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.
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