Iced Tea Chat: Summertime

Hello, dears!  Come in and let's have some iced tea.  Nothing but iced tea would do with our temperatures.  I can offer you a lovely peach iced tea, an organic green peach tea, black tea, lapsang souchong which is smoky and mysterious, a raspberry and pomegranate or peppermint tea.  And there are cookies in the cupboard.  John bought those on Sunday and I've been restraining myself.

Monday morning I was sitting in the kitchen and had just finished Bible study.  I picked up the phone and glanced at the temperature and gasped.  92F at 10am with a 'feels like' of 98...Holy cow!  I suddenly thought of my basil the previous morning, looking rather limp which I'd forgotten to water.  So I jumped up and went immediately to water plants heavily.  If it's almost 100 in the morning it's only going to be much hotter by afternoon when we hit peak temperatures.  And it was.  Oh my, it was!

The AC was limping along trying to keep up and all the fans and ceiling fans were running and it was still a wee bit warmer than I like it indoors, the sort of warm where I can breathe out and in again and break into a sweat. Now I realize, having lived for many many years without AC that this is not a true  problem.  It's just that at a certain age, the heat can quickly overtake you between your own personal thermostat getting stuck on high and the one attached to the AC creeping steadily upwards.  I drank a lot of iced water, pulled ALL the curtains closed and we limped through until the shade of the pecan tree finally hit the west side of the house and the place started to cool down to 78.

But you'll have to imagine how my heart sank when we were sitting here at the peak of the heat, with not a cloud in the sky, not a drop of rain and the electric clicked off.  No AC.  No fans. I wondered how long we'd be without power and if we'd all (thinking of Bess and children too) trek into town to sit in some comfort at Katie's provided the power was still on there.   I am sure of one thing: if we lose power, Bess and Sam do, too.  They are end of the line and their power passes through the transformer on our property.   And here each of us had a baby at home in mobile homes that get stuffy and overheated with all the windows open...  Well, it was on again within 10 minutes and I breathed a deep sigh of relief.  The house was only a wee bit warmer than it had been and  AC quickly cooled it back down.  

On Sunday, Bess brought me a bag of vegetables to sample from a local farm that sells produce bags on a weekly basis.  I was impressed.  It was enough for the two of us (John and I) and some of the prettiest stuff I've seen.  

Tuesday morning I topped and tailed the green beans from the bag and put them on to cook.  I tasted one  to check for doneness and was immediately swept back to childhood when I ate homegrown vegetables year round, fresh in season and canned or frozen through the other seasons.  The beans were so delicious, a tiny bit sweet because they were so fresh, and tasty as if they'd been cooked with a bit of meat in them.  When I was a child, it wasn't a proper pot of beans or peas or greens if a slice of bacon or a bit of ham hadn't been dropped in the pot with the vegetables.  I've never cooked in that manner but these beans tasted every bit as good as those from my childhood memory.   It was grown in 'real' dirt.  By that I mean proper soil, amended naturally, not sterile soil such as my potting soil.  

Granny and Mama both had huge gardens, as did Mama's brother and each year there was a regular exchange between households as one garden might be low on tomatoes or the beans didn't produce and in another it was a bumper crop.  Between the three gardens we only ever ate green peas and asparagus from a can and that because no one ever bothered to plant either of those crops.   Jelly was put up at home, too.  Apple, crabapple, plum, grape, peach, blackberry.

We foraged the fields for blackberry and plums.  The plums were bitter sour things that ripened to an incredibly sweetness moments before they fell from the wild trees they grew upon.   They made a lovely jelly, rosy in color .     Blackberries grow wild here.  Talk about organic!  These fruits had never known anything but rainwater, sun and native soil.     And then we'd climb roadside hills and walk in the edges of woods to gather wild blueberries.  Granny was merciless about the blueberries.  She covered an area about five miles wide and no bush went unpicked.  It was a serious undertaking with her to gather blueberries each year and she got enough to share amongst the other two households.  Of course, it was a lot easier to gather so many berries when she had all 7 of us grandchildren here at once!

In fall, Mama and Granny and Big Mama picked scuppernongs and muscadines and a wild purple grape called Harmon grapes that came off the land where Big Mama and her family had lived for a hundred years or so.  They grew wild in the woods there and it was a feat to get to the vines.  I wonder if they still produce?  The land left family hands years ago, so I'll never know, I guess.

Grandmother also 'put by' things and always had a big garden.  They grew things less in favor by the rest of my family.  They liked crowder peas and speckled butter beans.  These tasted less green and more starchy somehow than the black eyed and lady peas our families here grew, as well as the tender young butter beans that Granny picked before they matured fully so they were sweeter and less like their lima bean kin.   

 Grandmother tended to freeze things, rather than can them, as did Granny.  Mama on the other hand, did a considerable amount of both freezing and canning.  

I signed up with the girl who grows the produce Bess brought here.  My own 'harvest' thus far has been a handful of yellow pear cherry tomatoes, one large and lovely Brandywine and two Roma, plus two good sized and sweet Green Onions I'd grown from root ends.  Truth now, I'd rather grow my own but since I haven't done very well at that this year, I'll go second best and get somebody else's good homegrown stuff.  It's an expense and I'll have to adjust the grocery budget because it's going to cost more than grocery store stuff but goodness the variety and flavor are going to be just lovely!   

This morning I was up early and drove over to the farm to pick up my first bag.  It has Spinach, Vietnamese Coriander, figs, two cucumbers, three tomatoes, another packet of those lovely green beans, okra (the one thing John told me he'd be happiest without!), eggplant, Acorn squash, and yellow squash, a green onion and a big orange Zinnia.  I don't think I've left anything out.  As for John and the Okra, I shall slice it up and fry it as my grandmother used to do it and he'll eat it just fine, but I grew up eating okra and tomatoes in a pot of soup and  okra with tomatoes as a side dish and  it took some powerful mind changing to get me to forgo that when we married.  I never in my life could I eat it boiled so we at least agreed on that much! lol

It was a lovely ride over and I went the way with windows down.  Needless to say, its cooler today than it's been this week.  I wanted to tour the gardens but had no time for that this morning, since Caleb was being dropped off and I knew John was good for just a few minutes on his own and then he's worried about what he might be expected to do, lol.  He's the sort of father my generation was accustomed to, not the sort that our children's generation has become.

 I have to say to you all that the ride alone, over the blue hills with vast views spread out before me and a windy road and misty pones and birds singing loudly along the way I had to travel was just the thing a soul needs on a summer morning.  And perhaps next week I might ask for a farm tour if they aren't busy.

I miss the days of full summer gardens and the social visits where one took up a pan of beans or peas to snap or shell.  I remember family coming to visit at Granny's or Grandmother's and we'd all sit and sip iced water or tea or soda, sit in the shade and work and talk.  No one ever left a house empty handed either.  There was always a 'mess' of beans or something to carry home.  After all a worker deserved his reward.

While I relate this I am nostalgic. Summer does make me think of gardens and fruitfulness and good things from the past.  Not just food, but time with Granny or Grandmother and Big Mama, of family coming by to visit.  I miss the velvety summer nights and the aroma of the scorched grass coming in the windows each evening which grew stronger as the dew fell on it.  I miss the hot sticky nights and the cool mornings that dawned fresh and sweet as this morning did.  I miss the people that occupied my past.  Now I am the Gramma and the memories are my responsibility to make.

I've been thinking a lot about this.  John and I differ a good bit.  He's more of the mind that grandkids are great on occasion but he and I don't agree on the frequency of visits.  I think once or twice a week is about right with the occasional baby sitting when necessary.  He thinks once a month is better.  I say the years go by really fast and we've learned the hard way that they cannot be recaptured later.  Distance prevented my knowing the four in North Dakota and the three in South Georgia or Florida or wherever my son's children now live now.  

There's Josh and Isaac and Millie just over the field and while I am not the every day any hour of the day sort of Gramma,   I want very much to see more of them.   Taylor  is here only a couple of hours every other week.  Keeping Caleb reminds me of what I've missed, though I was privileged to have Josh for six weeks one summer and later Josh and Isaac  here full time while Josh was still a baby.  It was hard but a sweet and lovely time, too, a time in my life I'll never regret, even with all the difficulties our family was facing during those days.

Well, one can't go back and one must live with one's husband.  I listen to his concerns and try to honor them but also insist upon a compromise between us.  I don't know how long I have to create memories with these children.  It would be wonderful to live into my most senior years as Granny and Big Mama did and to see my grandchildren's grandchildren but there's no way of knowing if I shall...It's important to me that I at least honor my own convictions.

I have been reading The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd.  It's a very good book and one of those that inspires me, because the words are strung together so beautifully.  Some books are just that way.  They satisfy something deeper within, calling it forth and touch your forever.  There area books so lyrical your spirit sings along with them as you read.  And yet I've found, to my disappointment, that another book by the same author may never ring with the same frequency and speaks nothing to the soul at all.    

I've read the book before. I must have loaned it out and not gotten it back , but I decided earlier this year that I'd read it again and so I bought it through ThriftBooks.com     I'd stumbled upon another book I wanted and put it on my list on the site and this past week they contacted me to say they had a copy of it.  I've been getting the occasional book for the Kindle, though I must by necessity read those less intensely than I do a printed book.

Today was my last day to keep Caleb.  I've spent two weeks with that little fellow and enjoyed it immensely even the one afternoon he was fiercely obstinate about sleeping and miserable.  He's a good baby, sweet and amendable, and I've enjoyed getting to know him more intimately.  Bess too enjoyed her days with him.  I cannot say I regret that time I spent with him, but I am mindful that there is good reason for young people to have young children and equally as important that old people not!  There was not much left in me at the end of the day and some mornings it was hard to come out of the bed but unfailingly Caleb was a happy little fellow and brightened my days.

Now Gramma takes over in another form.  She's watching River and the chickens for a day or two...I warrant they'll be a lot easier on a Gramma!

So here I am once again with time on my hands, sigh.

No regrets mind you.  There's a project list a yard long and jobs aplenty to be attended to.  Mama will appreciate a visit or two a month once more.  Josh and Taylor (her kindergarten year) start school in about a week.  I hope to get Isaac a morning a week and visit with Millie here and there.  I want to try my best to get a rose bush or two and some fall garden seeds planted.   There's a porch floor to paint and railings to clean (back porch) and railings to paint (front porch).   There's fall cleaning to begin because it is nearly the end of July and it takes time to get quilts aired and freshened and walls cleaned and such if one is not to work themselves to death doing it.  So yes, there is plenty to be done.  And it's just hot enough that I shall take these matters in small bites and get them done in increments.

Well, its a brief chat but I confess I'm bleary eyed with tiredness.  I shall end here and wish you all a pleasant summer evening ahead...and I promise we shall gather here in a week or so and have another chat together.