Fighting For Food

There are now at least two tiny gladiators challenging each other and the insects, so I decided to refill the hummingbird feeder. I had to beat down the bees to get at it. These birds and bees give a whole new meaning to the term "food fight." We also hung another feeder in the dogwood tree outside our kitchen window. I like their movement, but not their meanness. Hummingbirds must have some serious ADHD; maybe that's why I like them -- they remind me of so many people I know and love. I wonder if I added a little Ritalin to the sugar water, they'd be nicer to their fellow feasters.

Judy posted on her Facebook that she was getting buckets of grapes from her vines, so I figured I'd better check our "vineyard" (which means the vines growing wild on several areas of our property) before the birds and bears did. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like we're going to have many grapes for our jam, and the ones we do have are a long way from ripe.

The walk around our property was still fruitful. I found a flowering vine that I'd never seen before, and it was growing on the foliage of a hazelnut plant that I didn't know was a hazelnut (aka, filbert). The irony is that Jack gave us a hazelnut plant from his yard two years ago, and I've been waiting for signs of flowering. The stem of it has been broken, apparently by the lawnmower, but not to worry; we'll still be picking filberts this fall.

When we lived in Louisiana, a hobby we enjoyed was catching crabs outside our back door; we now pick fruit and nuts from our land. Richard likes to collect and crack black walnuts, so I'm assuming that he'll equally enjoy harvesting hazelnuts. The black walnuts are divine in zucchini muffins; too bad all our zucchini plants have, literally, bitten the dust.

We went to the garden last night and found quite a mess. Mamie's chickens have decided that the cucumbers were planted for their eating pleasure, as were the cantaloupes. Our sunflowers have toppled over from the weight of their huge heads, and the cabbage bugs have finished making lace out of every cabbage leaf. The weeds are so thick that we can barely find the onions, and our carrots are splitting their sides because of drought followed by rain.

We try to get to the garden every other evening, but sometimes other pastimes take precedence; it's hard to get motivated to work in ninety-degree, damp heat. Thank goodness there are grocery stores because we'd be hard pressed to feed a family with our laissez faire attitudes about getting up and going to the garden.

For today, there are cucumbers to cut for pickles and beans to string for First Friday. We'll go to the garden and weed-whack; maybe we'll find more food under these wild, wanton weeds.

Arts and Crafts of Coker Creek

I'm an artist wanna be, which means that I'd love to be able to produce beautiful measures of music, dances that delight, and paintings that inspire, but these talents weren't given to me. I so admire passion channeled into action, especially into artistic endeavors, that I absolutely love to be around creative people and watch them while they work.

I've dreamed, since we lived in New Orleans, of living in an artists' colony where I could, perhaps, keep myself busy writing or cooking while basking in the creative spirit all around me. Artistic inspiration is in the Coker Creek air; many people who move here are artists in bloom. I think we're now getting close to actualizing an artists' colony.

Stephanie, the gal who recently bought Coker Creek Gallery, is planning to create an incubator-style environment in conjunction with her retail space. Her vision includes having those whose art she represents work out in the open where they can be observed. What a wonderful addition to our other Appalachian attractions this would be!

I was privileged to meet a group of ladies last week-end who are putting their artistry into action making quilts for critically ill children. Once a month, the ladies with Quilts For Kids haul their sewing machines, scissors, and ironing boards over to the Ruritan building and create a sewing bee. The kaleidoscopes of patterns and colors in the quilts were a delight to behold; I'm sure many a child finds a reason to smile when presented with the gifts of love from these ladies.

So much of the creative process seems to require silence and solitude, and I'm a lot loud because I channel my passions into prose, poetry and prattle. On the bayou, there was nothing we wouldn't discuss with lots of laughter and as many tears. I sometimes need a good wet-my-pants belly laugh, a righteous rant, or a soul-splitting cry, and good church ladies don't seem to be comfortable with this brand of unedited emotion.

What's a woman raised with a bunch of boys to do? This is the Bible Belt, and I know that one of the quilters is a pastor. I do have the problem of being a bit too outspoken and baudy for small town tastes. It's so hard to find women of wicked wit;I don't fit in for long with "ladies who lunch," or ladies of any kind. I simply can't act like a lady for more than a few minutes without exploding. My loose lips can sink relationships; and in a small town, like in a family, it's easy to become a pariah.

The quilting queens looked like a lively bunch, and they did have snacks setting near some sewing machines. Somebody's got to feed the troops, and the Ruritan building has a full kitchen; so, maybe I could cook for these crafters. That ought to keep me quiet enough that they'll let me watch them while they work.

A Mess of Emotions

What a messy affair emotions are. Yesterday, I almost wept over the taste of a perfectly ripe peach; the awe its perfection inspired took away my breath. Living in such close, quiet quarters with my man and my memories keeps me ever-extreme in my emotions.

I’ve never considered myself a greedy person, but I really am greedy for my people. I can’t get enough of the essence of them in my mind; even when my emotions are stretched to the breaking point, I want more time, more connection, more making memories. Every child I ever held, in some small way, became a part of me. Every friend or family member I ever hugged has a hold on my heart. Heaven for me would be to have all my people right next to me simultaneously. For now, I have to settle for enjoying them from afar.

I love being able to live vicariously with my grandchildren, family, and friends through Facebook and email. I’ve been able to enjoy my oldest grandchild’s summer activities through the pictures her friends have posted on Facebook. With families these days being so busy, if we didn’t have electronic ways to keep up, we may not be able to recognize our own grandkids by the time we do get to see them in person.

Our grandson’s joy at being able to witness and even participate in rescuing sea turtle babies also came through on Facebook. His dad has promised to post pictures of the monumentally memorable event. I almost feel like I’m there when I’m made privy to the pictures, and Nick’s passionate prose. It does sometimes make my heart hurt with the longing to hear their voices, see their faces, and smell their special smells, but that’s the price we pay for allowing ourselves to love.

Creating Cozy

Isn't it bizarre how we buy these big parcels of land and then spend so much time shrinking the spaces to cozy parcels that we can enjoy from our favorite windows?

Mountaintop Mary and Don own a whole top of a mountain, but they've figured a way to create a cozy place for their grandchildren's reading and dreaming. Just off their front porch, they've closed in a section of yard with ranch-style fencing. In the middle of this enclosure, they've built a tee-pee out of rebar and chicken wire; here they're growing lunar pumpkin vines to create tee-pee walls with brilliant orange blooms. The entrance path to the the tee-pee is a home-hewn stone walkway. All around this miniature mansion are bright red canna lilies in an English-style flower plot inviting the hummingbirds to hover. Their hammock swings gently in the breezes wafting across this child-size Granny Camp garden.

Our close-in trees not only provide shade for our house, they also provide places to observe birds and other beasts feeding and frolicking in the branches. Our niece, Nikki's, favorite reading spot is in the hammock strung between an Eastern hemlock and a black walnut tree only twenty steps from our front door. Would it be as inviting if she had to hike to get to it? I will admit that autumn would be a bit quieter without the avalanche of walnuts bombarding our roof as they fall, but where would we put Nikki's favorite spot? And, every time I speak to my children about moving our bonfire pit farther away from our porch to improve the "curb appeal" of our entry way (not that we have curbs in Coker Creek), I get wails of distress that I would even think about making it less accessible.

Richard and many of the people we know up here worry about the big trees so close to our house. I've had several workmen come up here and admonish me for having pine trees anywhere near our roof line, for fear that they'll fall on said roof. Mamie now says she should have listened to her husband when he wanted to take out all the close-in trees before building her home seventy-six years ago. But, until recently she, like me, celebrated her big trees.

We do have some serious wind storms, and ice can make the branches of pines brittle, but I'd as soon sell this house and live in the desert as worry about a tree falling on our heads. Lightening could strike us as we work in the garden or walk from our carport, but I think that we all have to pick our battles and the things we will worry about. I worry about things that go "bump" in the night, like black bears, not black walnuts.

At least one hummingbird and a wasp have located our front yard feeder. I find it funny that hummingbirds will chase each other from any one area rather than share their food, no matter how many feeders are in the vicinity; but a wasp sucking down the sweet sustenance doesn't worry our winged warrior one whit.

Good Golly, Miss Molly

Good golly, Miss Molly.
How hard can things get?
I’ve been trying to publish
Nancy’s book for months,
And haven’t succeeded yet.
She and I really thought
Her work was finely tuned;
But no, it seems the printer wants
For us to circle the moon.
Finally, in frustration,
We started the process fresh.
A proof copy has been ordered
We hope we can give it a rest.

Woodland Wonders

How high does a hummingbird feeder have to be hung? We had a hummingbird attempting to get through the kitchen window, apparently attracted to the orchid on the sill. Or was it the tomatoes ripening above the orchid? This orchid was given to me by “my Atlanta girls,” Rachel, Rebecca, and Sarah, for my birthday, four years ago. It has bloomed beautifully for all four years, and is the first bloom of spring at our house in the holler. It serves to remind me of the ever-renewing love between “my girls” and me.

It just happened that Josie was the one who noticed the hummingbird’s seemingly suicidal attempt to come through the closed window. It had no way to know how badly this could have gone for him. Our cat, Buster, is a great grey hunter, who often lies in wait of prey on the picnic table just outside that window. With his faithful side-kick, Gypsy, he’s sometimes been successful at catching several squirrels, a bird or two, and many a mole. Josie’s comments and this daring feat of the hummingbird prompted me to fill our hummingbird feeder and relocate it to where we can observe these most aggressive avians from a frequented spot in front of a window.

Our wild bird feeder is in a dogwood tree about twenty feet outside the kitchen window, similar to the spacing between Jack’s bird buffet and his kitchen window. Our concern is that, as small as the hummers are, we won’t be able to see them as well as we’d like. For now, the hummingbird feeder is on a low branch in our black walnut tree outside the office window, where I can watch it as I type. The only feeding frenzy, thus far, is an army of ants attracted to its steady drip of sugar water.

Lately, we’ve been waking to the presence of a visiting bulldog, waiting for Gypsy to come out and play. I don’t know whether its Dozer or his little brother, but he puts me in mind of short, stocky Spanky from “Spanky and Our Gang,” waiting for long, lean Alfalfa with the interesting head of hair(Gypsy?) I don’t know who Buster plays in this scenario, but he certainly loves to torment Gypsy until Gypsy takes action chasing him.

Gypsy used to be so docile that she’d allow all animals visiting our front porch, including our cat, first dibs on her food bowl. Dozer, his brother and all the visiting dogs have cured her of that; she now lies down with her paws curved around her dish, daring anyone to getting near enough for a nibble.

Our usual letter carrier Garry says that the substitute mailman on duty yesterday saw a baby doe near our mailbox. We’ve never seen a doe or a deer of any age on our property -- a weasel, a bear, a red fox, and bunches of bunnies, but never a deer. We just never know what woodland wonders we’ll see.

Excess Largesse

Pastor Lynda called yesterday morning to take us up on our offer to supply support for her congregation’s food bank in the form of food. One of our primary reasons for gardening and beginning the First Friday suppers was to create an avenue into families of Coker Creek. I miss the easy relationships we had with so many children and their parents now that we live so far from family.

I was scheduled to go to the garden to harvest field peas, but was concerned that the recipients of the excess of the Almighty’s largesse may not be usable to non-cooks. My misgivings about the ability of Lynda’s clients to use fresh food were assuaged by her assurances that she could show them proper pea-shelling procedures and such.

Richard had gone downtown to the recycle center, unloading our “souvenirs” all our company in the form of the trash left after their departures. I wasn’t looking forward to working alone in the hot sun, but one of the things I’ve learned from Mamie is how to be like Tom Sawyer in getting some company in and assistance with my work. I invited Mountaintop Mary to make picking peas and gathering eggs at Mamie’s the day’s activities for her version of Granny Camp.

Mary and three of her four grandchildren, spending the summer with her, arrived with baskets in hand. We exchanged tokens of our appreciation of each other, Emma presenting me with a perfect Zinnia and the children choosing their favorite souvenirs from our collection of Coker Creek t-shirts and such. Chris, Aaron, and Emma, with Grandma Mary’s help, made short work of pea-picking and headed home for lunch.

While I continued my harvesting, Marshall and Donna came by to pick peaches. Donna and I began comparing notes on dealing with all this edible excess. I shared with her my desire to teach needy families in the area the same survival skills that we’ve been learning from Mamie and Jack. Lo and behold, she had been having the same conversation with someone connected to the Smoky Mountain Christian Camp, down the road from Jack’s house and his gardens. She also informed me that her grandchildren are coming to Coker Creek for Donna and Marshall’s version of Granny Camp, and that they, like some of our campers, had a visit to Ms. Mamie’s garden and hen house on the top of their wish list of vacation activities. Move over Mickey Mouse; the kids love the pleasures of the simple way of life.

When Richard and I had our first version of Granny Camp on Lake Pontchartrain, our Austrian nephews who had spent several weeks doing all the American tourist activities, including Disney World, declared that their time boating, floating, and fishing at our place was, “better than Disney World.” We’re striving to create the same sense of excitement for families who come to Coker Creek to visit. We’re hoping to have the opportunity to help do the same for families living here.