I'm back from my trip to market. It's always fun to go and see what's new and coming in the retail world, but it's also nice to get back home to the quieter roads of Mississippi after a few days in Atlanta traffic. It's good to be back home, where the peas and butter beans have come in, the watermelons are ripe, and the corn is ready to pull.

I've put up 29 bags of peas in the last couple of days. I was in the kitchen, late last night, blanching and bagging and feeling as close to a Proverbs 31 wife as I'll probably ever feel. I don't select much wool or flax, make coverings for my bed, and certainly never get up while it's still night, but, for a moment, I felt like I may have slightly grazed verse 14...."She is like the merchant ships bringing her food from afar." I guess that would make me the Proverbs 31:14-ish wife.

Putting up peas reminds me of my Grandmother's house. She and Granddaddy always had a big garden and whenever we visited them in the summer, it was all hands on deck. Granddaddy would spread out the peas he'd picked on a bedsheet inside, where they'd stay cool until they were shelled. After lunch, we'd all head out to the front porch to swing and rock....everyone coming with some sort of vessel full of peas to shell. A roasting pan, dish pan, large mixing bowls, or an empty ice cream bucket. Whatever Grandmother could come up with to get everybody in the game. We'd rock and swing and talk and shell. Waving at the cars as they passed by and discussing the possibility of rain. Sipping on a jelly glass full of Grandmother's sweet tea. Listening to the hum of the window air conditioner running inside and the occasional bobwhite in the distance. If you were lucky, there was a pot of peanuts boiling on the stove to snack on between pans of peas. I know it sounds like a hokey, stereotypical scene from a movie set in the South....you know the ones where people sit around sweating through their clothes and rocking all day...….but it's really how it was. Well, maybe minus the heavy sweating part. We'd just shell and shell until our thumbnails were sore and looked to be irreversibly stained green.

I'll never forget the sight of my Grandmother standing at her porcelain sink in her floral print duster cutting corn off the cob. Her hair would be wet with sweat as she'd stand there working for hours....ear after ear after ear. I don't know much about putting up creamed corn, but I do know you have to work an awfully long time to fill just one quart bag. Whenever she served that creamed corn, I thought about her at the sink and was always sure never to leave even one uneaten morsel. That was just pure love on that plate and I seemed to realize that even at an early age.

They grew potatoes, tomatoes, peas, corn, muscadines, squash, pears, watermelon, pecans, and I'm sure there's a lot that I'm forgetting. They raised cows and always had eggs from their chickens in the frig. Granddaddy had bee hives and dozens of honey jars to compliment Grandmother's biscuits. He stayed many-a-long hour out in the hot sun, working the garden, picking the harvest in the Mississippi humidity, and then passing it off to Grandmother for her leg of the process, which wasn't a bit easier. The result was that their house was a place, where your mouth would start to water as soon as you pulled up in their driveway. It was like it knew it was about to get something extra good. And I don't think our family ever left there without our car loaded with the fruits of their labor. They always wanted to share what they'd worked so hard for because that was who they were.

Davis planted a garden, this year, but the deer kept getting into his fence and eventually made it the all-you-can-eat veggie buffet. After work, he just didn't have enough time to tend to the deer problem. So, I bought shelled peas from the fruit stand yesterday....but I'm hoping it'll still qualify as "bringing her food from afar." There was no harvesting in the sun or shelling for hours or sweating at the sink. No, just a minimal amount of time spent blanching and bagging in the AC while watching TV. I guess you could say that Davis and I are no Grandmother and Granddaddy.

But, it did make me think about my Grandmother a lot. And what I wouldn't do to spend another day like those summer ones at her house. To put my feet under her table just one more time and eat some of those vegetables with a pone of her cornbread.

As far as the Proverbs 31 wife goes, well, she was the real thing.

She was all the verses.

And I miss her every day.
                  Y'all have a good one!