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.