And Now A Photograph

There has been a request for pictures on this blog. Well here goes nothing! This is a photo of one of our five raised garden beds taken last year. My husband was the designer, architect, and builder, and I just try to keep something growing in them. Sometime soon I will be cleaning out our beds for a spring garden, and don't be surprised to see my results. Notice that he also developed a secure method for keeping the animals (big and small) out of our lettuces. It really works, but I still wish it was easier to access the lettuces when I am ready to pick them. I just fiddle around with the mesh and a few metal "hairpins" in the ground and get what I need. It works!

Yesterday we pruned our grapevines and our knock-out roses. Maybe we are a little early, but at least that is done. The weather was warm and sunny, so both of us (plus our beagle pup) were enjoying the pleasant January day. Today is another story. It is so gloomy that we both said the weather looked like a grey, Dutch winter day. How depressing it must be for millions of people over the world who have months of this somber weather. Glad we can see sunshine most of the time here.

Memaw’s Stories—written in 1995.

In 1925 when I was born, our family lived in a little three-room house on forty acres of land, about a mile and a half from Moro, Arkansas. I was the fifth of nine children. We were all born at home with the help of the doctor or a midwife.

My memories of the home place are a little foggy, but this is what I remember:

The house had two large rooms and a little back room or kitchen off the main room. It had a front porch that went all across the front of the house and had a dogtrot hall that separated the two main rooms. It had a back porch that extended from the little kitchen across the rest of the house. The roof was shingled with handmade shingles. The foundation was wooden blocks made from large logs cut to the appropriate size. There was a fireplace in the main front room. There was a Home Comfort wood range in the kitchen. This was the heating system in winter. Each room had a window. In summer the cooling system was open doors and windows and a cool breeze. The yard had a handmade picket fence. The water pump was located near the barn lot. This way it was convenient to the house and the animals. There was a smokehouse in the backyard. That is where the meat was smoked. I vaguely remember meat being smoked there.

There was a big oak tree in the backyard and two big oaks in the side yard near the pump. The front lawn outside the yard had several large trees. I remember the highway department used to pull their equipment in there in the evenings when they were grating the road that passed our house.

The barn lot had a barn and a shed. And behind the shed was the toilet. I believe the toilet was in the back of the garden before this.

The garden was directly behind the house, and there was a little orchard of apple and peach trees. I can remember grapevines in the garden. The toilet was out back of the grapevines.

My earliest memories are burning my hands. My next to youngest sister was a little baby, so I must have been no more than three years old. Mama had washed clothes that day. She had heated water and boiled the clothes in a big black wash pot in the back yard. After she finished washing, she left the hot coals under the pot. I was pulling an old trap and fell and my hands went into the hot ashes. I was burned pretty badly. I can remember Mama standing on the back porch holding the baby in her arms. I guess Sam Salve was good, but I still have the scars on my right hand from it.