Recently I gave a talk to a group of women:

“Praise God for His faithfulness in the many challenges we face in daily living.”

In preparation I interviewed my aunt about my grandmother’s “Market Days.”

My maternal grandmother was a work-at-home woman who faced many challenges in daily living. Grandma ‘stood at market’ weekly and the items she had for sale were basically off the farm. Some items were seasonal but many were almost year-round because they managed storage with a spring house and root cellar. They had a huge garden from which she sold fresh veggies-onions, beets, carrots, turnips (my aunt remembers cleaning and bundling veggies by the tubful), and water cress that grew down in the meadow by the swimming hole. She made pickled beets and red beet eggs (eggs from their chickens), potato salad, and coleslaw. Her baked goods included angel food, sponge, chocolate, white, and yellow cakes, all mixed by hand, as well as seasonal Christmas cookies. She had three freezers of ice cream every week (milk & cream from the cows but they bought the ice to make it): vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry (from her preserved strawberries).

She sold apple butter; after making it they stored it in the attic in crocks covered with waxed paper dipped in vinegar. They bought pig’s feet from a butcher and made souse, made scrapple and mush, and they dressed ducks.

In addition to going to market, they had dairy cows, raised tobacco, and preserved food for the family.

They often had extra people staying with them and almost always had company come for Sunday dinner.

 Grandma had a weekly schedule: wash on Monday (rain or shine) with water heated on the wood stove; iron on Tuesday; mend on Wednesday; clean upstairs Thursday; downstairs, all but the kitchen, Friday; and sweep and scrub the kitchen and all three porches on Saturday, rain, shine, or ice.

Obviously Grandma did not do all the work herself, there were children to help, but that required management. And consider the down time to have 14 babies, the death of three of the babies, and various illnesses all factoring in to her energy level and emotional availability.

Yes, my grandmother had “a few challenges in daily living.” She is no longer living but I have many fond memories of days on the farm and her visits in our home in her later years when she enjoyed reminiscing with us grandchildren. She was known to be quite a story teller and we enjoyed hearing the same stories more than once.

I do believe we have found the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow!

This field of sunflowers is between us and the sawmill. Our house is in the shadows to the left, a sawmill building to the right. We have seen quite a few cars stopped and people taking pictures. The earliest to bloom are beginning to droop, heavy with seeds; others have not opened yet. We are enjoying it while it lasts.

The grand-bird and grand-dog, that is. The human grands have gone on a vacation, so Crystal, the parakeet, and Xenia, the dog, are staying with us. It always takes a few days to get used to having another little ‘person’ in the house. At the supper table last night we heard what sounded like a soft human sigh and looked at each other a moment till we recognized it as one of Crystal’s sounds. And Xenia’s favorite place to be is sprawled out on the glider on the screened-in porch. I put her outside every morning and try to make it better by giving her doggie treats, which she accepts greedily, but still lunges toward the porch. We enjoy them while they are here and it’s OK when they go home again.  They enrich our lives with their own little personalities and provide some relief from the pressures of life!

Actually, what I want you to do is look at the scenery BEHIND the profile picture and turn green with envy (the good kind :). Some folks live near the Grand Canyon or the Poconos or some other famous place. We have the Atlantic Ocean nearby and can just hop in the car/camper, drive 45 minutes, and spend a weekend at the beach. The trick is to go before Memorial Day or after Labor Day to avoid the high tourist season. It was a lovely weekend with good friends, fine weather, much eating, a little exercise (walking the beach or pitching horseshoes), lawn chair reading, and campfire visiting. It was a bit a windy and we chuckled at one nearby camper who said, "This wind has got to go!" We figure he has never camped on Assateague before. And the 'wild' horses made their rounds looking for food. And youngsters were out early on their noisy little trikes. And there were some noisy, late-night neighbors. But that's all a part of camping. You can see photos on rajdaughter's xanga site. It was a lovely weeekend and went by entirely too fast!

If I could do a ‘scratch & sniff’ for you here I would. I just weeded the mint tea and it is so fragrant. A neighbor unfamiliar with garden tea once asked me, quite seriously, if I was sure I wasn’t just picking weeds? She would not even try the tea. Another neighbor, unfamiliar with shoo fly pie, would not taste it because the name made her think of the sticky fly catcher she had hanging in her kitchen. Changing the name to molasses pie could not erase the mental picture for her. On the other hand, I learned to make tasty greens and slick dumplings from her. Oh, the pleasure of entering each other's cultures.