Saturday, June 22, 2013

Ghosts And Skinks And Bats And Blackberries. Another Day In My Life

Today I walked down to a nearby clearing with a cell phone tower in it which is bordered by blackberry bushes and I picked a good 3/4's of a gallon or so of fine, fat berries. I forgot my gloves and could have picked more if I'd been able to thrust my hands into the thickets. As it was, I was pricked some and bled, but who cares? I have blackberries.


I think that instead of making jam with these, I'll make Mr. Moon a lovely cobbler when he gets home. Maybe that will be our entire dinner one night. When the kids were little, I used to make strawberry shortcake for dinner about once a year when the berries first came into season. I'd make the big sugary biscuit-cakes and slice up the berries and put them over the split cakes and whip real cream with sugar and vanilla and put that on top. The children were delighted and scandalized at the same time. 
It was wonderful. Who the hell says that every meal must have a protein, some carbs and and some vegetables? Not me. As long as it all evens out in the end, I'm happy. 

It was such a pleasure to pick the berries. I was listening to a book on CD and the sun was hot but it was a little overcast and although I sweat right through my overalls it wasn't painful in the least. It felt good. I didn't see a snake but I did see something that was just as frightening. It was the gnarliest nest of ground bees I've ever seen and if I'd stepped in that, it would have been horrible and a sort of hell and could quite possibly have made me as dead as the bite of a rattlesnake. I saw it just in time, though, and backed up and moved on and was not stung at all. 
I am grateful for that.

I went out in the garden and pulled a cart-full of weeds and then took them and pitched them over the fence for the goats next door who don't ever get anything green. They were on those things like teenaged girls on Justin Bieber. Made me happy to see it. 

I picked in the garden and I gathered from the nests and I added to what I had picked and gathered yesterday. It looks like this. 


Do I feel lucky? You bet. 

I guess I'll go cut up some of those vegetables and maybe cook some quinoa and make my supper. It has been, for me, a practically perfect day and I have done exactly what I've wanted to do and tonight I think I'll get in bed and read for a good long while before I turn out the light. My shower will feel tremendous, and rivers of dirt will wash off of me although I got the topsoil off with the hose before I came in the house. 

I'm not sure when I became the woman I am right now. This woman who is most content and happy after spending all day sweating and avoiding death by ground bees, picking berries and pulling weeds and gathering eggs and picking tomatoes and peppers and onions and greens but here I am. Here I am. 

Here's a picture of Walter Lloyd Bond who had this house built in 1859. 


A little foppish, don't you think? He married his wife, Annie Laurie Lloyd Bond, when he was forty-three and she was twenty-nine and I'm thinking they must have been cousins and I don't know if they had any children or not but I'm thinking of them tonight and, as I so often do, of all the people who have lived here before me and who have grown vegetables in this yard and raised chickens and had babies and died, right here. 

I'll be happy to sleep with their ghosts tonight and today I saw a tremendously large skink in the hallway and I feel certain he's still here somewhere but that's okay. Plenty of room for all of us although if I see another bat, I'll be shrieking like a little girl. And then I'll go get a towel and capture it and put it outside. 
Maybe. 

I'll let you know how it goes.

Love...Ms. Moon




10 comments:

  1. What an excellent day, what beautiful food.

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  2. I am enthralled by your gorgeous pickings of home grown vegetables. You are just so cool and the best thing is you don't even really know just how cool you are. Except that you are Hank's mom and you know that kind of makes you cool too. I am glad you ad such a nice day. Sweet Jo

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  3. What bounty. You're inspiring me to grow my own garden in my weedy plot out back.

    And, lord if I don't love a bit of a fop. Does this make me a pushover?

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  4. Thank goodness you didn't step in that nest of bees! Yikes! I used to love picking blackberries in Florida. We can pick them wild here, too -- I was tickled when I moved here and found wild blackberries in London!

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  5. Picking blackberries. What therapy. Ours are not out till August. They grow wild all over the hedgerows. It usually means I can't get down a country lane in under 3 hours.

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  6. Love those blackberries. They are superb. The blueberries are in here and prolific on the netted bushes.
    I'm fascinated about the history of your house.

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  7. Ground bees - what a nice thing to call yellow jackets. The horror!
    That happened to my 90 year old aunt at the family cemetery (in Jacksonville, FL) a couple years ago(she survived) and my heart pounds into panic whenever I think about it.

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  8. A- Yes on both. In my opinion, at least.

    Sweet Jo- You are too nice to me, woman. I swear you are.

    Kat Fisk- Hello! Lots of women love a fop. I seriously doubt you're a pushover but even if you are- our ranks are huge.

    Gradydoctor- By my standards it is!

    Jenny Woolf- It's hard to pass up free berries, isn't it?

    Syd- I have tried to grow blueberries in my yard but there is not enough sun. And I hate to pay to pick but I'm thinking of it this year because fresh blueberries are wonderful.

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  9. I just went and looked up the Bond family. They had two children. One, a girl named after her mother, lived to adulthood. She never married and died in 1954 in Florida. Walter disappeared from the census by 1900, although Annie is still listing as married. She has a few boarders. Annie the wife, died in Atlanta, GA. in 1919.

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Tell me, sweeties. Tell me what you think.