In a Pickle.

Yesterday I was starting to panic, with the sudden onslaught of big, heavy cucumbers landing on either end of our garden every morning. I wrote this on our local town forum:

Yeah, I've got another dishpan of bread and butter pickles salted down and icing, out there on the kitchen countertop. THEN, after I got that going, I went outside and gathered TODAY's Walmart bagful, so heavy the handles were stretching and threatening to break. I'm beginning to feel like Lucy and Ethel on the chocolate candy assembly line. What I'm gonna doooo? Panic and start stuffing them down my shirt and back pants pockets? Tomorrow I'm due to attend a family reunion and bring a dish to pass over near Opelousas. I'm thinking up all kinds of dishes that use a lot of cucumbers. And I'll set a load of em on the picnic table, too, for anyone who feels sorry enough for them to take and give them a good home. Now...if I come home and find where those two sets of 8 ft tall jungles have made way too many again, the neighbors might hear me out there yelling, "You want me to BEAT you with your own big fat cucumbers??? Is that what you want??!"

I managed to give our neighbor, Sonia, that big sackful, minus two that had managed to grow to a grotesque size hiding in the underbrush. The above picture is yesterday's vat of freezer pickles, which have been added to the previous day's batch. I haven't dared venture to the garden yet this morning, dreading the inevitable.

As it turned out, Aunt Gussie, Bless her heart, isn't feeling well today, and so is unable to go to the reunion, as planned. (Get well, Dear Heart.) Also, after three days down in 'da Gulf', where no phone service kept Cappy and me from communicating, and instead of my being able to go to the reunion, anyhow, they, out on the boat, are in dire need of a few medical supplies, and so, I will attend to that instead, later today. And tell ya what...those boys are also going to get a boatload of cukes and pickles, as well.