Our garden is really small potatoes, pardon the pun, but whenever I put up our little harvests, I feel like my Grandmother- only a really amateur, slothful, unskilled version of her. Just the process of putting up vegetables reminds me of her standing at her kitchen sink for hours on end- cutting corn off the cob. She’d be in her duster with her hair wet with sweat- putting up bags and bags of creamed corn for all of us to enjoy through the year. They were bags of liquid gold, really. If my young self had only known then what it knows now about how much work was involved, I would’ve eaten it much more regardfully and with some added reverence. 

Some of my favorite memories of her house involved all of us on the front porch with a pan of peas in our laps- shelling and swinging and rocking. There was always an old sheet in the middle of the porch for throwing our hulls. Not a phone anywhere in sight. Just good conversation and waving at the passing cars. Every now and then, somebody would go in the house and ask if anyone wanted anything while they were there. A glass of tea or a slice of pound cake were common requests. We’d shell everything in our dishpan or roasting pan or Tupperware cake carrier lid- whatever Grandmother had scrounged up for us all to use as pea-shelling vessels. With our thumbnails green and sore to the touch, we’d knock out the huge undertaking and get a whole lot of visiting done at the same time. 

Gardening is mostly a hobby now, but it hasn’t been too many generations ago when it was more a matter of survival and not a choice. We just celebrated the birth of our nation and I thought about the centuries of men and women who have worked to scratch life and sustenance for their families out of the ground since its very beginning. Most without tractors, electricity, freezers, Ziploc, and, perhaps most notably, air-conditioning, they worked circles around us, I’d venture to guess. With each generation, more inventions, modern conveniences, and access to food have been added to our arsenal and now we have little need to do things the hard way anymore. 

I’m not really interested in going back to the pilgrim days and doing it their way. I’ve always said I would’ve been the first headstone in the pilgrim cemetery and I mean that. God knows who belongs in what century and He was so wise in His placement of me. But, I do wish we could take it back just a little ways- maybe to the time when families and friends sat on porches for hours and worked and talked without any distractions or interruptions. When there weren’t so many other options competing for our time and we were content just to be with each other doing not much of anything. Yeah, maybe we could revisit that……but only if we can take the air-conditioning with us.  

Hope y’all are having a great week! 

JONI