Gumbo

My garden happened to succeed this year, and we have an absolute bumper crop of okra. The plants are ridiculously huge, the stalks several inches in diameter and the tops waving way past our heads. A lot of it has gone to waste because I hate the scratchy prickliness of the plants that leaves you itching for a good fifteen minutes post-pick, but we have certainly eaten our fill. I have fried it, stewed it, cooked it with tomatoes, pickled it and put a ton in the freezer for future pots of gumbo.

I was not introduced to gumbo until I came to the South. You poor, poor northerners have no idea what you're missing! It's right up there with cheese grits, crawfish and boiled peanuts. OK, some may argue about boiled peanuts making that list, but I like them. At any rate, you can't beat a good bowl of gumbo. Jason's mom makes it every year at Christmas, our old neighbors cooked up a pot before a football game, every respectable seafood joint boasts some version. The best kind is the kind you can't see through. Yes, the worse it looks, the better it tastes, my friends. There now, doesn't that look appetizing? If only your monitor were scratch-n-sniff!

Cook up some fluffy white riceand eat up!
The funny-looking green stuff in there is the okra.

This is the year...

for a successful garden. I claim it!! After years of gardening failure, I am proud to announce that I have had a successful season of English peas, which are already done and gone, and now green beans, potatoes, zipper peas...

and okra!! And this is just the back garden. The front garden is doing its part to maintain my reputation as a vegetable killer. There zucchini, summer squash, bell peppers, tomatoes, pumpkins and butternut squash are struggling to survive.

Backyard Citrus

The satsuma trees are loaded again this year, and the ripening fruit is getting sweeter every day! Satsumas in the fall are our climate's peace offering for the grueling summer heat.
Helen loves them so much, she can eat at least two in one sitting. She peels them herself. Here she made sound effects as she threw the peels onto the ground.

A New Crop

This week Jason has been helping a friend plant sugarcane.

Acres and acres of cane.

The planting crew likes to start at 6 am, and it's all planted by hand.

Jay brought some home to plant. Why not experiment? We need something more interesting than a dead hydrangea in this bed.
This is the cane.

This is the joint of the cane.

This is the new root growth from the joint of the cane.

Helen sucked on a piece of peeled cane, which kept her busy all evening. I had visions of her impaling her pharynx. You know...don't run with a sucker in your mouth...don't run with a scissors...don't walk around and go up and down stairs with sugar cane in your mouth.

This cane is supposed to get very, very tall, so Helen will have an unending supply of the sweet treat.

Free Lunch

I think that my garden has an invisible sign that welcomes all wildlife to come and taste thereof. My one lone canteloupe that withstood my bad gardening habits met an untimely end and became a gourmet meal for something with a small mouth. It was nibbled perfectly in half. I suppose I could play CSI and take a bite mold. Ha. CSI:Garden of Desolation. I had such high hopes for my garden. Unfortunately, earlier this year when I planted 3 rows of beans and 3 rows of zipper peas, I planted them too deep, and only a quarter-row of beans came up and 3 pea plants raised timid heads. Our tomato plant is doing all right, but everything else is merely half-hearted.
I spent some therapeutic time in the kitchen yesterday, baking whole wheat bread, banana bread and veggie pie. I even snipped fresh herbs into my pie dough--thyme, to be exact. I diced all my vegetables, cut up some more fresh herbs--thyme, rosemary, sage--and cooked it all up with a Parmesan sauce. It's a surefire way to get Owen to eat his vegetables. (In a pie, go figure. With a cup of sweet tea, too.) Is this like adding applesauce to cookie dough and calling it a serving of fruit?




The "GVP" on the crust stands for what else but Garden Vegetable Pie. Yummy. After sharing it with the in-laws for lunch today, it is gonzo.

Life on the Back Porch

Along with some great vegetables, I nabbed these flowers from my mother in law's garden while they were away. (With prior permission/suggestion/request from her.) I have always loved zinnias. They are such friendly flowers. And they're easy to arrange.









The other afternoon, Owen was doing his best to get the kitty, who was doing her best to hide from his clutches. It is amazing to me how the cats let Owen haul them around, not even giving him a warning scratch. He will carry them in various backwards and upside down positions, almost squeezing the life out of them. When he finally gets one, he climbs up into a chair and holds it tightly--Owen gleeful, cat quietly panicked. They've learned to stay away from him now.














By the way, this sweet little thing needs a home. She is learning to catch live things and turn them into dead things. (That's a good thing if you live in the country.) Can you mail a cat?















I was so sweetly touched when I saw Owen's treasures in the trunk of his car--two withered petunia blossoms. (Never mind the fact that I have been working with him NOT to pick flowers.) He saw me picking some zinnias and some hydrangeas and talking about how pretty they were. I'm glad he appreciates them, but we can't just go around picking any flowers we like now, can we? If I did that, I'd be in serious trouble with the city.















And the other day, I saw a butterfly resting on the outdoor tile. I wonder if it had seen better days? It had some apparent battle wounds. (Maybe it met up with the kitty?) I saw the butterfly again today, or maybe it was another one, and I saw the kitten scoping it out. I held my breath as the cat pounced--I didn't want to witness the murder of a butterfly--but fortunately the butterfly was quick enough to save its own life.

A new favorite place

This week has marked the beginning of the wheat harvest-- an exciting, adrenaline-pumping, work-like-a-slave season in farming life--the harvest boogie. It's the time of year when tailgate suppers are standard occasions and take-it-with-you meals are extremely necessary. Living on the farm has made a night-and-day difference for me during this time (or like some silly blonde on a recent infomercial for Hip Hop Abs said, "what a 160-degree turn!") When you don't see your husband from dawn until after dusk 6 days a week, and the children are your responsibility that whole time, things can get ugly. Here on the farm, we see daddy several times a day, and we can help run meals to the field more often. It's much more conducive to family life. I guess I had to suffer through 6 years of being farm widow to truly appreciate living out here.

Jason remembers that getting a combine ride, as a kid, was a paramount event. Owen now has the same experience. The past few days, all he can talk about is "ahma-how" (Grandma's house) and the combine, his two favorite places.

I took Owen to get a ride and snapped a few pictures. I also did a mini-harvest with my scissors. I wanted some new wheat for display in my house, plus some for my friend and fabulous hair dresser, Angelique, since she had admired mine last fall. I did another mini-harvest Saturday from a different variety of wheat--a bearded kind. I think it is all so pretty, the hanging head stuff too. I love to use it when I decorate the communion tables at church.

On another note, if you desire an extreme work-out, and the flaky advertising for Hip Hop Abs turns you off, just grab an old-fashioned hedge clippers and head for your lawn. Our giant shrubs called my name yesterday, and I wanted to surprise Jason, so I went to it. I hadn't done much bush trimming until then, but I can safely say that now I have been introduced. Jason found me after a bit, and offered to sharpen the giant scissors. By the way, he was delighted that I took such initiative. I took him up on that kind deed, and it made it a lot better. My mother in law offered her electric hedge trimmers, but seeing how my inexperience could quickly do a lot of damage to a bush, I passed. Plus, she was using it earlier this week and sacrificed a slice of finger, and I'm a little squeamish and didn't want the same to happen to me. So I whacked some serious bush toosh with my handheld operation. And now my arms are so sore I can barely hold my babies! Plus my poor hands are a bit bruised. One more thing about hedge trimming--it's probably safe to say that pruning holly bushes would NOT be an activity of choice at a nudist colony.

Aquarium Gravel: Reloaded

Our house must contain a bad aura for anything that breathes with gills. Dorothy won an all-expenses-paid trip not down the yellow brick road, but down the vortex of terror. Did you know that dead fish don't float immediately? It takes about half a day. (Or maybe she was just mostly dead.)

I used the aquarium gravel to decorate my new little corner of happiness. I created a little fairy garden on my back porch with some tiny little pots I had been saving for just such a moment as this. Check out the bird bath! It all started with my captivation with the miniature gardens decorating the tables at my brother's wedding. (I wasn't the only one staring at them with my eyes and mouth wide open, grinning like a fool over their cuteness.) I succombed to their allure, and was so excited to take one home with me. Jason, however, was not delighted. Boys just don't understand. He didn't see a magical little sanctuary that we had to have; instead, he saw the logistics of traveling back down South with a long box full of dirt in the back seat of his precious clean car. (HINT: If you really want to get under Jason's skin, just drop a gum wrapper, a hair, or a grain of invisible sand on the floorboards of his car while he is watching.) Fortunately, love and genuine service won out and I got my fairy garden. Unfortunately, the moss and all the flowers died soon after I got it home, and then the whole thing got stored in various outside storage places, and it still is the target of my husband's ridicule. We both laugh now. But now I have my very own fairy garden, destined to survive because the plants in it don't need water very often.

Mother's Day is a very special day for me. Jason and the kids surprised my socks off with a substantial amount of money for new clothes. I had been telling Jason that I had nothing to wear, and after trying to help me pick out an outfit for church last Sunday, he believed me.

I tried to get a cute picture of the kids before church, but both were rather cranky and had no patience for the camera. Oh well, gotta love 'em anyway!