HONEYSUCKLE'S OUT!!

 

Per

                         Perfect palette of color in the lawn-wide Fairy Dell.

Pictures of growing spring, and farms, and homes,
With the Fourth-month eve at sundown, and the gray smoke lucid and bright,
With floods of the yellow gold of the gorgeous, indolent, sinking sun, burning, expanding the air;
With the fresh sweet herbage under foot, and the pale green leaves of the trees prolific;
In the distance the flowing glaze, the breast of the river, with a wind-dapple here and there;
With ranging hills on the banks, with many a line against the sky, and shadows;

And the city at hand, with dwellings so dense, and stacks of chimneys,
And all the scenes of life, and the workshops, and the workmen homeward returning.

Walt Whitman   "When Lilacs Last . . .'

We're still in the mud-stage from last sunset's quick, fast Gully-Washer---so dark, I hurried out to put the cans out, then a bright hour and a half before the real dark fell velvet blue.   But this morning, I noticed four clumps of tulip greens---the faithful old things were here when we moved in, and that's 29  years ago. Last year they didn't even bloom, but we left them there in hope, sorta like a faithful old dog who's outlived his huntin' days, but still deserves a place by the fire.

And Miss Effie, the nesting flamingo who sits at the foot of the BIG TREE, will soon lay a few tiny pastel eggs in her nest, in honor of the Season. She's been with us since three houses ago. You DO know that flamingoes sitting on a nest are NOT TACKY, don't you? Just wanted to be sure.

And all over the beds, small remnants of Used-to-Be narcissus and jonquils and hyacinth are peeping out---remnants of impulse grabs at the check-out of many a long-ago wait-in-line a the grocery, the fillin' station, and other places that stick the pretty temptations RIGHT THERE while you're waiting and have your wallet out anyway---those bulbs dried in a sack in the fridge drawer to give them the whole renewing-cycle of a REAL year, if they're lucky, and tossed toward the mulch pile in June and missed, if they weren't. 

 The moss is a verdant blanket of velvety hues, all across the back garden, and with all this lovely weather lately, REAL Spring  promises to be right around the corner. Before we know it, the grapevines will be sending out their little seeking fingers and the Fairy Dell is already filling with the gleamy leaves of millions of little purple violets. Something about hundreds of yellow dandelion blooms scattered upon that moss among the dainty purples---the color wheel knows what it's doing---perfection.   The Winter-crimped carpet of ivy is already beginning to green up and shine, and even a couple of bushes have either retained lots of fresh leaves, or they're just jumping out to get a head start.

I'm headed out now to shear off a few limbs of the Honeysuckle visible from Leah's high window---it's waving in the constant breeze out there snugged up with the wind chimes, and perhaps I'll pick a blossom or two, put my tongue to the honey, and for a moment, be EIGHT again, lying in clover, tasting the hot Summer sweetness of those years---dusty feet,  scabbed knees and all.  

SPRING LETTER FROM MISS MARTHY

A SPRING LETTER FROM MISS MARTHY TIDWELL:

Dear Rachel,

I hope this letter finds yall all well and warm, and dug out from under all that Ice and Snow!  We are all well as Common and gettin all set up for Spring.  

Sledge got us a new little Troy-Bilt this year---said the old one was just give out, and too heavy, besides, so we've got the rows all ready, and some of the reddishes are just about eatin-size and the peas might soon make a good mess to cook.   I know your Mammaw always said wait til after Good Friday to put a seed in the ground, but once he got his hands on that new little red plow, he was out there by February when he could find a sunny day.  He's got a good stand of snap beans and the cucumbers  and those  cantaloupe vines are takin off into the middles, already.    And I always think of that time with my Mama's cantaloupes the minute one vine shows on the ground---that was just the meanest thing that Mrs. Walker ever did, and Mama never forgot it.   

I don't know if I ever told you the story, but it come about with the Missionary Society at their July Meeting.   You know, they went around the county, with one church hostin one year, and another the next---well it was our turn, and there was such a great foofraw for everything to be JUST SO---you know how good cooks put their best pot forward haha.   And this year they had the idea to make a really fancy Salad Bar like they'd see on a cookin' show.   

Well, we'd had a real Bumper Crop from that handful of saved-up seeds you gave us on our trip up there that year, those Decker seeds that they said wouldn't grow anywhere but Indiana---well they musta thought our Miss. dirt was close, because we had a right smart good turnout all through July.   We had enough to give a few neighbors one, and they just couldn't quit makin' over those Mushmelons.   

So when Mama heard that the preacher's wife had saved up grapevines and made baskets special for the boquets for the tables, and their son John had come home that day before from Delta State just to do the flower arrangements---who ever thought ferns and pitcher plants and bayou lilies would look so elegant?  Well, Mama thought she'd give everybody a taste of those good melons.

She'd saved up four of the best ones.  You know they're big as a basketball, and so sweet.   Well she got out a couple of real nice platters, and begged the borry of Earnestine's silver wedding platter, too.   She peeled and sliced those melons into the perfect moon shapes, and I'm tellin' you those platters looked like a magazine.   We even put a few sweetpea blossoms on there for a little purple.   We had to put books in the back seat to balance 'em all flat, but they made it to the Fellowship Hall OK.    

 I went on ahead, because I had made a double recipe of Chicken Salad.   Four of us did, to have enough.  Then I waited and helped carry in the platters and they were so pretty under that Saranwrap. 

The melon went into the church refrigerator to last the mornin til lunch, and when finally lunchtime came, the church ladies brought in the food.   Everything looked so pretty when the ladies came into the hall, and Mama walked over to see all three of her platters of that golden goodness, and she got the shock of her LIFE.    Them slices was just plumb gritty-gray cause they was scattered with enough black pepper for a hog killin'.   And salt too, had to be---for all those pretty slices, washed down in all the juice leakin' out, and just RURNED that good melon.   Well, somebody had done takened, and scattered hafe a box of black pepper all over them cantaloupes!!  It looked like it was covered in ants, and a lot were swimmin’ in the juice down on that silver Weddin’ platter!  

I could see the tears in Mama's eyes for how ugly that was and  all that waste.  And Mrs. Walker standin over there, just watchin to see how Mama took it.   Mama asked who did that and why and she said, "That's the way WEE like it at Mye house." 

Mama said she first started to say this wasn't her house it was the Lord's house and she hadn't no businness prinkin up somebody elses food, but she just kept her mouth shut because ladies from all over the county were coming in.   But many and many a member saw that mess and knew all that salt and pepper was just to burn Mama's hide.   I don't know if Mrs. Walker ever got to help with a luncheon again.    I do know that hardly anybody ever made over her food at First Saturday again, and plumb few ever took any on their plates---even when she made that Mountain Mama Delight, and that's sayin' somthin.       

That's all til next time.  I clean forgot to turn on the TV for my story, I got so caught up in tellin this.   Take all mistake for Love,

                 your friend,   Marthy Tidwell

 

LIME PICKLES AND CANDIED WATERMELON RIND

 

We've had a fabulous celebratory time this LONG already weekend---Friday with a six-year-old neighbor who LOVES pink and pretties like we do---she and her Mama came for cookie decorating for a couple of hours.   Then Sweetpea and her Mama were here for Easter Lunch yesterday, with wonderful tales of their St. Patrick's Week trip to Ireland.   Her high school band was invited to St. Patrick's Day parade, and they had a wonderful week.   They had also made a tour around Europe last June, performing concerts in five countries.  Her Ganner would be SO proud---he brought home so many musical instruments while she was younger, and she settled on playing Clarinets, but also plays Sax as well.   

Today was just us of the house, slow and comfortable, choosing lunch from several days' yummy leftovers, a whole afternoon with just pre-views and trailers of the "new" Jane Austen series---it was almost like watching the whole movie---we KNOW how it ends, Heart/Heart.   Our favorite Author---we speak often in Austenese, with quotes from all the books populating our conversation in our Southern Drawls.  We exchanged our Easter bags---always new Spring-flavored shopping bags to each other, and mine had divine Silicone kitchen items---ladles and spatulas for every use, candy and Peeps and a Moon Pie and best of the best---she'd searched and found the jars of Candied Watermelon Rind I used to save up 79 cents to buy for myself at Safeway every two weeks when they were all babies.   It came in a narrow jar like olives always came in---just room for about seven of the inch-big cubes in a lovely green syrup.  They sold the candied Cantaloupe, as well, with golden syrup.      And she'd Amazoned two pints of LIME PICKLES, so very like the ones I learned to make from her Grandmother, my first Mother-in-Law.   Such sweet remembrance, and so thoughtful a gift.

 Then just at a beautiful sunset, the two small neighbor children were invited over again for a few moments to receive their bags of fun things and candy.   

The livestock has been fed (Seven cats, three possums and five raccoons that I know of---we should have bought stock in Friskies and Nutrena five years ago),---they get their dinner out the back door, on an immense cafeteria tray twice the regular length.                                                                                                                                     The dishes are awaiting Monday, and Leah has retired with a Miss Marple.    I've had a Spa Hour and it's Hubble Time, so good night and a Happy Week to you all!  

PS.  I reminisce and speak of my Mammaw so often here, I feel everybody should know about her by now.   Mammaw of the Roses, the family history told in stories, the dozen white Persian cats with one blue eye and one green, who "lived by the clock and the calendar and time for the mail to be up."   She had a correspondence with Park and Burpee seed companies which equaled her letters to and from family, didn't get an indoor bathroom until 1958,  raised two children in a shotgun house without electricity til "TVA came in 1938," and had a little grave of her first daughter out where she plowed and planted her garden. 

 I doubt that she traveled more than seventy miles in her life (to Memphis when Grandpa was in the hospital).  She had a black silk dress with a rhinestone pin in her closet that she'd ordered from Sears Roebuck to be buried in, and she wore it once the time Mother and Daddy took her to Memphis and she danced with Lawrence Welk.  

She also had The Louvin Brothers play and sing in her front yard when they were traveling from show to show with her Brother-in-Law's band.   I was about eight, and she and I served them noon dinner on the way to their next date, and she got to play along on her mandolin to Tennessee Waltz.

Today would be her 131st Birthday!

RADAR AND HER FAMILY

                                                            

We've had a long love and affinity for BUNNIES.   When we were first married, Chris knew I loved and missed having a pet in the house, and so surprised me with a precious pink-and-white baby rat.   She lived in an aquarium in aspen shavings, with a mylar-silver coffee-sack as her hidey-home, and traveled with us everywhere.   She'd travel in a charming small birdcage, and I'd sweep grandly into whatever motel we were occupying, with a scarf draped over her little house.   She was very easy to support---a tiny leftover from whatever our lunch/dinner was, her licky-water bottle, and whenever we got out of the car for any length of time in the Summer, we'd stand two or three icy cans from the drink cooler in her abode, to snuggle on to keep her cool.   We loved and cared for a succession of those little girls, for when one seemed to be gently easing into her last days, he'd being home a baby---Seven in all we had, over those first years.  

But before Penelope (christened PeePee forever by Daughter Two, when she immediately peed into her hand on first meeting)---there were Bunnies.  We lived in a tiny "mill" house in a charming little town on the Alabama line, and one cool evening near Easter when Chris came home from making calls on clients, our hug included a "Reach into my Pocket."    I obligingly reached into his blazer pocket, and encountered the softest, warmest little creature---she was white with a perfect little raccoon mask on her eyes and lop ears.   Due to the ears and the fact that MASH was playing in the background when he came home, her name was immediately RADAR.  He'd stopped by the local Rabbit Man's farm and picked her up for me.

And Radar loved living in that little house with the fabulous screened porch---she'd spend her days out there in the sunshine, and slept in her bin in the bathroom; the big old clawfoot-tub made a great hidey-space beneath til she got too tall to be comfortable under there.   We almost had to pay for renovations on that house---in the night, she would walk up to the bathroom wall, gently gnaw loose a piece at the bottom of the wallpaper, and start backing up, tearing that inch-sized strip toward the ceiling clean as a carpenter.   And WIRES!!!   Back then only our phones had charger-wires, and her great joy was to nip one in half and just keep walking.   And her HATE for a broom was lethal---she'd grab the bristles in her teeth, I'd swing the broom gently up in the air, and she'd hang on to give it an enormous KICK with her hind feet.  

Chris one day brought her home a Husband---a much larger long-hair Lop, and she had three babies in her bin in the tub.   The first one kinda escaped out into the tub, and was named Houdini; I was such a mystery fan we named the next two WhoDunnit and Sherlop.      And when we moved down to the coast, with a big yard, Radar's five babies with LONG hair like their Daddy were named Samson, Fabio, Rapunzel, Godiva and CrystalGale.   They found nice homes with neighbors and kin when we moved up here, and I 'spect there's a line of long-haired Lop-Ears still flourishing in LA (Lower Alabama in Chris parlance).

SUNDAY AT THE PICCADILLY

                                                           

Introducing two new folks, long-time residents of Paxton.

Estelle Emerson finished her after-church lunch well before her husband was done with his.   She never took much time with ordinary things like eating, because food had never appealed to her much; she considered a can of Beanie Weenies apiece to be a perfectly adequate meal.   She hated to have to cook and her sparse larder consisted of instants and microwaveables, with one shelf of the small pantry devoted to boxes of StoveTop and Minit-Raas and jars of Chef Boy ar Dee sauce.    She was a bright spot in the browns and end-of-Winter jackets and coats in her pink shiny jacket and a wide ferny skirt with a blaze of flowers.  

She consulted her purse and emerged with an old-fashioned gold compact, one that she had gotten as a graduation gift.   She did one of those chin-bob, three-point scans in the mirror, touched the corner of her mouth with her pinky finger, and dropped the compact back in.   Then she stood, took a quick brush at her skirt, and set a fast pace to the 50% Off Corner of the Gift Shoppe as her husband finished his pie.

Dennis, intent on scraping every last bit of coconut-laden filling from the stiff, lardy crust, sat there silently in his Sunday khakis and blue plaid 90%-cotton shirt as she disappeared through the archway.  He was used to Estelle's darting, dragonfly ways, her quick, deft movements around the house, and her no-nonsense economy of living life.       He dragged the side of his fork across every surface of the naked, perfect shell of the crust, opened wide and inserted every millimeter of the tine-end into his mouth.  He closed his lips around it, then withdrew it slowly from the tight channel, leaving it as shining as when he'd unwrapped it and its companion spoon and knife from their paper cocoon.   Giving a series of several satisfied little smacks, he checked his watch for Time-Til-Kickoff and sat back to wait.   Estelle liked to take her time.

And he liked to "Watch the Line."  There was always someone interesting or funny or dressed so special at these Sunday noon dinnertimes---from kids with tats and last-night's clothes, slept in or hurriedly recovered from a strange floor when noon-time sleep gave way to the quick, gnawing hunger of the young and hung-over.  Young guys with earrings slid unabashedly past cashiers with their trays of mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese, chicken noodles and slabs of chocolatey cake, while their dates heel-tipped past with small plates of green things which they might or might not eat, for fear of spoiling their lipstick or image or both.

An important-bustling smug-faced man with the large hair of a confident preacher herded several older folks to their seats, while a small caravan of well-dressed younger ones and several seasoned waiters followed with trays holding plates with one chicken leg or discreet small servings of turkey and gravy and big mooshy peas which comprised Walt's Senior Specials, along with little dishes of Jello or pie.

Dennis gazed longest at a petite, wrinkled lady in an outfit Twiggy would have killed for---tight little skirt and matching white pleather jacket with an oversized Newsie Cap in the same far-fetched material.   Her white GoGo boots and dandelion hair-to-match gave her the air of having popped onstage between scenes on Laugh-In, and stayed frozen there for the last fifty years, beginning as Goldie Hawn and ending as Golden Girl.     You could imagine her closet at home, with its lingering ghosts of Arpege and Intimate, hanging full of a lifetime of tee-ninecy ensembles of bright sweepy skirts, demure puff-sleeve white blouses, and little pumps with ankle socks.

Golden Girls Goldie's conversation matched her wardrobe---bright and effusive.   Her voice flew up and down the chirpy notes of the treble clef---sometimes like the tweetings of chattery birds, and at other moments, when she was really into her story and smiling wider than wide, it quite resembled the sound of the little plinky bar in a music box.

Estelle reappeared down the hall, carrying a flamingo-covered something which blended with her bright-splashed skirt and shiny jacket.   He realized that it was a bag---90-to-nothing there wasn't a thing in it, because Estelle was an acknowledged "Fool for Bags"---any kind, and shopping ones especially.   She even rotated them with the seasons and often, because her scant grocery list scarce ever filled two, and she liked to show them off.   

A stiff-haired crisp man in a black suit and squiggly ear-wire held the door as a smartly-dressed lady in an off-white pants-suit, pumps, and a dashingly-draped pink scarf breezed in.     Estelle and Dennis waited to go out, and the man's wary eyes continued scanning them til they stepped outside before he let the door swing shut behind them.  The smooth heavy white car, which they assumed belonged to the guarded lady, eased into a wide parallel at the curb, motor running and the driver as alert as the escort, as Estelle and Dennis, one brightly striding like a flitting gaudy bird, and the other headed for his La-Z-Boy, retrieved their own big Chevy, gently rounded a hitchhiking backpacker and turned toward home.