No White Shoes after Labor Day

When I was a little girl I had two pairs of “church shoes”. They were both patent leather; one pair was white and one pair was black. The rule was you wore white shoes from Easter to Labor Day, and after Labor Day until Easter you wore black. It is funny how I relive that memory every Labor Day. Year after year on Labor Day I announce, “Put your white shoes away”, to no one in particular.

As time goes on so do fashion trends and the rules of many years ago. I now have several pairs of shoes that I can wear to church. They are in lots of different colors and certainly not patent leather. I wonder, what stories would you be able to tell about the rules in your house when you were little? Do you still hold true to those rules or are they just a memory?

Mushrooms in My Yard

I think mushrooms are really cool organisms. I don’t know much about identifying them; I just like looking at them. After lots of rain, they simply appear. You don’t know when, where, or what kind, but the spores are hanging around and the mushrooms just show up. 

I leave them in my yard when they appear because I like how they look. All sorts of varieties, shapes, and colors; it is all part of nature’s visual artwork. 

When I see these little creations of nature, it reminds me of walking through the woods at my childhood home; mushrooms would be scattered throughout the woods. There were also lots of books I read as a child with illustrations of fairies sitting on the tops of the mushrooms. 

We have had a lot of rain here in Charlotte lately and when I walk around in my yard I find mushrooms all over. I think they are lovely and when I see them they inspire stories. They remind me of legends, folktales, my youth, the woods, and my childhood home. In fact, I think there is even something spiritual about these lovely little things just appearing. 

Here are some pictures of the mushrooms that have appeared in my yard this week. One of them even has a little buddy attached to it; a snail is taking refuge under the umbrella of one of them. Can you find it? 

You can also get lots of information about mushrooms simply by searching for mushrooms. Here is one reference I found that you might find interesting. 

Butternut Squash

Squash. I know, the word is weird and makes your mouth turn up on one side, but I like squash. One of my all-time favorites is Butternut Squash, maybe because of the memories and the story that is attached to it. When I was a little girl for a snack my mother would cut a butternut squash in half and put it flesh side up in our gas oven to bake. It would get soft and brown and beautifully caramelized.

Mom would take it out of the oven put some butter and salt on it and smash it up in the shell. Then we would use spoons, not forks, to eat it. It was like hot ice cream, sweet and salty. When I make it in my own kitchen the memory of my mother, the old farm kitchen, and that ancient gas stove come back to me. I close my eyes when I take a bite and for a few moments, I am a little girl again.

What garden food reminds you of a story and takes you back home again? Write it down and tell your kids about it, or better yet, get that food and relive the memory with them. Tell me about it here in the comments, I’d love to hear the story.

Daddy's Rolaids Bottle

There is a Rolaids bottle sitting on shelf in my house. It is special to me. Really, it is! I'm sure you've scrunched up one side of your face wondering how a plastic bottle that says Rolaids on it could have extra significance to me. 

There is a story in it. Years ago, my father would buy Rolaids and take them for his heartburn, which he often had. Then he would save the bottle and put pennies in it. The bottle that sits on my shelf is ¾ of the way filled with pennies. When I look at it, I see my dad taking a penny out of his pocket, opening the lid of that plastic jar and dropping it in there. I laugh at the memory: Daddy had Rolaids bottles scattered here and there  throughout the house, each one worth its weight in pennies.

Every cent in my little bottle was held by my father; he touched every one of them and valued them all because “a penny saved is a penny earned.” My father left the earth more than two decades ago, and I miss him every day. Yep, that plastic bottle of pennies is special, and it will remain on my shelf in an honored place.

Groundhog Day

Last week Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow.* 

I've never met Phil, but I've seen lots of his kin in my lifetime. A groundhog is a woodchuck, a rodent, a ground squirrel. I grew up on a farm in the Catskill Mountains of upstate New York and there were woodchuck holes all over the fields. The critters liver underground, where they dig long tunnels with several openings on the surface. When I was a young girl, I my father stopping me from galloping a horse through the field. He took me out to that field, showed me a groundhog hole and said, “If that horse steps in one of these holes while running, it's gonna break its leg and we’ll have to put ‘em down.” I never ran a horse through the field again.

In Germany, hedgehogs were the animal of choice to predict the coming of spring. But when German immigrants came to America, there were no hedgehogs to be found — so they called upon the woodchuck to predict the weather. It works like this: if the groundhog sees its shadow, it will be scared of the shadow and run back down the hole to sleep for another 6 weeks. But if the groundhog does not see its shadow, it means spring is close at hand. Now, mind you, groundhogs are only 40% successful at actually predicting the coming of spring, but still the ritual happens every year. Oh well, what can you expect from a humble rodent that never went to college.

*If you aren't happy with Phil's prediction, here are 8 other groundhogs that predicted spring last week.