Over the Fence: Mid-October

How about a morning playlist?  I've been especially enjoying the videos of music that Jake Westbrook posts.  He has the loveliest vintage ads included on the screens of each.  This particular playlist is called "Morning Coffee".   Two songs that I love are the very first one by Bing Crosby which is just cozy and heart warming as can be and a peppy one a little further on called "Java Jive".  I like that one so well that John and I both tend to sing it when we're working about the house!

Hello there dears...Yes, I do realize it's really past the mid-point of October but never mind.  I have been up each morning well before dawn and have watched the gentle awakening of each day.  I can tell the moment the natural life around us wakes to the second because the dogs suddenly go nuts barking every morning.  I am sure it's because deer and squirrel and birds begin to rustle about in the dry fallen leaves and mice start scurrying about, and rabbits, too.  The dogs stop barking shortly after the world is alight and then they simply dash repeatedly into the woods or down the yard.  The deer no longer cause them to bark like idiots.  They reserve that for strange dogs and neighbor's cats who find our grounds better hunting than their own.  The deer and squirrels just generate the mad dashes now.  It's as though, in the dogs' minds at least, they don't count as highly on the danger list as the stranger pets that come to hunt or sniff about and leave their lingering scents in place of their own.  

Each morning the sunlight comes over the top of the trees golden and rich and shines through the leaves of the Faith tree giving that tree a golden glow as well.  The air looks heavy and palatable, not ethereal as it might in other seasons.  I often think should I wander outdoors I could reach out my hand and take a handful of it from the atmosphere, it seems to have that much body to it when viewed from the warm corner of the kitchen sitting.  

I don't go outdoors, though.  I don't want my illusions shattered, no more than I want to give up the warm corner and the heat of the mug in my hand.   I like sitting there with my thoughts wrapped about me like the sweater I wear each morning now and contemplate the tree and the sparkling lawn and the sky and nothing more.  It's restful and peaceful, and for a moment of time, perfect.

When Caleb arrives the house sort of explodes.  He runs into the day each morning, feet pounding on the floors and toys begin to appear in the kitchen as he waits for me to make breakfast.  This morning we had a new to me recipe of baked oatmeal and that is something I'll very likely make again.  Next time perhaps in a muffin tin so we'll have individual servings.  It's super simple to make:

Maple Baked Oatmeal

2 cups old fashioned rolled oats

1 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

2 tbsps. brown sugar

1 tsp cinnamon

Mix these dry ingredients together then pour them evenly into an 8x8 square pan.

2 cups milk

1/4 cup melted salted butter

1 egg

1/4 cup maple syrup

Mix the wet ingredients well and pour gently over the oats.  Shake the pan slightly to insure the wet goes all the way to the bottom of the pan.  I had absolutely no issue with this in pouring but it's part of the instructions.

Bake at 350F for 40 minutes until golden brown.  Let rest 5 minutes then cut into squares and serve with your choice of fruit or toppings.

Confession: I absolutely forgot the maple syrup when mixing up my oatmeal and didn't even think of it until I was just about to remove it from the oven.  I poured the 1/4 cup directly over the top of the warm oatmeal and let it seep into the warm oatmeal which it did quite nicely, not even leaving a sticky residue behind.  This was good, truly.   It was yummy and delicious.  That 8x8 pan is easily enough for 4 generous servings.   I've enough leftovers to serve us another morning, perhaps over the weekend before church.  

Cinnamon is one of my favorite fall flavor profiles.  Not for me pumpkin spice this or that.  I reserve pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving and perhaps for Christmas, not for any other time of the year.   But give me cinnamon, ginger, cloves, allspice and nutmeg this time of year, all the flavors that pumpkin pie spice incorporates and individually they floor me.  Nutmeg warms the Nut breads and cheese sauces and allspice marries with beef to deepen and enrich the hearty flavor.  Ginger and cloves make spicy gingerbread sing with a warmth that never disappears.  And cinnamon will happily go into the flour before it coats chicken to be fried or combines with coffee and milk for a special autumn afternoon cuppa, as well as upon toast with sugar to go with tea.  

An impromptu thing happened last Friday night at the coffee house.  The small group leader spoke to the room of mostly women and said, "I'm told ALL women like pumpkin pie spice everything so I got..."  He was shouted down by every woman saying "Not me!  I don't like the stuff..."  And then one lone male voice spoke up and said quietly, "I like it...." lol.  Guess who was gifted with the pumpkin spice items to carry home that evening after the performances were over?

I don't think I've shared about that small group meeting.  We had a fellow group member play the harp, which I've never heard in real life.  She's an accomplished musician but newish to the harp.  Well I could hear the hesitancy as she played notes and checked keys but it was still lovely and beautiful.  As John told her last month when she was wondering if anyone would enjoy her playing, "If you just strum the strings playing scales no one will ever know you weren't playing a song.  They'll all just be impressed that you play the harp."   

The other performer was a young man with an awesome testimony of healing who had performed with several of our group members in small theatre.  I daresay he sang as well as any Broadway actor.  His voice was strong and clear and pleasant.  He sang some hymns but also a few songs from roles he'd played, such as "On the Street Where You Live".    

And to add to the atmosphere a woman who is an artist had set up paintings to display.  I wandered around and looked at several but one just stopped me right in my tracks.  It wasn't that it was especially beautiful, though it was a lovely painting.  It was that the scene she'd displayed brought to mind my old childhood church, the simple country  one I attended for 32 years of my life.   Every third Sunday if the weather was pleasant outdoors, boards were set up on trestles built into the ground and  we had 'Dinner on the grounds' under the big old oak trees on the property.

This scene was similar in that there were big oak trees, albeit moss strewn and the trestles that were erected to stand year round.   In her portrait this was set up near a lake...so no, not exactly as my own church but landscape was so evocative that I could see the older widowed women who attended service.  Miss Callie with her beautiful white head of hair that curled softly about her face.  Mrs. Waters with her long earlobes and heavy earbobs resting upon them.  Aunt Ruth with that tightly drawn up topknot of grey hair and the plump stomach she couldn't hide in her simple dresses.   Others too came to mind but those three stand out especially clear.   

And I can't remember the dinners without remembering the foods.  Granny always brought fried chicken, pimento cheese sandwiches with the crusts cut off the edges and the sandwiches cut into neat little halves.  Fresh butter beans, a plate of homemade biscuits and potato salad.  Desserts varied with the seasons but the rest of the menu did not.   Mrs. Greene, whose husband and sons farmed thousands of acres, arrived in the autumn with fresh homemade sausage and biscuits.  Mrs. Waters always brought a Strawberry cake, so beautifully moist and pink.   Mama changed her menu according to her whim, always a new recipe.  I can't remember what Aunt Ruth and Miss Callie brought but no one ever came empty handed.   There were almost always pineapple sandwiches and casseroles and green beans and really far too much food, yet little food went home with anyone in the end.  Everyone ate heartily.

And in those days, though a child, I had jobs to do after church.  It was my job to count how many folks we had, to roll plastic forks into napkins, to put the ice in glasses and dip the sweet tea into the cups.   There was no place to be seated after and people stood near one end of the table or around the tailgate of a pickup truck that had been pulled close.  Children piled upon the steps and sat on the chilly concrete.  Plates that were too full balanced carefully upon one hand while the other juggled tea glass and fork.

Often in the autumn months we were constantly pulling falling leaves off the serving dishes of food and the air about us would be cool while the sun was warming.  In winter and rainy seasons we'd eat indoors but those days outdoors eating in the fresh air, especially in autumn, were wonderful.

So I stood staring at that landscape on Friday night and told the woman, despite the price tag, "I want this one..."  She said "It's been sold..." and I guess the dismay in my face, which I felt deep in my soul, bothered her because she said "I can make another one like it though...It might not be exact but it will be yours."  And just like that I commissioned a piece of art not because it would have great value one day or because it was so beautiful it took my breath away but simply because I had stepped from one moment into one far in my past, that more innocent and simple time we all spend a lifetime yearning for once it's gone.  I hesitantly told John, "I agreed to buy a painting this evening..." and God bless him he didn't blink twice.  "Okay."  I explained to him briefly, less in detail than I've told you, why I had to have it and then he said "Well I'm glad you went ahead and got it."

I was sitting thinking a moment ago of the perfect autumn days behind me.  Do you know what I consider one of my most special autumn memories?  We'd gone to Macon to visit Amie and  her family.  The leaves were all on the ground and the afternoon sunny and warm.   Josie took John by the finger and said "Come" and she pulled him to the door.   They went outside and walked up and down the sidewalks of the apartment complex.  I followed and at one point, Josie began scuffling her feet through the leaves and I followed her example remembering the sheer joy of hearing the leaves crackle and crunch and their lightness and the spicy, sort of dusty aroma remembered from my own childhood days amplified my pleasure in that moment.  Josie and John were walking ahead of me and she turned to me with her eyes shining bright and smiled as if to acknowledge that we were sharing something momentous, a connection that went beyond her age of three and mine of 45.  The sun shone down upon her shining hair and her face was filled with joy.  

Seventeen years ago...and now that little girl is expecting a little girl of her own next month.  I shall be a great grandmother...  Mama called last night to say "Doesn't it make you feel old?"  Well no, it doesn't.  It feels right.  It's that multi-generational thing that I've known all my life.  When I had Amie, I had two great grandmothers and a great great aunt living as well as my grandmothers.  I saw the connection of the lineage of us all in a tangible way when I looked behind at my daughter and ahead to my great grandmothers, who were now great great grandmothers.  There was something very blessed and very right about it and that's just how I feel now, as well.   

Even though I may never meet this little girl, I hope that Josie feels that same powerful lineage of women ahead of her and passes that sense of strength and blessing on to her daughter.  I hope that when, in some 20 odd years, this little girl has her own first daughter, I'll still be here in spirit if not in fact.

Do you know what I miss having?  A camera.  I had two cameras there for quite a while and I really enjoyed using them.  I've never been as quick to frame and take a good shot as Katie but every now and then I got some good photos.  I made up a booklet of family photos for Mama one Christmas and a calendar of some of my photos taken about the home.  I came across that calendar the other day as I was digging for cardstock and I realized that I keenly miss a real camera.  I'm not good enough to want anything pricey, but I'd certainly like to buy myself another one in the near future.  Say what we will, the phone takes great photos, but somehow holding a real camera in your hand makes you take time to stop and think about light and color and composition more than a phone does.

I'm always at a loss as to what to do with the hundreds of photos I have on my computer now, uploaded from digital copies.  My internet cloud tells me that I have no space left.  It reminds me every day that I have no space and urges me to buy more.  I went through my photos recently and deleted hundreds of poorly lit, over exposed, badly composed shots.  I still have no extra space.  I'd had flash drives with photos on them, not realizing that they often get corrupted after 5 years as do SD cards.  I don't even know how many photos I've actually lost due to corrupted drives and cards.  I have boxes of photos sitting in a cabinet.  I shared hundreds of those with the children ages ago, creating piles of multiples of prints for each one.  I passed them on to them, so they'd too have a record of past holidays, of their childhoods.  That was something I don't have, is photos of my childhood.  There are, somewhere at the house in town, loads of photos that I was never allowed to see or look through in my lifetime.  Mama refused to let anyone see them.  Truthfully, I have no great attachment to photos even with all the hundreds that I have in my possession because my family was always so adamant that no one should see them. 

Their attitude is hard to explain.   Yet over the years, I've come into possession of Grandmother's few, and some of the oldest of Granny's, a few from Daddy and a few more from his sister.  Most of the photographs mean nothing to me.  Grandmother was good about notating on the back of the pictures who they were and ages and sometimes dates, but others I have no clue.  Are they my relatives or my aunt's in-laws?  Is that my cousin or someone I likely never knew or would have known?  Is this one a former neighbor?  I've no clue.

I have taken a few of the older photos and copied them to put with genealogy pages.  I think there should be a visual record of those who have left one behind, if I know for sure that they fit.  But there are others that don't fit my direct line that I'd like to post online for those who are part of that direct line.  It's one of my genealogy goals.  

As for my own photos, I circle back to say that I really don't know what to do with all the photos I have.  I'm not a scrapbook maker and never wanted to be.  I don't keep photo albums because they tend to just fall apart.  I've tried dozens of storage ideas and in the end came back around to what Granny used: a shoe box.  It works as well as anything I've used thus far and all the photos fit in ust fine.  I've given my children all that I think they will ever want though likely the actual photos will remain here for them to plunder through or toss as they choose when I am long gone.  

The digital ones would cost fortunes to print out and many of those are copies of ones the children sent anyway so they shall not want them.  Besides they'll probably never access them though Katie and Bess are both aware of how to get into my email account.    I wonder at times if my lack of attachment to the photographs overall is unusual or simply a trait that some others share.  For all that I keep them all, I have no real hard attachment to them and don't really consider myself as owning them even.  Is that strange?  Do any of you feel the same?

This is our first autumn without the female persimmon at the back corner of the house.  It's been the most peaceful autumn we've had thus far.  In the past the deer, raccoons, possums and skunks and rats and mice all came to feast on the ripened fruit that had fallen to the ground.  Wild persimmons are edible but in my mind hardly worth the effort.  Each small fruit is about the size of those coconut bonbons we used to buy at confectionary counters.  And in that small ball are 3-5 good sized seeds.  Consider the seeds similar in shape to Mango seeds and proportional in size to the persimmon fruit.  They are so astringent that the flesh of the fruit made the mouth have a wrong side in sort of feel.   Despite this, the wild creatures love the fruits especially when they've begun to ferment.   It's not at all uncommon to find a critter staggering drunkenly about after eating fermenting persimmons.

The fruit drew in the wildlife and the dogs were exhausted running them away from the house.  Those deer that warrant no barking at all when seen down the hill a little ways were a whole different matter when they are standing at the back corner of the house munching persimmons.   Last year, because the tree had gotten so big that it had begun to crowd the Sweet Gum and grow in towards the house, John and Chad cut the tree down.  I haven't missed it but I did wonder where the bees carried the pollen of the Faith tree after that tree was removed.  The Faith Tree is a male persimmon and flowers each spring but has no fruit.  The bees would gather pollen from the Faith Tree and take it around to other trees.  I suppose there are others here on the property somewhere.  It would be odd were there not.  I remember persimmon trees here my whole life long.  So I'm sure the bees managed to find something to pollinate.  

And in the meantime, aside from that early morning ruckus, we have had the most peaceful autumn nights we've had since we moved here 25 years ago!

I've just finished scanning our local paper.  There's not much to it, as a rule, but it is the legal organ for the county and the only remaining paper published in the county area.  I was reading a letter sent to the editor by the former Fire Chief of the Volunteer Fire Department.  It's remarkable in this way: the man mentions things like Integrity, Moral Character, Personal Standards and Values.  

This very sort of subject has come up two or three times now between John and I, on other blogs, in personal conversations with others.  And it's made me think of something Granny said a long time ago which I never understood until I found myself in a position where my own reputation had suffered from my own actions and behaviors "Once you lose your good name it's hard to get it back."   

In my childhood I had no idea of what Granny was talking.  I'm sorry to say that even in my adult years I hadn't any idea either.  'Good name' was just words that she spoke.  But once I'd stumbled hard and my reputation was up before the general public, I knew exactly what my Granny meant.  It took quite a few years to mend my tarnished reputation and it made me very mindful to this day that how we act, how others see us act is very important indeed.    Shortly after I'd begun the mending process a business entity banked on my reputation to gain them favor in their business dealings with my employer.  I was offered an incentive for insuring that they received jobs.   

My personal reputation was tarnished but my professional one was intact and remained so.  I quietly told the man making the offer that I'd be glad to put his name before our board but I would NOT in any way influence their decision nor try to.  I wasn't angry or horrified.  I said what I said humbly enough and I guess it was impactful because shortly thereafter I received a second phone call and an apology from the same man.  

Now the truth told, I was in a tough financial situation and monetary 'help' wouldn't have come amiss in my life.  But I just couldn't bring myself to stoop to that level.  I wonder often enough if I hadn't already left my personal reputation in a tattered state if I'd have been more tempted but I don't think I would have.  But I felt the truth of Granny's words for quite a long time and I've never been the least bit tempted to lose my 'good name' since then.

I told my children as they were growing up when moral issues arose and they took a stand that often cost them friends or a job or an opportunity that sometimes the only satisfaction you're going to get from doing the right thing is knowing you did the right thing.  You won't see a tangible reward but you'll feel it and that's what counts in the end.   That's pretty much what this fire chief is saying in his letter.  He's tendered his resignation to the county but he leaves knowing he did the right thing.  And these days it's darned impressive to see people choosing to do the right thing, even though it costs them to do so.   I'm impressed.  I truly am.  Those are old fashioned values he's talking about and frankly we could use more folks stepping up and displaying such.  It makes me wonder if they are as uncommon as we've been led to believe.

Well dears, it's been lovely to chat but it's time I got back to my household.  Talk to you again soon!