'd just bought a new top, and so top #3 sat in a box until last year, when top #2 rotted enough that one whole side tore off when I was trying to take it down. Top #3 was half dry-rotted when we took it out of the box, and it doesn't quite fit my Jeep, either. The back window won't zip all the way shut - I suspect it's not even the original window. This summer, as we were sitting on the back porch, The Husband suddenly exclaimed, "There's a bird in your Jeep!" We ran out there and opened the doors. There was bird poop, old and new, all over the place.  Come to find out, a wren had built a nest behind the spare tire and had been doing her business inside the Jeep for quite some time.  Gah!  I was so disgusted.  We taped the back window shut with black duct tape to keep the bird out. The poop came off the neoprine seat covers fairly easily. Hopefully the disinfectant killed all the creepies.  If it didn't, I shall blind them with sunlight today.

Cornbread & Buttermilk - September 8, 2020

 

My daddy used to love cornbread and buttermilk.  He would crumble stale cornbread into a glass, pour buttermilk over it, and eat it with a spoon.  When I was a kid, I thought it was disgusting, and if I'd say so, Daddy would just say, "Man, you don't know what's good," and keep eating.

Daddy grew up dirt poor in northeast Alabama during the Great Depression.  He was one of 15 children (twelve of whom made it to adulthood).  His father was something of a n'er-do-well, and left the family to fend for themselves for long stretches of time.  Cornbread was a staple of their diet.  I imagine that cornbread and buttermilk served as breakfast, lunch, and supper, at times.  They didn't throw out the left-overs.  

His father's mother, Martha, lived with them, and reportedly ruled the roost.  Mother remembered hearing her say to her daughter-in-law, "Pearl, you go pick the greens, and I'll start the cornbread."  

"Granny"

Daddy remembered that she made the worst cornbread in the world.  He said she made a "pone," and cooked it on a flat pan.  I can't imagine cornbread that would stand up by itself before it was cooked.  It probably had to be soaked in buttermilk, if it was to be choked down.

Both my mother and my mother-in-law were/are cornbread masters, though their end results are strikingly different.  Mother liked to lace hers with chopped onion, sometimes.  Onions or not, her cornbread, always cooked in a pre-heated iron skillet, always baked at 500 degrees, was crisp on the bottom and sides and moist in the middle.  She would dump the cake out, upside-down, onto a plate, and cut it into triangles.  Nanny cooks her cornbread on a pizza pan, of all things.  She puts a blob of grease on the pan and heats it in the oven just long enough to melt the grease, then she pours the grease in the batter and bakes it at 425.  Her cornbread has a tad of sugar in it.  It comes out with a cake-like texture, barely brown on the bottom, golden on the top.  As soon as it's out of the oven, she unwraps a stick of butter and smears it around on the cornbread until the whole stick is melted into the bread, then she cuts it into squares (except for the edge pieces, of course).

I love both versions and have tried to duplicate them.  Forty years, I've been trying.  Still haven't gotten it right, though I've made cornbread at least once a week.  In fact, I made cornbread for supper Sunday night, to go with the peas I picked on Saturday.  We don't throw out left-over cornbread, either.  If I've made Nanny's thin version, we toast the left-overs in the toaster (it's a little hard to get out without crumbling it all to heck) and smear it with more butter.  Monday night, we toasted Sunday's left-over cornbread (Mother's thick version) in the air-fryer to go with the left-over peas.  

I had cornbread crumbled in milk for breakfast this morning. 

Don't tell Daddy.  ;)

Labor Day Weekend - September 8, 2020

 

The Husband pulled a fast one on me yesterday.

Since we did not have any Labor Day cookout plans, we spent the morning cleaning closets.  (Our younger son and his family are moving back home from east Tennessee in about 10 days, and they will be living with us until they can find a house.)  After lunch, we zoomed with the ukulele group for an hour or so.  When that was over, The Husband said he was going to get the tractor and bush-hog the field in front of Nanny's house.  

I was sitting on the back porch, fooling with my mandolin.  I said, "If Roger sees you, he'll want you to come do his porch, and I'll want to video it."  He made some grumbling noises and left.  A few minutes later, I heard the tractor in the field.  Absorbed in my practicing, I did not notice when the tractor left the field and started up the road, but a screeching noise got my attention.  I knew what it was; he was taking the porch off of Roger's trailer.

I grabbed my phone and took off across the road, but the deed had already been done.  

Damn it.

In any case, it was uneventful.  Roger's trailer is still standing.

Pea Pickin' - September 6, 2020

 

Yesterday morning, before the dew had dried, I said to The Husband, "I'm going to put on my boots and go play in the garden instead of sitting on my toocus staring at a screen all day."  The Husband said he'd be down there later, after the grass dried, to mow Nanny's yard.  I put on my hat and my gardening apron and struck a trail down Nanny's long driveway.

On the way, I saw where Nanny had dusted several fire ant hills with ant killer, and I saw several more ant hills that must have erupted since she'd done her work.  Before setting foot in the garden, I retrieved the fire ant killer bottle from the shed and circled Nanny's yard, looking for new ant hills.  I found several.  This is worrisome.  And creepy.  We need a better solution than that bottle of powder.

There wasn't much that could be done in the garden.  The ground was too wet to do anything about the grass in the soon-to-be turnip greens patch.  I pulled up a couple of the worst-looking squash vines, picked the few purple hull peas that were ready, gathered a few tomatoes and squash, and came on back to the house.

Instead of offering the peas to Nanny as I've done all summer, I brought them home and shelled them.  They yielded about 2 cups of shelled peas, which I plan to cook for supper tonight.  

It wasn't long before I was back to sitting on my toocus, staring at a computer screen.  

At noon, I heard the wail of a siren.  The closest little town, 5 miles away, tests its emergency sirens at noon on Wednesdays and Saturdays.  This siren reminded me that on Saturday afternoons, The Husband's ukulele group meets online for a virtual jam session.  He was puttering around in the back yard when the siren sounded, and I hollered out to him to remind him of the jam session.  He said it usually happened around 1 p.m., not noon.  Since I had music on my mind, and nothing better to do (that's not really true), I went inside, got my mandolin, and brought it outside to practice.

Friday evening, The Husband and I had talked about how nice it would be to have our children and grandchildren gathered on the porch, playing music together.  Both of our sons play the guitar.  Our grandson and our oldest granddaughter are both in their school bands, and both of them have been learning the guitar.  Our younger son and his family have been living all the way across the state for the past two years, but they are moving home in less than two weeks and will be living with us until they can find a house.  This family music jam should soon be do-able, if we can find times when everyone is available.  I need to become a better mandolin player.  Soon!

An hour later, we logged on to the ukulele jam.  An hour after that, The Husband went to mow Nanny's yard.  

We keep our riding mower in Nanny's shop.  We also keep the new tractor there.  For some reason, The Husband parks the lawnmower in front of the tractor, so that the tractor has to be moved to get to the lawnmower.  (I suspect that the reason for this is that he needs an excuse to crank up the tractor once a week.)  He backed the tractor out of the shed, backed the lawnmower out of the shed, mowed Nanny's yard, then put everything back the way it was.

Not long after he came home from mowing, the phone rang.  Cousin Roger.  He said, "Hey, where's yo' huzzzband been hiding that tractor?"  

I said, "Roger, I can't tell you.  It's a secret."

He said, "Well, I need to use it - "

and before he could finish the sentence, I thought to myself, Fat chance of THAT happening . . . . 

" - or get HIM to use it.  I'll help him, of course."

I asked him what needed doing.

He said, "I want to tear this ragged-ass front porch off my trailer."

In the space of a millisecond, a full-length documentary developed in my mind, one in which Roger's trailer is dragged completely off its foundation.  

I managed to suppress a laugh and said, "Hold on.  I'll let you talk to him about it, if he's out of the shower."  

I took the phone to the bathroom.  The Husband was standing at the sink, shaving, with only one side of his face done.  I handed him the phone.  "Roger wants you to come over there on the tractor and tear the front porch off his trailer.  He said he'll help you."  

He said, "Oh, Jesus," but his eyes lit up, and he took the phone.

I left the room.

A little while later, I heard the end of the conversation.  " . . . Well, just call me when you're ready to do it."

I will be there, filming it, when it happens.

Cool - September 5, 2020

 

For many, many years, my morning routine has been to get out of bed, pour a cup of coffee, and sit down at my computer desk to read mail, catch up on news, and otherwise entertain myself until it's time to get ready to go to work.  With The Husband working from home every other week, my computer desk is littered with his work stuff, and I have to adjust my morning routine every other week.  I bring my laptop and my coffee out to the table on the back porch, which is kinda nice.  Yesterday morning, I saw an owl fly out of the woods and land in a tree in the back yard.  .

This morning, I came out to cool weather.  Sitting here in a sleeveless shirt, I almost need a sweater.  

This will be a good day to work in the vegetable garden, if the ground is dry enough.  The bare spot that I saved for turnip greens is grassy and needs to be tilled before the seeds can be planted.  The squash vines need to be pulled up and hauled away.  The peas may need picking and the okra probably needs cutting.  I'm almost excited about it.  

This past couple of weeks of rain has kept me house-bound, and it's about driven me nuts.  Yesterday when I came home from work, for lack of anything better to do, I dragged the push-mower out of the shed and went to work on the yard.  It was really too wet to mow.  No grass was shooting out the spout, and I had to stop every little bit to thump the mower against the ground to knock the grass patty from around the blades. 

I had done the back yard and was almost finished with the front yard when Cousin Roger from across the road came riding up on his lawnmower.  He made a gesture that said, "Do you want me to help you?"  By this time, I was hotter than a firecracker and close to pooped.  I made a return gesture that said, "Have at it!"  He mowed along the tree line next to the road, then aimed his mower at the remaining square that I was cutting.  But he had his blades set higher than the blades on my push mower, and after he mowed one side of the square, I motioned for him to let me finish it with the push mower.  He moved on to the side yard, which is shaded by trees and is mostly covered in soft, green moss.  It didn't really need mowing, but I let him do it, since he was needing something to do, like I was.

When I finished my square, I came inside and fixed two glasses of ice water, and flagged Roger down to give him one.  He rolled up, shut off his engine, and drank his water.  He was probably waiting for me to slip him some money for helping me mow, but . . . nah.  ;)

Garden Check-up - September 3, 2020

 

Well, the vegetable garden is a mess.

Because of all the rain, it's been close to a week since I set foot in it.  It's been so wet for so long that the ground has a sour smell.  The paths that I've beaten down going in and out of the garden were hard enough that I didn't sink in the mud, but I didn't dare to step off the paths.  

There were 4 squash just the right size for eating, twice that many that were rotting on the vines, and about a dozen more as big as watermelons and as yellow as school buses.  The squash vines will have to go, pretty soon.  (I've been saying that for weeks, haven't I?)  All of the tomato cages had fallen over, vines and all.  Most of the okra was as big as daggers.  

The purple hull peas are ripening.

Two cabbages have drowned.  I couldn't even walk in the end of the garden where the broccoli, brussels sprouts and carrots are planted, so I don't know how they're doing.  They're all about half covered up with grass.

Bugs.  All kinds of bugs.  Ants.  Squash bugs.  And some other bugs on the squash I didn't recognize  that resembled this critter:

The article that goes with the picture says it's a Wheel Bug.  There's something else that resembles it called an "Assassin Bug."  According to the articles I just read, they will bite the crap out of you, and it hurts.  I did not know this when, bare-handed, I picked a squash that was crawling with these bugs and shook them off like they were nothing.  

After surveying all the damage and all the bugs, I mixed up a batch of insecticide and went to work.  I think the squash are past saving, but I want those bugs DEAD.  I sprayed the peas and the butterbeans and saw clouds of tiny little winged things take flight.  By the time I finished the beans and started back to the shed with the sprayer, the squash bugs had moved from the lower parts of the vines and were staggering around on the upper leaves, and I doused 'em again for good measure.  

Currently, the healthiest tomato plants in the garden are those that came from the seeds I planted a couple of months ago.  They have never been staked or caged or sprayed for blight, and are just trailing on the ground, au naturale.  A few of the leaves are a little blighted, but the blight is nowhere NEAR as bad as it is on the tomatoes in cages that I sprayed and sprayed and sprayed and babied.  They haven't produced tomatoes yet, but they are blooming, and there is hope.