Two Weeks in a Blender

The other day, as Cappy and I (and the dawgs in tow) were driving him out to his boat...a day early again...Grrr...he was feeling kind of down that we hadn't gotten a lot of things done that were on our set-in-pudding 'to do list'. Taking a deep breath here; yeah, we 'lolly-gagged' a lot...not.

Where to begin...where to begin. Well, no doubt you read Cappy's post about having all his innards checked out, with all the dr. visits and waiting room dawdling that goes with it; precious time that we might have spent doing other fun stuff; but oh well, at least now we know he's fine. Poor Cappy; not knowing anything for sure there, for awhile, had him kinda shaken a bit...and me, too. We think the whole 'hullaballoo' was caused by the new 'sugar medicine' he was prescribed. What we call, "The Yellow Toenail Syndrome". You know; if ya take the prescribed pharmaceutical drug to get rid of a slight toenail fungus, you could end up with your liver falling out, your ears ringing like the cracked liberty bell, sarcoma of the sacroiliac, or your whole leg having to be amputated...but my, don't your toenails look nice?(!) (So, we are still pondering as to what we are going to do about that.)

As long as we were over in the Baton Rouge area, we went to visit our friend, Lona, at the hospital, who had just undergone knee-replacement surgery the day before. Yow! This lady is one strong woman. As we got there, she was just walking (!!!) back to her bed from 'the other room'. I was suffering just watching her. It was obvious she was in very much pain, but she said she'd already done some excercises as part of her recovery therapy, and encouraged another lady, who had, had the same procedure, to do the same. I guess the other lady was prolonging the inevitable, like I would. I still shudder to think about it. Lona's a stronger gal than I am, Gunga Din.

From there we wandered around Baton Rouge and had a wonderful supper at TJ Rib's. My mouth is watering again, remembering that luscious buttery steak. I keep promising myself that when son, Dan comes back for a visit, we have got to take him there. He likes sports, and there are a lot of "Shaq"memorabelia on display there. We could put a motor on the back of one of Shaquille O'Neal's shoes and tool on down one of the bayous in it!

We also spent an hour or so in the Whole Food Store; which is way too easy to do, put our healthy purchases in the SUV, then went across the street to Goodwood Hardware, where they have the most incredible cooking things. It's like Cajun heaven in there! Cappy wandered around with his hands in his pockets, and since it was his 'maiden voyage' in that store, when asked by a friendly greeter if he could help us find anything, Cappy tersely said, "No thanks, I'm just looking, that's why we have no shopping cart". Well, that lasted for about two aisles, 'til he told me to run and get one. After jamming our stash in the back of the SUV amongst the environmentally correct grocery bags, brimming over with the health food purchased earlier, we meandered around til we found a West Marine store, where Cappy bought a water-resistant radio, for his Jeep; the new radio which had just been installed when he was last off the boat....had gotten water-logged somehow, during several rainstorms that took place in his absence.

Sooo...on toward home we came. Speaking of rain, he had me pull into a parking lot just a hair's breath ahead of a crashing thunderstorm. He wanted buy me a surprise he'd had in mind for our 6th anniversary. Ok...OKAY!!! But I wanted to run in as fast as I could get in there, because of all the lightening going on; the wind was throwing twigs and flowers off the crepe myrtle trees and candy wrappers and plastic bags had joined in league with the tremendous incoming force of nature, and were rolling on ahead of it, in the charge across the parking lot, threatening everyone to get out of it's way. Cappy had one hand jammed into his pocket and was holding onto my hand with the other, was slowly sauntering along, chin up, humming a tune, and had a look of serenity on his face. I, on the other hand, could almost feel the electricity in the air standing my hair on end (leastways that's how I imagined it), so I tried to pull loose from his grip, wild-eyed, ducking and jumping, and 'bungee-cording' my arm out and back, ahead of him to try to drag him toward the store, but he had an anchor dragging somewhere. We musta looked like an 'interesting' couple viewed from inside the store. As we neared the automatic doors, he told me the same 'joke' he always does, "Do you know what a Cajun does when it rains?" I muttered under my breath. He continued, "He gets wet...know who tole me dat one? Daddy".

Looking back, seeing as how the whole mission to this store, in the first place, was for my benefit, I'm feeling kind of guilty now. He bought me an MP3 player! It seems as though I've wanted one all my life, even before they came up with such a thing. (The last couple of days I've been having more fun putting songs that I like on it, but boy, am I picky!...no Dr. Hook.)

Coming home we were thrilled to be able to drive on the new road that has been in the works for the last twenty years. By the time they got all the 'red tape' and etc. unraveled, the actual work only took a couple of years to be completed. We all thought we'd never live to see ourselves riding on it. One poor ol' boy bewailed, "I'm never going to ride on it, am I?" then passed away a day or two before it opened. As Cappy and I rode along on it, we discovered that this new 'short-cut' warn't all that short after all the intensive waiting and excited nail-biting. Politics, no doubt. 'They' took what, in our opinion, should have only been a couple miles long, and snaked it around in the sugar cane fields so that it's now almost five miles in length. Plus, we hate to be critical, but we are nervous about the train crossing that runs across the middle of it. Perhaps it's that there have been a lot of train crashes in the news lately, but we were very apprehensive when the view along the approach to the tracks was blocked solid by thick trees on both sides of the road. Looking down the length of the tracks while crossing, one is reminded of a dark green tunnel, where an Amtrak could come blazing out at any second and into the side of any car who happened to be on the tracks. There are crossing rails and lights, yes (which are still new, so we hope the 'bugs' are being worked out of 'em) but there are also stop signs. The second time we had to go across it, I kept gawking at the thicket of trees to my left, scanning to see if a fast train might be whizzing along toward where we would intersect. No, no train that I could see. A truck was plowing along behind us, with speed that let me think that he had no intention of stopping, or even slowing down on the rails. Still, I slowed down, rolled down my window to listen....nothing...so I rolled onto the tracks, turned to my right to look down that dark tunnel, but RIGHT THERE on the tracks was the AMTRAK with it's headlights ON!!! I screamed and floored the gas pedal. I think I heard Cappy shriek too!...I looked at him and his eyes were wide, looking directly at me! Then I realized the train was just sitting there on the tracks, lurking in the bushes on the righthand side of the road. He had seen it before I had, but when I screamed, he apparently thought I had lost my mind right then and there in the middle of the train track.

So that was an adventure.

Cappy got to go meet up with a group of fellas from our vicinity, who get together at their camp once a week to share stories and a good meal. One of the guys, Mr. Sam, took Cappy with him as he gathered a truckload of new 2 1/2 gallon chemical containers that he would use to recycle and convert into fish traps, which he would use in the lake near us, and in doing so, drove through one of the most beautiful plantations around our area, called the Evergreen Plantation ( http://www.evergreenplantation.org/ ). Cappy took a few pictures, and intended to take a few more on their next excursion, but sadly, Mr. Sam's dear mother-in-law passed away this week. He's such an exhuberant fellow, with tons of enthusiasm and laughter, and we are heartbroken for his loss and that of his family.

Speaking of the "ol' boys", they are an amazing bunch of folks. From previous posts, you may or may not remember that I absolutely adored William F. Buckley, for his wisdom and intellectual humor. Well, these guys have that. One of them, Mr. Jerry, (who belies his age) who raises the beautiful Serama chickens, among other specimans of God's creatures, invited Cappy and me, along with a few of the other guys in their group to go have supper with them at their home. Oh MY GOODNESS!!! I have a lot of words at my disposal, but they escape me as to describe what a wonderful place he and his wife Fay, have. I should have taken tons more pictures. Their home is sheltered among many live oak trees, replete with the long hanging Spanish moss, beautiful plants, a cozy bayou in back and along the driveway, wooden walkways to...well, we didn't get to visit the farm area, as of yet, but it looked so darned inviting out thataway. Mr. Jerry cooked a Creole jambalaya, beans, had a salad, and a decadent dessert for the group. I'll tell you what...Cappy went home Happy...and so did I!

...and look! As we were talking away, this graceful gentleman came regally gliding by. As I have mentioned, my camera has been fighting me, of late...rats! He is gorgeous...more gorgeous-er than he appears here, that's for sure.
Oh, the two weeks were filled with all kinds of great stuff. Our neighbor, Brad, came home from the hospital in Houston. He's still not overtly responding, YET. He will be. He looks as handsome as ever, and he's got so much love and support. Every time Cappy stepped out the door to go visit, there were a "ton of cars in da driveway...I don't wanna intrude on 'em". That family's strength is awe-inspiring.
During this last two weeks, Fathers' Day was stuck in there, with the kids calling and telling their ol' Pops they love him. SparkyBear and MarkyBear got him three DVD's ("Secondhand Lions" among them, and at the end, he hollared, "DANG! Dat movie made me cry! You are married to a WOOSE!" LOL...it's a great movie and Cappy's not a woose...he's just got a tender heart, and I love him for it.) Then of course the obligatory reading materials. Books, books, books. The man's gotta read! Stories of the high seas, this time; another series.
The second Saturday he was home, Cappy "manned da pit". That's a "gotta do"every time he gets off the boat; "Jammin' to da Blues, smokin' up da neighborhood". YUM-mee!
For our early anniversary, (because he'll be on the boat on the 29th) Cappy declared the day to be "Nekked Day". (shock and horror!! After all this reading, have I got you sitting up straight now? :-) Actually, we parade around in our pj's the entire day if we want, watching movies, eating wings, imbibing, being downright decadently lazy. I gave Cappy his anniversary present...a karaoke machine with lots of Blues CD's to howl along with. As he was unearthing everything from the box, he came across the microphone and said, "I aint singin' with no microphone...don't need it". Well, he gets the thing all hooked up, and as I'm coming out of the other room, he starts it up and begins merrily and loudly singing away. As I round his chair, I notice he's sitting there, head leaning way back, eyes closed, mouth wide open, belting out a very cool version of something or other, holding the mic at an angle and in a manner that I've only seen used by ol' Tom Jones. He looked way too comfortable for this to have been his first time manhandling a microphone, I tell ya. Well, we sang and sang til our singers were sore, until sometime after midnight. Mercifully, no one called the police.
The next day, for our extravagant anniversary dinner out, we went to Gonzales to a restaurant called, "Sno's". (It was 90 degrees outside.)We called Cappy's sister, Maria, so she and her husband, Darryl came to the restaurant to help us celebrate. Before they got there, I understood why they call the place "Sno's"...I was Freezing in there! I went out to the vehicle to try to scrounge up a sweater or something, and met Maria and Darryl in the parking lot, so she turned and found me a black windbreaker and her a sweater in their trunk. Next time I'll remember. At the table next to us, a lady was wearing a coat, and her daughter was wearing a pink winter coat, with fur around the hood, which was pulled up over her head, and around the collar. Again...I don't wanna comPLAIN...but...sheesh. It was cozy tho, once I wasn't freezing, and Maria and Darryl got us caught up on their trip with Darryl's art class to Italy. I can't relate any details here, but they had us laughing so hard we were crying. And they brought us back souvenirs; Cappy a statue of David refrigerator magnet, with 'clothes' to interchange, me a beautiful filigree bracelet, and for each of our dogs, a St. Francis of Asisi dog collar medallion. I think they have no idea about how much that touched my heart. It was a wonderful day, and when we got home we found a plastic bag on our front doorstep, where someone had left us...Bless their heart...(and, I...I...I really mean it now...Bless their heart, for they didn't know...) had left us a ton of cucumbers and tomatoes.
So, that's where it ended, and that's where it begins; Cappy out on dat boat, wishing he could have fit more into his two weeks off, and me, here at home, wishing I could have fit more cucumbers into his seabag.

The Results Are In

I went to the doctor yesterday, and she assured me all was well. My internal plumbin' was in good shape and she must think I'll be around for a while 'cause she said come back in 5 years.

With all the doctor visits and stuff, the 2 weeks home seemed to fly by. Now the ole sea bag sits packed and ready, and I'm waiting for a call to tell me 'bout crew change. I am already looking forwards to the next time I get off da boat and our annual family Jambalaya. I'm sure Peggy will do a better job than I did posting and keeping this Blog rolling while I'm gone. So for the next month I wish you all well, and hope you all try to practice the Cajun philosophy,"Joie De Vie"(joy of life). May God bless you and yours.

Cappy

Where We Been the Last Three Days

For those of you thas been wonderin' where we been for the last few days, I guess I should bring yall up to speed. I put off mentioning it 'til it was over and I could relate the whole story. In short, I been gettin' my plummin' checked. Sunday, I spent the afternoon swillin' down what seemed like a 55-gallon drum of "turbo-lax" super laxative, after having swallowed 4 regular over da counter laxatives for an 'appitizer'. I then spent the evening and into the night strapped to the toilet to prevent myself from bangin' my head on da ceiling as I launched myself up off from said throne, with jet-powered geysers of ...... well I'm sure ya get the picture. By 8 p.m. or so I could drink a glass of water, and it would hit "bottom" 'fore I could set the glass down.

After a 3 hour nap Peg and I got up at like 4:30 a.m. and got ready to to to the Doctor's office for the 'snake camera' exams. The 'turbo-lax' did an amazing job of cleansing my innards and I got pictures to prove it, which, much to yall relief, Peg refuses to let me post. I was so bloated, tho, that Peg coulda tied a tether around my ankle to prevent me from floating around. Good thing the place I was going had no neo-natal clinic on the way; what with the stuff about that pregnant guy all fresh in everybody's minds and all. Well...so we got there and they did the 'scopy' thing up one end and down the other. Before they knocked me out though, I hadda make the usual inquiries like: "Are ya gonna use the same camera for both procedures??? If so pleeeasssse do the upper one first" and "Yall did sanitize that thing from last time(?)... I mean ya didn't just wipe it off with a greasy rag like I do with the dipstick in my Jeep, right???" Well, since it was my very first time ever being 'knocked out', I mighta been just the least little bit nervous, so I remember thinkin' that I was lettin' the Lord know He was the last thing I was thinkin', and then poof, it was over. At first I thought it was the anesthesia guy who had woke me up, but now I'm not so sure, as I found myself in da recovery room with loud involuntary gas noises emminating from under my fluttering hospital blanket and bouncing off the walls, which sounded much like a first year student practicing his new tuba. I woulda been embarrassed, but there were other patients in there recovering as well, who had apparently been tuning up before I got there, and the nurses, who were attending to us, acted as though they heard nothing out of the ordinary, being used to it, evidently. With the test over, I got some great news, "no problems"; I looked 'good' from both above and below. It turns out that this wasn't the best news however, 'cause that meant they hadda look in the middle now with an x-ray machine. That meant I hadda stay on the clear liquid diet so's I could go back to the hospital the next morning for that test.

So, the next day we went back to the hospital, not as early though, thankfully. I got to drink this lukewarm, thick strawberry-flavored sludge, which was well.... drinkable....barely.

Then I spent 2 hours gettin' pictures taken every 15 minutes of the radioactive thick pink muck I had managed to swallow, as it slowly oozed it's way through my other-wise empty small intestines. This caused the most amazing stomach growls and gurgles I had ever experienced. I even had the x-ray techs giggling. Anyways, after havin' my bodily conduits thoroughly inspected, I'm proud to say I seem to have some squeaky clean healthy pipes, which I am happily junkin' back up with jambalaya, and cold beer.

A Picture Worth Many Words

I am not gonna rant about the many millions the Corps of Engineers spent on the new flood wall to upgrade New Orleans' hurricane protection. The new wall can be seen here all clean white and grafitti free. They recently scrubbed off a rather poinient one word statement that was located about a mile further to the left. It plainly said, "HINDSIGHT" and needed say no more; however even a ole country boy Cappy can easily see that the top 3 feet of this multi-million dollar flood wall aint even gonna get wet if there comes a flood. Bet ya aint gonna see this picture when the media toots the horn, patting the Corps on the back. Oh well, like I said , I aint gonna rant; I'll just let the picture voice my opinion of our tax dollers at work.

For those of you, who don't get it, at first glance, click on the picture to make it bigger and notice where the bright white wall slopes down to meet the older existing floodwall. What do YOU think will happen when the water comes up?

Another Hitch on Da Boat

Yep, I am home:-) Last hitch we spent alot of time in the New Orleans area. It had been awhile since we worked there, and it was a delightful change of scenery. We made several trips to lake Pontchartrain and several more down the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet. This required that we enter the Mississippi River and pass through New Orleans to get to the locks on the other side. Here is a link to our YouTube channel where Peg and I made a slideshow of some of the sights from my wheelhouse window. Hope yall enjoy the show. http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=zJa7pmbnhVw

A Good Trade; Even Stephen

As you know by now, in many Spring blog postings, how we've often mentioned the wonderful generosity and community spirit of our friends and neighbors in our small town. Many's the time dishes and pans of good home cooking or bags of garden produce have been paraded back and forth across the street from house to house. One time we were given a couple of very large, sweet watermelons, much too big for Cappy and me to consume by ourselves, so Cappy wandered down the street, watermelon atop his shoulder and found a Kool-Aid stand, being manned by some of our neighbor kids. Pretty soon all the kids in the neighborhood were sporting hunks of watermelon. It still puts a smile on our face. And we will never forget the time we were given Saints football tickets!!!

...Now the other night/morning, it seemed as though I had only just gotten to sleep, as visions of cucumbers danced in my head, after having spent the night, and into the wee hours of the morning keeping Cappy company over the phone, as he manuevered his boat and barge in and around narrow channels out in the bayous. Blissfully, I was in a deep, DEEP sleep. Suddenly, the dogs practically broke my eardrums barking and yelling, then bouncing the bed into 7 ft. waves as they thundered out of the bedroom. Startled, I staggered out into the kitchen to see what was the matter, when what to my foggy-brained eyes should appear, just outside the dog-door, "Mr. Stephen" was here. (He's the guy who had brought us "Cherie", our 5 ft cherry tree, and he had taken away, the next week, a pot of four o'clocks. We got the better bargain in that trade, but promised him some more substantial nightingales whenever I could get them rooted and on the road to 'nightingaling' properly. After four tries, it isn't looking good; I've managed to kill off every attempt.) Poor guy, he didn't know 9:30 in the morning was an ungodly hour for me. LOL! He stepped into the kitchen, so lively and quick, the dogs jumped all around him and started to lick his ankles. Good 'guard dogs'. He held out a white plastic sack, laden with fresh eggplants and tomatoes, and said, "I've come to take some of those cucumbers off your hands". (Oh Thank God! They just keep coming and coming like an unstoppable force. We have a wonderful community 'bulletin board', better known to us as the Forum, where all kinds of information passes hands, such as the plight of our garden blunder, which Mr. Stephen had read and decided to lend a hand.) He went over to the sink to deposit the bag he'd brought, but, alas, I'm not an altogether fastidious homemaker, and both my sinks had yesterday's pickle-making pans and tools still sitting in there tapping their feet, waiting for me to clean them up and put them away. Mr. Stephen, holding the sack aloft, which was bearing the produce from his garden, stared down into the sink as if something wasn't registering, walked away a few steps, then turned and walked back to the sink, looked down into it again, as if his brain was telling him, "Does not compute...does not compute", then gave up and set them in the dish-drainer. Cappy has warned me in the past that Cajun women take pride in immaculate kitchen sinks. I told Mr. Stephen that, when Cappy is out on the boat, I guess I live like a bohemian. It's frustrating for me, that my art projects and the like take up so much time, and I'm often torn as to priorities, finding myself, at the end of the day, lacking. Guess I just need more organization. I try writing lists, but everything seems to be a priority. Dang. Ok, now ya see how I wandered off course here? That's how these things happen.

Well, the crux is, I ended up with these beautiful tomatoes and eggplants, and Mr. Stephen took away a big sackful of those miserable, but beautiful cucumbers. That's what I call a good trade. But what Mr. Stephen doesn't know, is that, not only has he blessed me by doing the good deed that he did, he will be blessing our neighbors. I'm still cooking one day a week for Brad's brothers, and Maggie, our neighbor, who has been looking out for them. I plan on making eggplant parmesan for them, (one of Cappy's favorites) with the bounty of Mr. Stephen's garden. Then, when Cappy gets home this week, I'll have a batch in the freezer waiting for him.

So, yesterday as Mr. Stephen sprang into his red truck, and drove out of sight, I wanted to call after him, "

"Thank you, Mr. Stephen, but I think, once again, I got the better end of the deal, and to all a good-night." :-D

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.

Oh, You've Just Gotta See This.

...But the only way you can see any of it...sorry to say, is in your mind's eye. For some reason, lately, no matter how hard I try to hold still, my camera is only shooting blurry pictures. I think it's just as well, in this case. It's all kind of embarrassing.

How many stories have we posted on here in the past, that describes the typical 'Cappy and Pegody' things that we mess up...BUTwithTHEbestOFintentions? Too many to regale you with just now.

It's a week now, til Cappy comes marching home again, hurrah, hurrah. Every day of his hitch out there in the wilds, he's asked me, "How does the garden go today, my Love?" "Any sign of the okra?" "How 'bout da cucumbers, and what about dem crook't neck squash?" We had so much fun planting them in the little square foot garden, laughing and being our usual silly selves. Three days later, on his tugboat, he was fretting over what was taking the seedlings so long to emerge. Finally on the fourth day, things started happening, much to his relief and delight. Today, the okra is growing elbow to elbow with one another in that bed, standing way taller than I am now. Imposing figures they be. Just as long as I get my okra, I don't mind how tall and loud they get, unless a giant comes crawling down outa the clouds on one of 'em. There are still a few okra stragglers, tho' just getting in the game, who are kinda short, doing the best they can, under the shadow of their much taller siblings.

We only planted three things in that little garden box. The okra, yellow crooked neck Summer squash and cucumbers. The cucumbers are on one end, with a trellis for them to grow up onto, and the newcomers to our yard, making a debut appearance are the squash, which have a very nice string web trellis, that Cappy wove with his nautical know-how, in loving anticipation of their arrival. When everybody was growing nicely, I told Cappy that the squash didn't seem like they were crooked in their neck area. He said, "Well, just keep an eye on 'em and make sure they get plenty of water and Miricle Grow". So I did, then I went to Aunt Gussie's, with the dawgs, and when I got back, four days later, I could hardly believe my eyes! Instead of everyone in the garden playing nicely, it was a jungle out there. There was a 'rumble in the jungle', as well. The cucumbers, instead of playing nice, and climbing on their trellis, had grabbed the okra by the throat, and the ones who weren't attacking the okra, were making a run for it across the lawn to visit the fig tree and the citrus trees. I put everybody back in their appropriate places, admonishing them to, "Procreate!...your own kind...I might be old-fashioned and not liberal enough for ya, but I don't want any of your new-fangled cu-figs or cit-cues or anything else like that, that you might come up with...I don't want anything fancy...just behave yourselves and stay in your own beds!" (Sheesh, you turn your back on anything these days...)

After the dust settled I realized something else was amiss. The crooked neck squash were amissing. Whaaaa?? Instead of the squash there were large, perfectly beautiful, juicy cucumbers. Oh ok...heh heh...I guess we'd gotten our seeds mixed up, planting them on the opposite side of the bed, than we had thought we had. I went to the other side of the bed to look around for the golden yellow squash. Cucumbers...more gorgeous cucumbers peered out at me from the dark underbrush bidding me come git 'em. Whhaaaaa??? More cucumbers? Does that mean no squash?? I looked again, sticking my head into the dense tangle of big prickery leaves and runners, practically climbing into the thicket myself. Cucumbers. Lots of 'em in all different sizes.

So. Here I am in the middle of of cucumber 'hayo'. For the last week I've been hauling out six or more a day; handing them out to neighbors and chawing down as many as I could manage every day. Now today, with six of them still in the fridge, sitting in there cooling their heels til I figured out what to do with 'em, I went out to the garden today and hauled in 16 more of the green clubs. Ya know...there is a limit. The neighbors are not going to think it's funny too many more times, my foisting cucumbers off onto them, in feigned good-nature. It's like when I lived in western NY; it was the same with zucchini. It got to where when you offered your neighbors some freshly grown tomatoes, they'd ask suspiciously, "How many zucchini do I have to take before I can have the tomatoes", because, instead of handing the tomatoes, first, one had to be weighed down with an armload of the caveman-club-sized zucchini. It seemed as though the tomatoes were really carrots on a stick, luring you into the trap. By the time you got home and compared the amount of zucchini you got, to the amount of tomatoes, the tomatoes seemed more like lagniappe. And it's still going on today! On any given Summer day, while taking a drive in the country, I don't believe you can drive more than a mile without seeing piles of zucchini left along the road like so much cordwood, with a sign, saying, "FREE". I've even been fooled, thinking I was stopping at a vegetable stand, but by the time I got parked and to the counter, expecting to find the little jar to pay for my selection of produce, I noticed there was no selection; it was just more piles of zucchini, free for the taking.

Presently, I'm not really doing anything; and as my mother would say at times like these, "Soooo, here I sit...". I'm waiting for the cucumbers. I hauled about of dozen or more of 'em to the kitchen sink, sliced them, mixed them with some sliced onions, in a dark blue speckled porcelain washpan, salted them down, stirred crushed ice all around in them, covered and pressed them down. Now I'm waiting.

I like to joke with Cappy, that most people say, "When life hands you lemons, you make lemonade, but down here in South Louisiana, instead, they make big poofy lemon merangue pie". And when life (aka mishaps of Cappy and Pegody) hands us cucumbers, sending us into cucumber "hayo", I intend, instead, to send us into bread and butter pickle "heaven". So now you get the picture :-D