Nervous Nellies

I looked out the window, and lo and behold, the sun was shining! Looks like a good day to sweep and de-cobweb the porch. We had a freeze during the night, but Richard had gotten the heating pad placed under Gypsy’s sleeping bag in preparation for the frigid temperature. Buster, our cat, immediately stretched out on Gypsy’s bed, claiming it as his own. Buster does have his own sleeping quarters; in the winter, we swaddle his cat carrier in a couple of layers of sleeping bag. But he much prefers the warmth of our oversized dust mop of a dog and our dog’s bed to having to generate his own body heat inside his hooch.

Mamie called to say that if we don’t get the frozen vines off the sweet potatoes, the potatoes will rot. One more thing to do before Pat and Will arrive, and I still haven’t finished freezing the basil -- some of which is laying on a tarp on the kitchen floor. The other herbs are still in the back of my van acting like organic car fresheners.

Jack removed his sweet potato vines before the freeze, but is afraid that his potatoes have rotted anyway. It’s been too muddy to dig them up with the special plow he invented specifically for his sweet potato harvest. I asked Jack how long-ago farmers survived all winter with the capricious weather dictating the success or failure of their crop harvests. He said that they dried a lot of foods before canning was discovered, and made sure not to deplete their larders in any given year.

Richard is hoping that the rain has removed the last of the black walnuts from our tree. Every night, for the past month, our roof has been under attack by projectile nut pods. The sound of shelling in a strange house in the black-as-pitch holler may be a bit disconcerting to our visitors from the lowlands of Louisiana. Especially since the sound of gunfire is a common occurrence in our area as people protect their homes and livestock from animals visiting from the surrounding forest. Richard likes to tell guests not to worry about the gunfire; it’s just the local way of conflict resolution. We can only hope that Will doesn’t suffer from PTSD, as he is a Vietnam War veteran.

I’ve already made our friends nervous by letting them know that they should arrive before dark because directions to our front door are not available on navigation systems, and cell phones get no reception in Coker Creek. It got worse when I informed them that I was signing them up on our membership for air evacuation services, in case one of them should need emergency medical care. The major hospitals are over an hour’s drive away, so this is just a precaution we take – not to worry. By the time I finished giving them directions to our home, Pat asked if I was expecting to have to send the air evacuation team to rescue them when they got lost. Will wanted to know if they needed to get shots before coming.

Maybe I shouldn’t have told him that he didn’t need to get shots, but he may be shot on his way here…