Behind the House
David picked up his cell phone and dialed Dirk’s number.
“Hey, I’m behind your house.”
“What? I don’t see you.”
Dirk and Pat are our neighbors, but their back yard is fenced, and with the placement of their windows it would be hard to sneak past them.
“Well, I’m right behind your house. It’s on the bridge.” (more…)
“You lost another garlic plant last night,” said David yesterday after his morning inspection of the kingdom.
Simple words, but with earth-shaking consequences for the garlic monster that’s taken a third plant. That’s 15% of my crop, and even God only asks for 10%.
“Okay, no more Mrs. Nice Guy,” I said. “We’re going to Hooten’s after lunch so I can talk to the garden guy.” (more…)
One of the bad things about living in the country is the bugs. I’ve come a long way in the two years we lived here. I no longer scream and flail around when a multi-legged creature lands on me – at least not much. I’ve even been known to pick a lady bug or other benign insect off a leaf and evict it from my garden with my bare hands. But there are limits to my tolerance, and those limits were reached several times this week. (more…)
I had a couple of serious posts in mind for today, but I went out to give my plants a drink and decided some garden pictures would be much more fun. To catch up on the history of some of my babies, go back to my post called “Plans, God, and Day Lilies.”The irises and day lilies Dirk gave me are doing great. One of the irises is proudly sporting two buds…
When we bought our little 2+ acre homestead four years ago, it was in need of some TLC. In a previous post called “Other People’s Garbage,” I wrote about the piles of junk and partially burned trash we found. This picture shows one of the larger piles in the lower right-hand corner. The downed tree was blackened and surrounded by a mound of dirt and the non-combustible remains of many fires. (more…)
Proverbs 16:9 says “We can make our plans, but the Lord determines our steps.” The Yiddish version is something like “Man plans and God laughs.” I wonder if God laughed when I thought today’s plans might include a little writing.
I knew I wouldn’t get anything done before lunch. I always begin the day with prayer and Bible reading, and since we started a ladies’ Bible study at church a few weeks ago, my study time has gotten longer. I thought I’d have time to do a little work in the garden before lunch, but by the time I sent a few e-mails that were overdue, it was time to hit the showers. That was okay. There would be time for gardening this afternoon with time left over to come up with a brilliant post and spend some time on my WIP (that’s work in progress for those not in “the business”). (more…)
David and I don’t have a regular date night. We enjoy each other’s company enough that watching a movie on our 47” television with a bag of microwaved popcorn seems like a date. But thanks to David’s growing reputation as a chili cook-off judge, we had a special date night last Friday in Quitman, another small East Texas town about 25 miles from Emory.
A couple of weeks ago, David got an urgent call from a friend in Quitman. They went to school together in Jonesboro, Louisiana, and the tale of how they reconnected after all these years is a tribute to coincidence, but that’s another story. For now, she was in a bind and needed help. She was coordinating a chili cook-off to benefit the Special Olympics, and one of her judges had pulled out for medical reasons. She needed someone from a county other than hers and preferably someone with a little bit of experience. Lured by the chance to expand his resume and by all the free chili he could eat, David said yes, and I went along to watch the show. I didn’t take my camera, and my phone didn’t have enough of a charge to take a lot of pictures, but I took enough to show you that people in Quitman know how to have fun. (more…)
I’ve written several posts about my little garden in the past few months. (here, here and here) Gardens are not very exciting to those who’ve grown them all their lives, but they’re nothing short of miraculous to a city girl whose previous horticultural experiences consists of a window sill herb garden and a few pots of patio tomatoes. Every time I take a bag of frozen squash or okra from the freezer or open a jar of salsa or pickled okra, I think this isn’t the product of a giant faceless corporation. This is the result of hard work by Aunt Fay, Jerry, Dirk and even me. (more…)
All of us who live in the South have heard some version of this comment from our friends of a more northern persuasion:
“I couldn’t live down here. I’d miss the change of seasons too much.”
It’s true that we don’t always have the gradual Spring thaw with the first green sprigs peeking timidly through the muddy remnants of the last snow. Instead we go to bed one March night with nothing but bare branches in the yard and wake up with a riot of white blossoms on every pear tree. And we don’t have a month or two to go through a slow transition from long johns to lightweight jackets to summer wear. Instead we go directly from boots and sweaters to shorts and sandals. But we usually get a day or two of beautiful weather when we can open the windows and air out the house before we shut ourselves in for the long, hot summer. (more…)
