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Grandma’s in the House – Supervisor

By late spring, I took a second job. It was a part-time, afternoon shift job, sorting mail. The garden suffered, in that the weeds grew pretty good that year.

When I had a day that I wasn’t working, I would head outside. It’s my favorite place to be. (My mom said I used to throw myself on the ground and cry and cry when she would bring me inside, when I was a very small child even). Back to the story…So, I would hear the door squeak open and see Grandma peak her head out and look for me. I figured she was making sure I was okay.

There was an old corn crib on the property that Tom converted into a chicken coop for me. I was painting the outside of it. I heard the door squeaking open and shut frequently, but didn’t think anything about it. Then, when Tom got home from work, I heard her telling him that I wasn’t working today (meaning at the house, not the job). She said I was napping in that building down there. That’s when I realized I had a supervisor.

I was working in the garden when I heard the back door squeak open and close, and I knew she would be coming to the front door next. That was one time in my life I was glad that the doors squeaked. The weeds along the edge of the garden were about three foot high by then and I dove down behind them. This was repeated whenever I heard the back door open. She always went there first and I had time before she got to the front door. The report that night was that I was goofing off somewhere, that I wasn’t working.

Grandma asked me one day, why I had so many coffee mugs. She said you need only three. One for each of us. (There were 4 of us living here, us three, plus our daughter, Andrea who Gma called “that girl that lives with you”.) I told her that we got mugs when we go on vacation somewhere, and also that I like pottery (LOVE is a better word for it). The next day, a mug “fell out” of the cupboard and broke. Hmmm….

On days that my mother and me went grocery shopping, Gma would tell Tom that we were off sitting and drinking in bars all day. That’s kind of funny, being that my mother is a preacher’s wife and the trunk load of groceries that I brought home. And I never had alcohol breath. Did not know where she got that story.

Also, with her being 90 years old, had some “bathroom issues”. She was always telling me that it was because of my cooking. I said that was strange, because no one else had that problem. So, sometimes when my husband is having stomach issues, he’ll look at me and say, “It’s because of your cooking”. He thinks he’s funny.

The Canoe Trip

How do I start? I loved canoeing as a teenager in high school and even afterwards. Then life got busy, working lots of hours and I didn’t do it for a couple decades.

My husband said he used to go all the time with his parents when he was young and really enjoyed it.

I know my brother, Rusty, liked to canoe, so I asked him and his now ex-wife to go with us. When we were paying for the trip, the guy asked us if we wanted to go the three mile or the ten mile trip. Me, being all gung-ho, said let’s do the ten miles.

So, me and Tom get in our canoe and head down the river. I’m in front, paddling. We start heading for the bank, so I switch my paddle to the other side of the boat. Then we zing to the other side of the river towards that bank. My brother’s canoe is calmly going right down the middle of the river. He ends up pulling away by a far piece, probably to avoid all the yelling going on in our canoe.

My canoe bounced from bank to bank and back again. At one point, I grabbed ahold of a large tree, that was jutting out over the river, before being slammed into it. I think that veer was intentional…

I kept asking Tom what he was doing and he said paddling. I said, “I thought you said you loved canoeing and did it a lot as a kid.” He said, “Yes, but I was always in the middle, and my mom and dad did all the paddling.” That explains a lot.

I don’t know why we couldn’t sync together and go down the middle of the river, but those ten miles seemed like one hundred, and was probably at least 30 miles, the zigzag way. I kept telling him to paddle on the opposite side that I was on, to go straight, but it never happened.

So, my advice would be, before canoeing with anyone, get a background check to see how they came about learning to paddle. And then ask their family and friends.

I never lost my voice canoeing before. First time for everything, I guess.

Andrea and the Snake

After a second divorce, I found a 150 year old brick home, on 7 acres, and bought it for a very reasonable price. It was the home of my dreams. All it needed was the white picket fence in front. It was so cool! It had a fireplace in the basement that was part of the original log cabin, with a swing arm for cooking in it.

The yard had only been mowed around the house, and the lawn between the house and the pond was allowed to grow up. There were big stalks from where big weeds had grown. I didn’t think much about it, till summer came and I started mowing it.

Being a single mom, I got a push mower and started mowing on Sunday, then and hour or so around work schedules and children’s schedules, every day all week to get the whole thing mowed, down to the pond. Then start back at the top again on Sunday.

The first day, while mowing, there was a 3 foot cream and brown snake between me and my mower. I jumped and started yelling, “Snake, snake”, only to be there standing by myself wondering who was going to kill the snake. So, I had to get braver and started wearing my work boots and carrying a hoe along the handle of the mower.

That summer, there were nine different colors of snakes that I encountered between the mower and me. Most were under the two foot range, if bigger, too big for under the mower. I “put out of their misery”, over 30 snakes that summer. I guess they had moved in where the grass had been high. It wasn’t like that any summer after that. I kept it mowed, thank goodness.

My daughter, Andrea, was just about a teenager. I was on afternoon shift at the factory where I worked, and had asked her to take the compost to the garden while I finished getting ready for work. She came in about two minutes later and was white as a sheet. She said, “Mom, I just stepped on a snake in my bare feet”. So, I’m thinking, a six inch snake. “Let’s go see”, I said taking the hoe with me. Also in my bare feet. We got to the back steps where she said she stepped off of and onto the coiled snake. I thought it was so small that we couldn’t see it in the grass.

Then something caught my eye to my right and there was a four foot snake “running” for the woods. I ran with my hoe and swung. It was hard to hit a big moving “S” shape. I got it about a foot behind the head and it came at me with mouth wide open. Andrea, of course, was supporting me from way behind. Out of big fear, I started swinging the hoe and chopping a lot. It finally quit trying to get me and went to snake heaven. If there is one. Which I doubt.

I was probably white as a sheet by the time the battle was done. My theory is if I let it go, it will come back bigger the next time. That was one day I was glad to go to work. If something would have touched my leg in the car, I probably would have wrecked it.

A Neat Encounter

Since I don’t have chickens at this time, I thought it would be a good idea to plant squash in my chicken run. Lots of fertilizer at the ready 🙂

I went down to water them and had this little guy on the coop door. I’ve never seen a moth like this before. He didn’t move, so I stood there and studied him for awhile.

Last year, I had a luna moth that stayed here for a few days. It was so neat to watch it and look at it up close.

I also have resident praying mantises that I love to watch. I like it when I find the egg case or sac in the cold months. And especially like it if I get to see the babies in the spring. I try to locate them when mowing to stay clear of where they are. However, they always jump me if they take off flying and I don’t know they are nearby.

I suppose that insects don’t pay us much mind (unless they are a mosquito), but it sure is nice to get to watch them and see them up close sometimes. I always got my children those insect cages, to trap and watch insects, when they were young. I probably enjoyed it as much as they did.

Here are a couple of this years batch of baby praying mantises. Second picture is a little left of center. So cute!

My Sister

I came into the world in the usual way, a mother and a father. When my mother found out that he liked to date other women while he was married, she promptly divorced him. I was 18 months old and my brother was just born.

My biological father, not wanting to pay child support, let my stepfather adopt us two. My stepfather has been the most wonderful Dad for us! A story for another time…

So my biological father married someone else and started another family, then moved a few hours away and I never saw him again. My brother, however, wanted to meet him and did, and knew him for many years before he died.

My brother kept telling me that there was 2 step brothers, and a step-sister. He would tell me how nice she was and how we had the same laugh. “She’s really nice and I know you’d like her”, he would always tell me, trying to make me want to meet her.

I was always kind of afraid that if I did, I would have to meet the biological father and I couldn’t seem to want to face it. So, after he passed, my brother got me thinking about her again and I said I would like to meet her.

I took my brother, and mother (she already liked her) with me and we met at a restaurant half way between us. My favorite color is purple, and when she came in she had purple glasses on and a purple case for her phone (her favorite color). I have one too. We both have a big love of music. She plays the guitar and keyboard. I just like to sing. I don’t have a good voice, just the heart for it. 🙂 We talked a little, we cried a little, and when we left each other, we exchanged phone numbers.

Within a few weeks, I called her and said I just missed her and wanted to talk some more. For being in my 50’s, I thought I was pretty brave to venture to a place I was afraid to go before. And I am so glad that I did. We text and talk and see each other very often and I wonder how I ever lived without her. I always wanted a sister.

In the Patch

Aww, they’re back! Those luscious, lip-smacking, little jewels of sweetness! Also, known as black raspberries. My friend Stephanie and I rode the 4-wheelers out back and searched the parameters of the tree lines. Quick stops when we see a patch of red and black.

We found a big pile of poo in the patch. I always ask my husband if it is bear poo, because they have been seen in our county. He always says no, it’s raccoon poo. I think he tells me that so I will keep going out in the woods.

I left my key in the on position on my 4-wheeler and when I got back, the battery was dead. Or so I thought. So, we rode together on one machine the last hour of our picking. When Tom went out with me to get it, he said you probably forgot to get it out of gear before shutting it off. And sure enough, I had. Ooops! At least we didn’t have to tow it back to the house.

I should have enough raspberries after another picking to make a batch of jam. I can hardly wait. Maybe I’ll add some jalapenos…

The Good Sore

Thornless blackberries my brother, Rusty, gave me 2 summers ago.

Banana Split – can you believe the size of this? I ate his cherries because he doesn’t like them. 🙂

Ok, how does this last picture fit in with the rest? Reward baby!

I’ve been concentrating on getting the garden going and looked over at the fruit garden and herb bed and went WOW! How did those weeds get that tall? It seems that weeds grow about 50 times faster then any other living thing.

So, the weed patches were 2 feet tall in among my fruit bushes and vines. I bought this Earth Mat because it looks like it may work. It’s not plastic, kind of more canvas and thicker. I tried a kind of landscape cloth about 15 years ago and it looked like I planted a blanket of grass there. Didn’t stop any weeds. I think it had a bunch in it. I’ve used plastic with newspapers on top with mulch and it lasts about 3 or 4 years then needs replaced, so I don’t use mulch anymore. For me, it has seemed to encourage the growth of weeds after the first year as the mowing throws a myriad of seeds into the mulch. So, I’ll give this a try and see how it works for me. My friend Pam stopped mulching her flower beds a few years ago and just takes a hoe to the weeds. Sounded like a good idea to me too, so I tried it last year when the last of my mulch had turned into fine dirt. Works pretty good.

The highbush cranberries are something that my grandparents in Maine always had when I went to visit them. They made the most amazing cranberry jelly that you can imagine. It’s for toast, not the kind you have at Thanksgiving. I’ve tried making it out of the cranberries from the store, and it is pretty good, but not as good as these.

I worked about 6 hours on this bed, pulling weeds, jumping when the cat grabs me from under the bushes, crawling under plants, wrestling with the poison ivy plants (thank goodness for lye soap), fighting giant wolf spiders (ugh), rolling around with 50 foot long pieces of matting, lugging rocks to hold down the matting, picking sticks out of my hair and hoping to goodness to not find a tick on me later. The next day, I had a hard time getting up and around because of using so many muscles that I normally don’t. If I would follow my 18 month old granddaughter around and do everything she does, I would be in great shape. My husband says that round is a shape (I hope he’s talking about himself).

The good sore is when I can look and see all the good that I’ve done for the day. I can see progress and some control in that wild kingdom out there. Yes, I may moan and groan for a day or two, and maybe even get a “good job, honey”.

And that’s where the giant banana split comes in. Rewarding myself for all the hard work. The great thing is, I’m only two-thirds of the way done with that bed. Then I turned around and looked over my shoulder at the flower beds. Yikes! More weeds…

An add on, January 2019 – The Earth Mat that I put on has not allowed ANY weeds to grow up through it. I am amazed and buy now for flower beds too. You can order from Berlin Seeds in Millersburg, Ohio. It is Amish owned, so you can call and get a catalog to order. 330.893.2091, or Bing it for the address.

Grandma’s in the House – Naps

Grandma likes her naps. She would go to sleep at 8:30 in the evening and set her alarm to wake up at 5:30 am. I thought that was a lot of sleep for someone her age, but then she also takes about six naps a day.

I had wrote down television channels that she liked and could punch the number in to go to that channel, instead of trying to operate the remote. She had it so messed up we had to have a technician straighten it out. She liked mostly westerns and the Catholic channel.

So, every half hour, she would turn the television on to a show she liked, doze off for a 10 minute nap or so. Wake up, turn the television back off and say she doesn’t watch it, but she knows what time all of her programs come on…

Sometimes she would watch a show for a whole half hour before turning it off. And yes, we did have to replace the bulb in the television because all that on and off, blew it out. That’s what the technician said. (smirk)

Even at night, when we would sit down to watch some television, she would fall asleep through the evening. She says she never naps.

However, when she would see my husband, Tom, in his easy chair with his feet up, starting to snore, she would bump his feet and say, “Don’t you have some work to do?” We didn’t nap, that’s for sure.

Tom said when he was little, Grandma would be outside for a while giving orders to the family what to do around their dairy farm. He said when he would go into the house for something, she was always napping in a chair. Hmmm…I think Grandma has always liked her naps.

Rhubarb

I have two very good recipes that use rhubarb for those of you who like it. People that don’t even like it, like these.

Rhubarb Cake Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease and flour a 9 x 13 inch baking dish.

For the Batter: Stir together 2 cups flour, 1-1/4 cups sugar, 1 teaspoon baking soda and 1/2 teaspoon of salt in a large bowl. Add 2 eggs, beaten and 1 cup of sour cream and stir till smooth, then fold in 5 cups of diced rhubarb.

(This batter is very thick and barely covers the rhubarb. I thought it was ruined but comes out wonderful and light!) Pour into prepared dish and spread evenly.

For the Topping: Stir together 1 cup sugar, 1/4 cup butter, softened, in a small bowl until smooth. Add 1/4 cup flour and stir until mixture is crumbly. Sprinkle on top of the batter. You can dust lightly with cinnamon if you’d like. I like it with and without it.

Bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, about 45 min. Cool cake in pan on rack for 1 hour. (I usually can’t wait that long, I like to eat it warm, sometimes with a little ice cream 🙂

Recipe #2 Rhubarb Cheesecake Smoothie

In a large saucepan, bring 2 cups of diced fresh or frozen rhubarb, 1/4 cup of water and 2 Tablespoons of sugar (or honey) to a boil. Reduce heat; cover and simmer 5 to 10 minutes, or till rhubarb is tender. Cool to room temperature.

In a blender, combine 1-1/2 cups of vanilla ice cream, 1 cup milk, 1 cup strawberries (frozen is good), 6 ounces cream cheese chunked, 1/2 cup plain yogurt, 1 teaspoon of good vanilla extract, 1/4 cup of confectioners’ sugar, 3 Tablespoons of sugar and 6 to 8 ice cubes depending on size of them. Cover and blend till desired consistency. Serve.

You can change out the fruit in this to all blueberries, raspberries, banana, peach, etc. Just don’t cook them and don’t add any water.

*My husband likes both of these recipes and HATES rhubarb. Just saying…

Rhubarb Jelly

If you like and make rhubarb jelly, I have found that if you wash and freeze the rhubarb in 1″ chunks. You can later thaw it and the juice from it is a beautiful pink and that is all you need to use to make your jelly. Just measure out the amount your recipe calls for. You don’t have to go to the trouble of cooking the rhubarb and straining the juice out. I just thaw, squeeze the rhubarb in the plastic bag to get any more out and you are ready to make jelly. Not near the mess and tastes delicious! You could use the rhubarb pieces to make the cake above. Two gifts in one! Oh yes, and when you thaw a plastic bag, whether it be Ziploc or a no name brand, please put it in a large bowl as I have found that sometimes the juice seeps out of the bag while thawing. What a mess that can be!

Grandma’s in the House – The Catssss

Grandma had six cats when she was going to move in with us. She was going to have them put down (to put it nicely), and we told her to bring them here. They got ahold of 4 of them to put in cat carriers and brought them to our house. The grandson who lived next door, kept the other two. After trying to tear the cages apart, they made it down here. We put butter on their feet so they couldn’t find their way back where they had come from, and they all scattered from the nice warm barn we gave them to sleep and live in.

They were back that evening and still here the next day, which I was glad of at the time.

Gma came with two 20 pound bags of cat food, different kinds, that we were to mix together, because the cats like it that way. They are too fussy to eat only one kind of food at a time. However, whenever they get in the garage where my cats are, they woof down my singular kind of cat food, like there’s no tomorrow. Gma buys the expensive stuff, I buy Dad’s cat food.

Two of those cats do everything they can to get into the garage. These cats came with enough blankets and rugs to wrap a sheik in comfort. They are nicely sprawled over soft mounds of straw so they can sleep in softness like a kitty cloud. Yet, they try to dig under the doors to get into my garage, where there are no such comforts. They follow me over and wait at the door until I come out, then try to out-maneuver me to get in.

Oh yeah, and when I go down to feed the precious darlings in the morning, Gma hands me two wet PAPER TOWELS to clean out their precious dishes so they can eat, because cats don’t like to eat or drink in a dirty pan. I think that’s funny, because after I clean and pour fresh water, they always go out and drink out of the mud puddles…