Flowers, Fish Hooks and Relatives

Today's post is going to follow the same attitude as yesterdays. A little angry, a little disappointed and really surprised.

Cemetery flowers. Yep, that's what I said, cemetery flowers. If you have ever passed a cemetery, graveyard, whatever you want to call it, you have seen thousands and thousands of flowers sticking up across the landscape. Ever wonder how they get there? Who puts them there? Who tends them?

Well, if you say yes to any of those questions then it isn't you that has that job. In my family, my Mama is the one who cares for the final resting places of my brothers, Papa and Granny. I am sure she didn't ask for this job, it was thrust upon her years ago when she and my Daddy buried their twin sons. From that point on she has always kept the flowers on all the graves fresh, seasonal and beautiful. I have, just recently started helping her with this task. Now for years she has taken my brother and I to the cemetery with her to place the flowers and clean up around the graves, but the task of actually getting the supplies and placing the flowers in the vase is new to me. I guess this is her way of passing on what will become my task in many many many many years from now. There are other family members that could help with this, if not physically, financially would be nice. As I have discovered while shopping with my Mama for the appropriate floral arrangements, it ain't cheap! Yea, we could go to the dollar tree and get some cheap, faded, trashy plastic crap flowers and toss them in a vase but we have more respect for our relatives (both living and dead) than to do that. We have seen way to many sad arrangement, mismatched, plain ole ugly sickly sticking out of a vase. I have even rearranged a few on strangers graves because I felt bad for both the dead and the living.

The problem with getting nice flowers, flowers that not only are appropriate for the deceased but for the season and aside from the cost and time is this... PEOPLE STEAL THEM! Yes, they steal our flowers straight from the graves. What kind of sick, twisted, morally bankrupt person do you have to be to steal from the dead? Seriously, this really really pisses me off. Not just because someone took the flowers that good money and time were spent on but they desecrated my loved ones graves in doing so. Now I know that there was no physical damage done to the site, but that is so not the point.

For Christmas, my Mama and I got 3 small trees, little ornaments and garland. She wired all the ornaments on the trees and I forced the little tree bases into the brass vases, making it damn near impossible to pull out. I knew after the holidays we could cut the bases and get the trees out. Two or three days after we placed the vases back in the cemetery Mama calls me from there and sure enough someone had tried to take a tree. She knew this because you could see where they had placed their hands around the base to yank it out, they bent the tree, the ornaments and messed up the ribbon tied around the bottom. Mama straightened it up, fixed it back pretty for the season. All the while cursing the name of the failed thief. (I'm sure she wasn't actually cursing... she was probably praying for their soul, I was cursing.)

We have joked about making an arrangement and hiding fishing hooks amongst the flowers so whoever tries to steal them would get a very painful punishment, and I would truly love to do that. However, I am quite sure it would end up either Mama or me with a hook in our fingers, we would laugh about it though because that's what we do.

I guess I should try to think of a more humane way to discourage these pigs from stealing our flowers, perhaps we should tie small prayers to each flower on pretty ribbons. Maybe the phone number of a church or pastor. Its something to think about, but I like the fish hook idea better!

Food for thought

Food, yep food. Why is food so important, I mean besides the obvious, it keeps us alive. Think about it, some of the best times revolve around food. 

What brought this on? I was watching Food TV (big surprise) and Anthony Bourdain asked whoever he was interviewing, "what food reminded them of their childhood?" This got me thinking, what food reminded me of childhood? I grew up with people cooking, my Mama always cooked dinner, my Memama cooked everything for every meal for everyone, my Papa was a great cook and I watched. My brother loves to cook, he used to get up in the middle of the night when he was a teenager and cook, I would hear the silverware drawer close and smell something sizzling. I remember sitting on the floor in my Big Mamas kitchen (my great grandmother) while she made pies in metal fluted pie pans. I watched Papa glaze this huge ham with shiny 

sweet juice and make his famous chocolate frosting that got hard on the cake, so it cracked when you cut it. I still cant make that icing. Memama, cooking bacon at 4am, yes 4am, Im not kidding, 4AM. The smell of bacon still reminds me of her house. She also makes the best fried corn, and pound cake, ohhh yum!

OK, back to the question, what food reminds me of childhood? You may be thinking its cake or cookies or something kiddie like, but its not, its Roast. The smell of the Sunday roast with lots and lots of carrots (I love carrots), potatoes, onions and celery all cooking together in the oven. The whole house smells delicious from top to bottom. Sometimes, if your lucky, the smell lasts till Monday, so when you open the door it wafts out in a wonderful cloud of yummy. 

We may be an overweight nation, we don't exercise enough, we don't always eat the right things, but food brings us together and there is nothing wrong with that. A big southern family gathered around a big southern table, holding hands, blessing our food, thanking God for everyday together. 

There's you some food for thought, how about thanking God everyday, not just once a year on an overdone holiday.

Memories of Pecans

I played hooky today! Stayed home with my hubby. We cleaned a little, went shopping took a nap, it was nice. By this afternoon I wanted to sit outside in the fading sun and enjoy the little warmth left from this beautiful day. I decided to make good use of my time outside and shell pecans. Thats pronounced pea-cauns, not pee-cans, anyway. You may find shelling pecans boring, strange, laborious, whatever i like it. So out to the swing I went, two bowls and the pecan cracker. My pecans came from my Memamas trees in Georgia. She has 12 or 14 huge, old trees. This year was the first time I ever got a bag of pecans from her without my Grandaddys grading system inside.

Let me explain. Grandaddy would pick up the pecans as they fell from the trees. He would put all of that particular year in bags, date the bags, time and approximate location and place them in a very large freezer to be used at will or given to family. So every year i get nuts from Memama, when I got them from the freezer to shell, there would be a small piece of paper inside, with Grandaddys handwriting on it with the date, time and approximate tree. Sometimes he would grade the nuts as good, dry, large or plump. This bag, had no grade, no description. Grandaddy died in June.

But I have such sweet memories of the pecans. Of picking up pecans in the yard with him for years and years. He made it seem fun, not the boring job it could of been. He had a pecan picker upper thing, it had a long handle with a wire, cage thing on it, looked kind of like a spring. You pushed it along the ground and the pecans got into the metal and couldnt fall out. It was open on one end to dump out the nuts. My aunt and i would pick them up by hand, he said we were closer to the ground and could get them better that way. He showed me how to hold two of them in my little hand and press really hard together, cracking one of the nuts, then you could pick out the good pieces and eat them in the yard while you were suppose to be picking up nuts.

Grandaddy and I would sit outside his shop and crack pecans, with the same type of cracker I have today. He would just crack them, not shell them completely. i wold take the bucket into the house to Memama where she would finish shelling them and make Chewy Cake! Yum!!!

Shelling the pecans leaves my hands dry with brown pecan dust under my fingernails, little bits of nut stuck there too. Sharp shells all over the porch floor, and you know what... I wouldn't change it for the world.