Garden Friends and Memories

 

It is a cloudy, humid and drizzly Sunday here on the mountain. O Wise One and I listened to church this morning on the radio and then went out and just tinkered in the yard a bit enjoying being together. I picked some squash to cook for lunch in a skillet with bacon and onions and made a stuffed pepper casserole with ground beef, peppers, onions, rice and tomato sauce. Kind of like stuffed peppers just not stuffed. 

While we were walking around outside I walked a baby duck that I am hand raising. O Wise One accidentally got a duck egg in with the eggs that he sat under the hen. It hatched but the hen rejected it rather violently so I guess I am now the mama duck. It's a tiny little thing just 2 days old but is doing good but has definitely bonded to me. So I now do a walk around outside in the sunshine and grass to walk my duck. I am hoping as it becomes a juvenile the duck flock will easily accept her/him into the fold and relieve me of my duties. But for now I am hoping it is another little hen for my flock and have named her Tiddly Winks. I have a feeling she will grow up to be quite the pest. 

While we were out we picked up plums again. That has become a daily thing. As I stood under the tree with my butt in the air picking up fruit a car pulled up to the fence with an elderly man and his wife in it. They were coming back from church and asked if they could have a hand full of plums to eat. As they stood there eating plums at the fence they began reminiscing of his childhood days and foraging these small yellow native plums for his mother and grandmother to make jam with. It was funny because I also shared my memories as a child of sneaking regularly to the front pastures of my childhood home in Louisiana and climbing up into the plum trees of a thicket of the same native plums and eating myself sick on them. My mother made a thick and sweet golden jam from them that was absolutely delicious.  

As we four old people stood at my fence line on a backwoods country road swapping stories of foraging for fruit as children, plum juice was dripping off our elbows as we all snacked on plums and took a trip back in time. It amazes me how the gardens, plants and fruits so often remind our generation of home.  A generation of agrarian based lives with our parents working the land. I do find it sad that so many children now miss those experiences. They will never know the hot summer days of picking wild blackberries on back pasture fences. Catching mosquito hawks just to see if you could. Fingers stained black and anticipating the cobbler mama would make that night. Made all those chigger bites worth while. 

Or picking wild huckleberries in the woods of Mississippi at my grandparents house for those same huckleberry pies my grandma was known for. Gathering wild mayhaws in the low lying areas on the back of my parent farm back by the swamps. Sometimes having to go by the small pirogue that we kept back there for getting back in the swamp which is where they loved to grow. Had to keep a close eye out for the cotton mouths but that heavenly mayhaw jelly is the stuff of southern legend.  A big homemade biscuit slathered with real butter and mayhaw jelly would make anyone a fan of that illusive fruit so rarely even heard of anymore. 

And we can't forget gathering the muscadines that grew overhead. My brother would climb those trees like a monkey and shake those vines. Many times they would fall into the water and again we would take the boat and gather them off the top of the water. They loved to grow down along the river at the back of the property. 

In those days summers for me were spent helping gather in the garden or foraging for fruit interspersed with swimming in the creek and fishing, helping get the hay in during season, and helping process honey from the bees. But more than anything helping babysit the younger kids and that never ending string of diapers and shelling beans or chopping vegetable to help mama with the constant canning. With 5 kids to feed those gardens were huge and those rows seemed endless. Long days turned into weeks and months of back breaking picking and canning.

The one thing I will say is that I will admit I had never in my entire childhood went to bed hungry. And oh the life skills I learned along the way. 

My hair is now completely gray and my children grown. Even some of my grandchildren are grown and it would not surprise me to hear of greats on the way soon. But I still am walking the garden. Not too old yet to eat plums and visit over the fence with strangers with a baby duck in my pocket. Let's not forget the duck. 

So I am feeling blessed on this lazy Sunday afternoon. God is good. 

I am wishing you all juicy plums and fuzzy baby ducks in your future. 

Blessings from The Holler

The Canned Quilter

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