Decorating for Christmas

I hear so many people saying right after Thanksgiving “Why are people decorating so early for Christmas?” Now that I am getting older, I begin to understand why. When you reach 50, it seems like Christmas starts coming every three months because time is passing so fast. It’s almost like if we don’t catch it when it comes by, we will miss it all together.

I have always loved Christmas. I love the color. I love the ceremony. I love the festivities I love  the celebration. I never understood the people who were too busy to savor it. I do understand how working parents are stressed. I remember the days of hunting that one certain most popular of the season toy. That was when I wished there really was a Santa Claus so he could do all the looking for the Cabbage Patch doll. 

Now that the children are grown and gone, I enjoy the season more. I still decorate like there are toddlers all over the place. I didn’t realize what a repertoire of decorations I had accumulated over the years until I went into the attic and started looking for them. I found things I had forgotten about and things I swear, I never saw before.

I went to a big warehouse sale this year and got carried away with the bargains. I got things I still have to figure out where to use. Some of them I just passed on to others in hopes that they could figure out where to put them. I got 2 glitter covered twig wreaths that were marked $70 retail for $5 each. I had a hard time fitting them into my red, green and gold color scheme, but I finally figured out how to do it. I added a small glazed fruit and greens swag to the top half of them and tied it with the ribbons that made them match with everything else (which I also got at the sale).

I am not a hanger of outdoor lights. I am pretty clumsy with a ladder and can’t risk ruining my holiday with a sprained ankle or worse. I just festoon the door and its surroundings. I use lots of ribbons and color in my swage. The swags around the door are not as elaborate as last year, because it was too heavy and kept falling on my guests as they entered. That is not a good way to say “good will to men”.
I am a true southerner in that I like sparkle and slightly gaudy. Rural Southwest Alabama is in the heart of Dixie, and we keep Dixie in our hearts. We know we are different from the rest of the nation because we like more glamour and noise in our Christmas. There is nothing puritanical about our decorating = our politics maybe, but not our decorations. We are the colorful birds of plumage in our Christmas sweaters and our holiday decorations. As for myself, I love a glittery mantle. Since all my chimneys were knocked down when they finished the second story of my house, none of the mantles are functional. Therefore, I don’t have to worry about catching the house on fire from the greenery on the mantles. I don’t use real greenery, anyway, because I leave it up so long. It would be dead as a doornail by New Years.

I always leave my decorations up until January 6th. Somewhere in my ancestry there were Anglicans who celebrated Epiphany and early settlers who came down the Federal Road who called it “Old Christmas”. There must have been some Druids way up the line, too, because I am crazy about greenery. I do have some that is read, because nowhere else can you get that smell, but from real cedar? I left two bowls on the dining room mantle to be filled with holly and cedar. They’ll have to be fresh when company’s coming. I plan to have lots of company this holiday season. But I want it in small groups so we can sit and catch up on our visiting. I don’t plan to have a soirée’ that keeps me hopping too much to have fun at my own party! I consider (like the rest of the South) where 3 or more or gathered – it’s a party.

Dressing or Stuffing?

Since holiday time is arriving, the one thing we see the most of, no matter what else is on the menu is dressing. At least that’s what we call it in the South. On television, they call it stuffing. I guess that’s because they stuff the turkey with it. I can’t imagine anything worse than soggy bread crumbs flavored with sage stuffed up a turkey’s behind. That is what stuffing looks like to me. In rural Southwest Alabama, we make dressing instead. I don’t know why we call it dressing. It must be an ancestral thing. We’ve just always called it that. My Uncle Daddy, who came originally from Ohio called it pudding the first time he saw it. He was used to the soggy bread crumb stuff, so when he saw the nicely browned pan of cornbread dressing, he thought it was some kind of savory bread pudding. I guess by definition, that is what it is. We first cook a pan of cornbread, and then we crumble it up. We add lots of celery, onions, (and a little bell pepper, if we are so inclined), cover it with rich well seasoned broth We may then add some bread or biscuit to give it more body and bind it with eggs. We chop the aforementioned vegetables fine. We may put them in raw or we may sauté them in butter. I prefer to sauté them in butter, the way my friend Patsy taught me. I remember reading in one of Paul Prudhomme’s cookbooks that sautéing the vegetables gives more definition to the flavor for most dishes. I know that is true of dressing.

One thing that I find totally amazing is how legions of people can take the same recipe and it will taste entirely different from one cook to the next. Dressing is the most outstanding example of this. The dressing that my two grandmothers made was made identically in process, but tasted like two different recipes. Both were good, but nothing alike.

I guess that dressing is my favorite food of all time. I used to work with senior citizens and each of the 17 groups would have a Thanksgiving dinner every year. I had dressing 17 times, plus the family gatherings. I never got tired of it. We had it again at our holiday banquet. Nobody complained about too much dressing.

Stuffing just can’t hold a candle to dressing. The only really delicious stuffing I ever had was some made by my neighbor from Wisconsin when she roasted a chicken. It had toasted bread cubes, onions, celery and walnuts. I wasn’t expecting much, but it was good. It was not stuffed up the chicken’s behind. It was fixed on the stove in a pan. It was not the least bit soggy and not overly sagey, but it still wasn’t southern dressing.

I think the thing that makes dressing so good is the cornbread base. When the vegetables are added, they just seem to disappear into the dressing. The cornbread binds them together. The dish just seems to undergo some kind of alchemy that make the whole greater than the sum of its parts. Dressing does one thing. The turkey may not be stuffed, but the diners are. Maybe a better way to put it is that we are happily replete. Dressing is one of those comfort foods that we can never get enough of. We don’t have to wait for a turkey to stuff. We can get dressing any time. We eat it all year around, but we love it most during the holidays. We’re about to begin the feasting time of the year. Gentlemen, start your ovens! We’re off the a race through the holidays with a pan of dressing on every table.

How to Spend a Holiday in September

Sometimes you just need a day with nobody in it. You just need to walk around in your nightgown all day long wearing no makeup and shoes. There needs to be a day when nobody is coming over, you are not going anywhere and haven’t racked up a list of chores to do. This is one of those days. The weather is cool and pleasant enough to just sit on the front porch. The noisy neighbors are not running their lawn equipment. The cat finally got off my lap and found her own chair. I have been perusing the stack of magazines that have accumulated since my last porch sit.

Some people like to sleep late on a holiday. Maybe I used to, but o have learned that the best part of the day comes early. I grab a cup of tea or a bad for me diet cola over crushed ice and head for my chair. It is a Victorian caned rocker in the corner of the porch where I can see everything that happens in my little corner of the world. I am surrounded by beautiful green plants and trees. I see that my 10 foot tall confederate rose is finally starting to get buds. I hear all manner of noisy birds, but they are in a different category from the neighbors’ machinery.

I use the first part of the day to read something inspirational to think about, then I daydream awhile looking at the magazine stack. I then decide what I’m going to cook. To me, cooking is a form of recreation. It is a thing I do to relax and create. I set some perimeters for myself, because that is part of the creative process. I know that I must use foods that I have on hand, so I won’t have to dress and go to the store. Part of the treat of the holiday is that I don’t have to scurry around like I do on most ordinary days. I know that I must use what is on hand and create from that.

Yesterday, I came in from a trip. I had been invited to my friend Melissa’s for Indian Food. I put it in capitals because the serving of authentically prepared Indian food in rural Southwest Alabama is an Event. On top of that, after dinner, we went to see the movie Julie and Julia down at the local picture show. We are so fortunate to get first run movies. I was proudly showing the local theater to my city nephew. I pointed out to him that we have first run movies. He dashed my pride by saying “You mean you don’t have but one?”. One is enough when a food movie is showing right after a home cooked Indian dinner.

My contribution to the meal was to be some mango chutney. I bought some in the city along with some good madras curry powder. It was raining when we got home, so I left them in my mama’s car. I looked for them long enough to realize what I had done, so I went to plan B. We had stopped at a roadside stand in Georgia to buy some fresh peaches. I spied them lying on the counter and thought “Why not?”. I whipped up some peach chutney on the spot. It turned out so good, I decided to use the rest of the peaches in a larger batch of chutney today. My son had gifted me with some lovely red sweet Hungarian peppers which I had used along with some grocery store yellow onions in the chutney. I always keep fresh cilantro on hand sine the local Walmart started carrying it for the growing Oriental and Hispanic populations. However, I have been on the road so much lately that it was wilted into oblivion.

I love to shop Big Lots for unusual ingredients and snack. Apparently they get the foods that big companies test market that don’t turn out to be winners or else they overstocked then closed out. I found some cilantro bouillon cubes which turned out to be perfect for the recipe.

Here’s the Emergency Peach Chutney recipe I came up with:

2 large fresh peaches, ripe, but firm, one big chopped onion, 5 red Hungarian peppers or 2 red bell peppers, ¾ c dark brown sugar, ¼ c balsamic vinegar, 1 tbsp cumin, 1 tsp pumpkin pie spice ( who said it was authentic?), dash msg, dash turmeric. Cook until onions are transparent and other ingredients tender. If I’d had raisins I’d have put them in, but I didn’t.

It turned out very well. The other Indian Food was authentic, so it was just a condiment – a fusion sort of thing. Maybe soon I’ll find the seven dollar jar, but in the meantime, I’m making another batch. In this batch I put a little hot pepper and some garlic.

A friend just called and said she was stopping by. She lives out in the country and is a renowned cook, so I asked her if she had any little canning jars sitting around that she wasn’t using. As a matter of fact she did. She is saving me a trip to town, so I’m surprising her and her husband with lunch. I just happen to have made another dish while I was in the kitchen whipping up the chutney. I wanted to do a casserole, so I checked my freezer. I had a good many fresh frozen wild Alabama shrimp that a friend gave me in my birthday box. I decided to make a shrimp pot pie. I’d never made one and thought iy might be a fun thing to create.

What goes in one? I had a crawfish pie once, so I figured the shrimp one couldn’t be too different in it is ingredients. I thought of the holy trinity – onions, bell pepper and celery. I didn’t have any celery. Two out of three are not bad, so I chopped the bell pepper and onions. I did have some celery seed, so I threw that in. I peeled a pound of raw shrimp and put them in a gratin pan. I put four small red potatoes in the microwave for 3 minutes to make sure they were not crisp in the final dish. I chopped them. I added some garlic, some Zatarain’s powdered shrimp boil, ¼ c of ketchup and a can of golden mushroom soup. I didn’t intent to use golden mushroom soup, but I didn’t have any cream of mushroom on hand. I mixed everything up and put it in with the shrimp/ I topped the whole thing with defrosted frozen biscuits. I stretched the biscuits out thin and tamped them down around the edges of the pan, so none of the goody would escape. It turned out gorgeously puffed and attractive.

The morning’s barely gone and I’ve felt very creatively expressed. I am back on the porch waiting for my lunch guinea pigs to arrive and test the shrimp pie. Nothing you can do to fresh shrimp could be that bad unless you candied it. That will be a creative endeavor for another day.

Getting Old is a Bitch (Even if You’re Famous)

I couldn’t believe what I heard on NPR. Bob Dylan was performing in a big concert up north somewhere. He decided after the concert to go out for a bit of air, so he took a walk. Apparently people don’t go walking at night a lot in whatever city he was visiting. He was stopped by the police. They didn’t believe his story about being Bob Dylan in town for a concert. Either they were too young to remember “Blowin in the Wind” or the guy they saw didn’t look like the frizzy headed young man they had seen pictures of. The pictures of the icon Bob Dylan were taken in his heyday and presumably didn’t bear much resemblance to the bleary eyed old codger they saw walking alone at midnight.

Unfortunately, aging happens to all of us, even the rich and famous. Anyway, the police were not buying his story. He insisted they take him back to the hotel where he was staying so that he could be identified. A couple of the staff identified him. The police apologized. Dylan was a free man. He was free from everything, that is, except aging. It happens to us all. Some transitions are more graceful than others. Take Cher for instance, she is in the same age group as Bob Dylan, but has held up much better. White hair and thousands in plastic surgery look good on her.

I always thought Robert Redford could have aged better. He’s awfully wrinkled. I was amazed to read an un-tabloid article that quoted the doctor who admitted to doing a facelift on Redford when Redford was in his forties. He’s now in his seventies and needs another. I guess even plastic surgery doesn’t hold up to Father Time.

I’m glad I live in rural Southwest Alabama where it’s okay to get old if you don’t mind being called Ma’m by people forty and under. Even if you don’t think you look old, getting called Ma’m will put things in perspective.

One of my favorite stories about aging is by southern writer Florence King. She says that the South reveres its matriarchs. Her famous quote is “as the bosom falls, so does the mask.” What she means is that as southern women age, they become more who they are. As young people in the south are taught, we must be nice to everybody. We must take care to be diplomatic and polite. AS we get to be old people, this is no longer required. We can be free to say what is on our minds.

We no longer have to wear tight clothes or tight shoes just to try to look better. We develop our own look and stick with it, sometimes from our college years to the grave the look never changes. I know a lot of women in the geriatric ward who still tease their hair, even when it gets so thin we can see through it. Funny thing about that though is the younger women are buying hair accessories now called bump to make their hair stand up like ours did when it was teased in the 60s. Why don; they just learn to tease and save the $10.00?

My high school class is having a reunion this weekend. I wonder if we’ll all recognize each other. I wonder who decades later will be chosen the person who has changed the least. I think that would be the boy in our class who died in his 30s. We can post his picture and give it the prize. For the rest of us, we all have gravity issues. The sagging chins, wrinkles, and excess poundage will disqualify the rest of us. We do have one thing going for us. W are still here to enjoy the rest of our lives. As far as I’m concerned these are the Good Ole Days, not the ones mentioned in those nostalgic emails about our leenage years.

I wouldn’t go back to those days for anything, even if I could take my experience with me. My bosom has dropped and I’m taking off the mask. I have a lot to look forward to. Aging may be a bitch, but I get to be one, too.

Fresh Corn – A Family Project

The corn came in yesterday. What that means is a big project. Unlike other garden vegetables, corn comes in all at one time. There is no negotiating with corn that is ready to be picked. It has the upper hand. It tells you when, not the other way around. It is a BIG undertaking to “put up” corn. It is a whole production.

When I got to my brother’s house last night, I found the production in full swing. There was an assembly line operation going on. The shucking had already been done, so there were piles of corn everywhere. There were two adults silking the corn, one standing over a fish cooker on the back porch, two cutting the blanched corn off the cob after it cooled and one chasing the children. I fell into place silking. Two of us were silking using plastic dish scrubbers. My bother had a better idea. He was using the water hose on a jet setting. It ripped the silks right off the corn in record time. He was in the back yard, which became flooded in the process of corn cleaning. Fortunately, he was perched in a lawn chair right next to the kiddie pool where his granddaughter was overseeing the operation from the vantage point of the swimming pool. Every now and then, she’d call for a hosing down. He’d turn the hose on her, then go back to silking the corn. My niece’s toddler was weaving in and out of the activity when her grandmother wasn’t quick enough to catch her. There were four generations involved in the process- my mother, her children, her grandchildren and great grandchildren. Where else, but in rural Southwest Alabama and her sister Deep South states are you likely to find an operation like this going on at the Simmer Solstice? Druids celebrated by dancing in the moonlight. We celebrated by wrestling with corn. I think the corn won.

Gardens Are Starting To Come In

My niece married a nice young man. How do I know? He just let me pick squash and corn in his garden. This year has been hard on gardens. We had a lot of rain in May, It was too wet to plant. In June, it has been dry as a bone. You’d think now that we get our produce from the grocery store it wouldn’t matter so much to us. Well, all of us in rural Southwest Alabama seem to have our roots in the soil.

I can remember my grandparent’s gardens every summer. We lived in town, but we went out to Granddaddy Bagley’s garden to pick the peas and corn that were the mainstays of our summer diet. Every day for dinner (meal in the middle of the day), we’d have peas, or occasionally butter beans, corn either on or off the cob, sliced tomatoes, cornbread and sweet tea. The only variation would be the meat dish. Sometimes we’d have squash or fried eggplant in addition to the other vegetables, but mostly just the peas and beans diet. We never tired of it. My favorite was the potlikker from the peas over cornbread. Apparently my siblings and I were picky eaters as children. Mama was a food pusher, a trait which I unfortunately have inherited. She would make us eat. When I discovered the pea juice and cornbread, she never had to make me eat again. That was when I got chubby. I have never lost my love for it.

Sunday, I went out to the garden and picked squash and corn. I am going to the beach with my son’s family. I’m bringing the fresh vegetables as a special treat. When I told my son, he was delighted. He grew up in rural Southwest Alabama. Although, he doesn’t live here now, he got the roots to the soil thing, too. We never know when we’re raising children, what takes and what doesn’t. The love of the soil and its riches took on him. When we get fresh food form the garden, we take it as a matter of course. When we don’t have it, it becomes precious and valuable. I have never seen fresh butter beans of garden quality in any grocery store. There is nothing as delicious as a garden grown fresh tomato. As Garrison Keillor says “there are two things in life that matter – true love and fresh tomatoes.” Around here we would all agree.

JUSTIFICATION FOR GARDENING IN RURAL SOUTHWEST ALABAMA (on Sunday?)

I just skipped church for health reasons. I had just been on the road way too much lately and myself said “Stop”! I have learned to listen to my body when it talks to me. I have learned that if I will do that, then my body doesn’t have to do something drastic like catch the flu to get my attention.

I sat on my porch, which is a good as a church sanctuary for felling close to god. I really believe that phrase that one is a close to god in a garden as any place on earth. My porch sits in the middle of a garden - my front yard. Of course, after sitting for a few minutes, I thought of all the nice plants my friends and family had given me for my birthday. Because I have been on the road so much, they were unplanted. I know that a lot of the old folks thought God would get you if you worked on Sunday. I think that God should stay in the Old Testament where he belongs. I’ll probably get some hate mail over that one. I got some over saying Billy Joe Royal was old and around here God ia a lot more popular than billy Joe Royal and a lot older. A lot of people in rural Southwest Alabama don’t like it when you mess with their traditions, whether they are yours or not. I think it’s fine to garden on Sunday. For me, Gardening is a joy, not a chore. Besides, I don’t often get time to do it during the week. I’m not trying to debate theology. Nobdoy ever wins at that. Opinions are like noses, everybody’s got one. We can’t wear each other’s noses and we’ve got just about as much use for somebody else’s opinion as we have their noses.

The devil didn’t make me do it, Mother Nature did and I think she’s God’s best friend. I had to get those plants out. I had a pile of them. One of them was an investment plant. My sister-in-law asked me what I wanted for my birthday. I told her I wanted a Limelight hydrangea. She had given me one two years before and I had lost it in the drought. The local nursery didn’t have one, so she had to go down the road to a place where they think a whole lot of their plants. I know this for a fact because as I was buying some pants from them one day, I saw some phlox they had thrown out in a ditch coming up and asked if I could have one. They said no. I could come back in 8 weeks and buy one. I haven’t had much use for those folks ever since. Gardeners share, especially when people are already paying you good money for other plants. I felt really bad about her having to go there to find one and REALLY bad about what they charged. They do a lot of landscaping for people with more money than the inclination to garden. I knew that I had to get that plant in the ground as a tribute to her generosity in even being willing to trust me with one again, especially since she went to the scalping place to get me one. I couldn’t let this one die, too. I had a bunch of other plants from gardening friends as well.

Sunday gardening is not a chore for me. I had walked around the yard earlier in the week and made mental notes about where to put things. I have a goal of one day having no yard except paths and flowers. I moved one step closer to the goal today. After much trial and error, I have learned that some plants like shade and some like sun. Some however, don’t really give a happy damn. I had a bunch of new daylilies to plant. They fall in the happy damn category. They were my first gardening success many years ago. You can throw them out and say “grow”. They will. They can live through anything, even being dug up and thrown in a ditch. In fact, I saw a whole ditchful blooming happily just up the road. I mad a new bed for them near the porch. I have a big secret garden on the side of the house, but in the past few years’ I’ve done more and more gardening near the porch where I can see it bloom and the people passing by in the street can enjoy it, too. That’s where the new daylilies are. I hope they are as happy as I was this Sunday morning planting them. I see it’s clouding up. Maybe God will help me water them. I’ll consider that a Divine Sign that He didn’t much mind that I wasn’t at church today; I think all of nature is HIS HOUSE. So much for my Sunday theology position, it’s not original with me. I really got the urge started by talking to a Baptist friend last night. She said how much she enjoyed sitting around drinking coffee on Sunday morning. When I got up and my body said “Whoa!” I thought of how much I’d enjoy a day off from church. I really did enjoy it. I hope where ever you spent Sunday, you enjoyed it, too!

Discovering Pass-along Plants

While we were filming the Ghost Trail the other day at Old Cahawba, I found the most interesting book in the Gift Shop. I owned it years ago and somehow lost it. It was like finding an old friend. It is Passalong Plants by Steve Bender and Felder Rushing. Steve Bender works for Southern Living as the garden editor. Felder Rushing is a retired professor and botanist in Mississippi. I have listened to Felder and his partner Dr. Dirt many times as a I have traveled rural Southwest Alabama.

The book is about plants have been grown in southern gardens for generations, but are hard to find in commercial nurseries. There are many old favorites and a few old enemies that want to take the property once they get a toe hold. The less desirable plants are called Aunt Bea’s pickles for the Andy Griffith show where Aunt Bea makes pickles for the county fair that are so bad nobody wants to eat them, but nobody has the heart to tell her. A beginning gardener will take anything. They are gullible and learn the hard way. I loved how they characterized these plants. All the articles are clever and make for great summer front porch reading. You can read one or two in just a few minutes. Some folks would say this would make a good bathroom book, too, for the same reason.

I highly recommend you get this as a reference book. I also recommend you visit Cahawba. Linda Derry, their director tells me that one of their major focuses is going to be native plants of the Alabama prairie. If you do go, be sure to visit their Gift Shop for the book and other great finds. When you go, plan to spend some time. They have great ghost stories there, too.

Alabama Ghost Stories!

For the past couple of weeks I have been working with the Honors Program at the University of Alabama on a Ghost Trail for Perry, Dallas and Wilcox Counties. They are three of the 11 counties on our tourism region. The reason they were chosen is because the program was housed at Judson College and that made these three easily accessible. This was in addition to the fact that Selma has developed a Haunted History Tour and has some Ghost Events leading up to Halloween on an annual basis.

This turned out to be a fun and fulfilling assignment for me, the students and the story tellers, I think it’s fair to say that once you start fooling with ghosts in the Black Belt, they start coming out of the woodwork. AS one resident of Marion told me “Anybody with a 143 year old house has at least one.” It seems like the houses don’t even have to be very old to have one. There are a lot of ghosts roaming around the Black Belt. As Kathryn Tucker Windham told us when we interviewed her, “I have been collecting ghost stories for years and I never heard about but two bad ones.” The ones we learned about were benign, but they get around to a lot of places.

The students working with me on the project were delightful and took their assignment seriously. Running into so many ghosts started them thinking. One asked “Why do you suppose there are so many around here?” we came up with several theories. One is that people just love rural Southwest Alabama so much, they hate to leave it, even in death. We always have known that we southerners love the land, we just didn’t realize we loved it all the way into the hereafter. Another theory we came up with as we talked to people was that southerners are superstitious. It comes from their ancestry and love of storytelling. There are a lot of southerners who have an African ancestry who brought legends of the supernatural with them to this country. A lot of others have Scottish or Irish ancestry where the “Sight” or ability to see things outside the realm of the physical is taken as a matter of course for those of Celtic Heritage. Living side by side with the loquacious storytellers of all the heritages, people learned to embroider the stories to make them more fascinating.

Some people who talked to us have really seen or heard the ghosts they speak of. These folks say they are not ghost stories, but ghost truths. There is little controversy in the general population as to whether ghosts exist. Everybody knows where one is or knows somebody who does. People loved to be scared. As Alfred Hitchcock said, “ If people didn’t like to be scared, why would they say ‘Boo’ to a baby?

I talked to one gentleman who had some reservations about ghosts because of his Christian faith. I explained my theory to him. I think of ghosts as energy imprints, in the same way a photograph has a negative, a departed body can leave an energy imprint around a place or event that they felt strongly about. In my thinking, there is nothing about being a ghost that prevents the spirit from going on the heaven. That is just my opinion. That is why I call myself the Front Porch Philosopher. I think about things. Lately, I’ve thought a lot about ghosts. I see them as a way to get people to come to visit rural Southwest Alabama. If ghosts will get them here, we can show them a lot of other things. Stay tuned to Alabama’s Front Porches for a Ghost Story Trail soon to be seen here.

Neighborhood Animals

Life on the porch is interesting. If traveling around wasn’t so much fun, I’d be like Emily Dickinson and stay here all the time. She wrote poetry in her upstairs bedroom,. I’ll think profound thoughts here in the porch. It’s early morning here in rural Southwest Alabama. The neighbor’s animals have joined me. There is a calico cat that thinks she lives here and a new rat terrier puppy. I think he’s adorable, but not so his mother. She and I have an uneasy peace. She slinks around the neighborhood, barking at all passing by. She barks at me until I scold her severely. There is nothing cuddly about her. She ate my best pair of sandals are couple of years ago when I was naïve enough to leave them on my own porch. I can’t quite forgive her for that. They were and still would be, the most comfortable pair of shoes I ever owned.

I have never had quite the animosity toward an animal that I feel for the shoe chewing dog, but I am fond of her offspring. His name is Buddy. The only cross word we had was yesterday when he tried to chew up my computer cord while I was working on the porch. The porch is my open air office during all the months I can sit here without a parka and hood. Even in the summer, early mornings are ideal for being here.

Last night, two old friends came to dinner and we actually ate on the porch. The animals didn’t understand why they were not welcome during the meal. It’s not like they actually belong to me. I don’t feed them or perform any care giving activities for them. The neighbors take very good care of their animals. They are not hungry, but they were not about to go away last night without a fuss. They didn’t get it that they were not welcome at the party. Of course, mama Molly, the mother rat terrier dog is never welcome at any event on my porch. I try to never entertain any guests who nip, snarl, pr bark at me. Usually, if it is just me the baby dog, Buddy and the cat, whom I have nicknamed Miss Tabb because she is a tabby are welcome. Last night was different. There was major food involved. My friends brought bacon wrapped filets, grilled Vidalia onions, asparagus with lemon sauce and homemade blackberry cobbler from berries picked fresh that day. Nobody would have been welcome to share. I am greedy when it comes to good food.

Those of you who know my hometown know that we have a leash law here. When it was enacted, my brother was among the most vocal against it. In the funny way that life has of coming full circle, he is now the ordinance officer for the city, which included dog catching. There was much controversy over it as there is with any issue when you try to turn a community into an organized city. We just got zoning in the last few years and just went wet last year. For those of you who may not know,” going wet” means allowing liquor to be sold. There was such an outcry over selling alcohol in some sectors that you would have thought the proponents were try to catch their children and boil them. So far, I can’t tell much difference since we went wet from when we were dry. I did however, go to a local store to buy a bottle of wine to serve my guests last night. That was nice that I didn’t have to buy it far away and import it.

My brother never reads my blog. In fact, he may not be aware that I have one, so please don’t tell him about my porch friend animals who are not on leashes. I want them to still visit, only not at dinner parties.

The Delights of Gardening

When I was young, nobody could have convinced me that gardening was fun. I saw too many people sweating in the process. I was young and vain, so sweating was not high on my list of things to do. I have always loved to pick flowers and arrange them, but somehow I never made the logical connection of growing them first.

When I fell in love with my big old house, I was given the gift of a wonderful, rich dirt, well established yard, but I still didn’t get it. I was not born to the soil like my friend Patsy Sumrall, who would ride down the road and wax rhapsodic “beautiful dirt” in the freshly plowed fields. To me, they were just fields we passed on our way to go somewhere shopping.

It was, however, my friendship with Patsy and Cindy Neilson that planted the seed of my becoming a born again gardener. I don’t use the term born again lightly. I know how many fine Christians use the term to set themselves apart from the unwashed masses who have not yet been saved. I do understand, though, how it feels to have the kind of sudden revelation they experience. They have theirs with Jesus. Mine came this time with his mother, Nature.

I must admit, I do feel a religious experience when I walk out in my yard (garden to the rest of the world) “while the dew is still on the roses”. My garden is a loose, evolving creation. It is always changing depending on what is blooming now or what out of my various plant experiments that decided to live. If everything I had planted over time had decided to live, now my yard would be a jungle. Apparently not all plants like it here in my yard. I have developed two philosophies that I garden by. One is from my friend, Gloria Clarke, who says “ I don’t like them if they don’t like me!” about the things she plants. The other is I practice survival of the fittest with the plants. If they need petting, they can die in peace.

I tried a few roses early on with great disappointment. They were like the girls in high school who thought they were the prettiest, so they felt the need to be pampered because they were special. It was the same with teachers’ children in you r class. I never cared for either one. I didn’t have any patience with roses either. Anything that has to be sprayed and fertilized and regularly watered needs a home with somebody else. It reminds me of that country song “Here’s a quarter, find someone who cares!”. Roses and I were not soul mates. A few of them live and prospered in spite of my lackadaisical attitude.

My whole view of roses changed though, when I saw the P Allen Smith Garden Show about antique roses and attended an antique rose seminar at the Alabama Rural Heritage Center. I discovered the survivor roses. These are the roses our ancestors brought with them when they left civilization and headed west. They stuck the cuttings in potatoes to keep the cutting moist. They have survived at old home places throughout the South and ,of all places, the Natchez Cemetery. I visited Natchez twice and got some cuttings both times. The B&B where I stayed said that for gardeners wanting the cuttings, there was a don’t ask, don’t tell policy about getting the cuttings. Actually, I think the cemeteries know that by allowing the small cuttings taken off, they are getting pruning for free.

I took along friends to keep the car running while I snipped the cuttings. I had bought paper towels and zip lock bags to put the cuttings in until I got home. I have had about 6 different varieties from there to live. I have also bought a goodly number of antique rose plants from Petals From the Past. There is some truth to the old adage about gardening –The first year it sleeps, the second year it creeps. The third year it leaps. That has certainly been true of the antique roses. They are drought tolerant, they don’t need spraying. They are happy with neglect. I think that between antique and native plants, I have found my gardening niche. If you happen to be in rural Southwest Alabama, come by and see my garden. I’m like a proud parent showing off the new baby. I am also finding gardening friends who feel the same way. Gardeners speak a common language. If you speak gardening, you are welcome!

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Black Cast Iron Skillet

The essential tool of every southern cook is the black Iron skillet. It is not just any iron skillet you buy. It must be a seasoned iron skillet – one that has been oiled properly and baked until it is black, not the new gray of one that has just been bought. It is the thing that holds the kitchen together.

Somewhere along the way I lost mine. Don’t ask me how it happened. Somewhere along the way it just disappeared. If my ghost, Mr. George, could cook, I’d accuse him. Anyway, last spring on the yard sale that goes from Meridian, Mississippi on Hwy 14 to a far flung part of Kentucky, I found a well seasoned skillet in Cuba, Alabama. I always try to go on the part of the trail that comes through our region of rural Southwest Alabama. I can usually manage only one afternoon on Mother’s Day weekend. So I do the part of the trail that is in our own backyard.

I never fail to find useful things. Some art pieces of art or photography. I have found just the piece of pressed glass that I am looking for. Of all the things I have found, the seasoned iron skillet has to be the prize. Just in the past week some of the ways I have used it include: Making my cornbread for the Easter dressing, making a pineapple upside down cake, browning bacon, toasting a grilled cheese sandwich and sauteing vegetables to go in the same Easter dressing. How’s that for versatility?

Most people don’t have dressing for Easter, They reserve it for cold weather holidays. My family doesn’t feel that way. We don’t have to have a turkey or chicken being served to want dressing as a side dish. Ours is so full of vegetables that it counts as a vegetable dish. Don’t’ tell because nobody has realized it yet. My friend Patsy Sumrall taught me to finely mince the vegetables and sauté them in butter. Another friend taught me to put bell peeper in with the celery and onions for more depth of flavor. I put the vegetables in the food processor, so that they aren’t great big hunks. By the time they are tender before they are put in the dressing, then are baked in the dressing, they disappear, just leaving flavor.

I know there is a question in your mind about the broth. I have found the Swanson canned variety to be delicious. I know about all the people who simmer their own for hours, and they are welcome to do it. I buy the neat little cans and dump it right in. Some things like an iron skillet that can cook the vegetables over low heat in butter while I read on the porch, are essential to the process. Simmering chicken stock is not when there are good canned varieties.

It might be Easter without the dressing, but it wouldn’t be a Southern kitchen without my iron skillet.

The Last Fire of the Season

It’s a quiet Sunday afternoon in rural Southwest Alabama. I am sitting by the fire (yes, you heard me right, but the fire) with harp music on the CD player. We’ve been hot for weeks now, but I knew it wasn’t really spring because the pecan trees had not leafed out yet. They are the last to put on leaves in the sdpr8ing and the first to loose them in the fall. We’ve had torrential rains lately. They are most welcome to us gardeners. I went to Selma last week to a meeting and my friend took me to the Cahaba Mental Health Center to buy some plants. I got some perennials to put into my flower beds. The rains started that night. I put the plants out in the afternoon. I also dressed my antique roses and other plants with some rabbit fertilizer that I had gotten last fall from John Hall, a local rabbit producer. He has this contraption that turns the rabbit pellets and somehow takes the fertilizer smell away. I usually don’t get the plants out the same day as I buy them because I’m on the road so much seeing all the wonderful things in our area and helping to plan more. I did get them in the ground this time. I walked around the yard today as proud as punch of my budding babies.

When spring comes I have a morning walk through the garden every morning. I can’t help but pull a weed or two, so I have to go scrub my hands before I leave home. I just can’t resist getting my hands in the dirt when spring come.

Today, thought, we are having what our housekeeper, Susie always called the “Easter snap” of cool weather before spring really comes to stay. It’s not terribly cold, but since I live in an old house with high ceilings, it is a bit chilly. I’m having company for supper, so I built a fire. I went out and got some twigs that fell during this week’s storms for starter to go on top of the piece of fat pine that I keep for kindling. I know this fire is a good one because I hear it singing. When it sings, it has really taken hold.

My cousin is visitng from Belgium where he where he lives. I’m having a few family members to come to dinner and sit by the last fire of the season. I’m doing a down home meal. He travels all over the world, so there’s no need to try to impress him with gourmet cuisine. I’m cooking butter beans. I cheated on the pie, too, I heard some of the clerks at Wal-Mart bragging on a caramel apple pie they had in their bakery, and so I snatched one of those right up. I will heat it here and put ice cream on it. I’ll throw it in the oven with my great cheat biscuits. You make them with melted butter, self rising flour and sour cream. They can be dropped into muffin cups with not a bit of rolling and cutting. He will enjoy every bite. He’ll like it because it’s served with love and family by the fireside.

TennTom Tourism meeting

At the meeting I attended yesterday in Columbus, Miss. I learned some new things to help us all. Rufus Ward has been hired by TennTom to start a museum on these waterways. He is an authority on the Tombigbee River. He has some old newspapers form the early 1800s with info on our areas of the river. He is willing to share what he knows and collaborate with us. His contact info: Rufus Ward
(662)328-0363
email:museum@tenntom.org
He is interested in visiting St Stephens