Nature & Seasons - grace grits and gardening

20 ways to rediscover the LOST ART of SUMMER

June 22, 2015 By Talya Tate Boerner

Three cheers for summer! This year, I say we take time to rediscover the lost art of summer. Slow down. Stop trying to orchestrate the picture perfect summer and instead enjoy some hot fun in the summertime “old school style”. Waaaaay back when I was a kid, summer meant hours of bicycle riding and exploring ditch banks and guzzling cherry Kool-aid in the shade of a mimosa tree. Now mimosas are drinks, the tree variety is considered trash by many, and summer is pre-planned to stave off kids’ idle brain drain. Makes me tired just thinking about it.

Work a few of these simple simon activities into each week from now until Labor Day, and you’ll have a more relaxing summer. Promise.

1. Play in the water hose. Drink from it too.

2. Go on a picnic. Grill hot dogs. Who cares about calories or the gritty sand that somehow made its way onto the bun?

3. Lay on a quilt and watch the clouds float by. A quilt hand-stitched by your grandmother.

4. Lose yourself in a trashy summer read. It’s allowed in summer.

5. Eat ice cream in the sun. Nothing fancy. Neapolitan scooped into a plain cone. Or, support your neighborhood ice cream truck. Or, both.

6. Go for lots of walks and always carry change. You never know when you’ll find a neighborhood lemonade stand. If you have little ones at home, man your own lemonade stand in the front yard and donate the proceeds to a good cause.

7. Catch lightning bugs in a mason jar or at least sit outside and watch them light up the yard. They are extra amazing this year! (Release them before bedtime, though.)

8. Swim in a swimming hole.

9. Eat watermelon. Plant the seeds even though they probably won’t come up.

10. Sleep on sun-dried sheets.

11. Splash in rain puddles after a summer shower. Make mud pies, too.

12. Color. Breathe in the smell of crayons.

13. Tie-dye something.

14. Skip rocks.

15. Roast marshmallows.

16. Swing.

17. Wade a creek.

18. Nap.

19. Climb a tree. (Watch the Busvlogger’s tree-climbing video HERE! Hilarious.)

20. On the hottest day of the year, spend the afternoon at the library where the air is always cold and the books are free.

These are just a few of the gazillion ways to celebrate the lost art of summer. What else?

Happy Summer!

Grace Grits and Gardening

Farm. Food. Garden. Life.

[tweetthis]Let’s slow down and celebrate the lost art of #summer. @Crayola @LtlFreeLibrary #LostArtofSummer #gracegrits[/tweetthis]

Musical Pairing:

Hot Fun in the Summertime, Sly and the Family Stone

Sound of the Screen Door.

June 8, 2015 By Talya Tate Boerner

Summer begins and ends with the sound of the screen door. Although most screen doors open and close year round, that sloooowwww swing open followed by a sharp slap shut sounds oh so different when the days are long and lazy. The screen door gets a summer workout as barefoot kids run in and out a hundred times a day. How many times did Momma yell, shut the screen door, you’re letting the mosquitoes in!?

In fact, she says that to me every time I go home.

I particularly like the sound of the screen door at the lake. I consider that music to be the song of summer. The slapping sound echoes across the cove.Continue Reading

There’s slime mold growing in my garden!

May 19, 2015 By Talya Tate Boerner

♫ one of these things is not like the other♫♪

Sometimes a garden isn’t all pink flowers and sweet smells. Sometimes an odd thing (like slime mold) takes up residence, and it’s up to you, the head gardener, to get to the bottom of it. Here’s how it happens. While enjoying your morning coffee (freshly ground beans from Arsaga’s with just a touch of milk) and admiring all the new blooms since yesterday, you happen upon a whole colony of strangeness lurking in the mulch.

What on earth?

Did a gigantic wolfhound vomit in your yard, because your small schnauzers could never barf up that much of anything.

A few days ago, you thought you saw a mushroom in that exact location. But now the “mushroom” has multiplied and slithered across the ground like The Blob. What a fascinating / nasty thing.

As you might expect by now, this is a true story. Insert dramatic music…

I turned to Dr. Google who said I have a slime mold, also known as dog vomit slime. For real. Mine (see how I’m stepping right up and owning it?) was whiteish and sort of reminded me of meringue or a funnel cake gone way bad. You know how funnel cake dough is all loopy and strung out on the paper plate? Sorry for the food references…

Here’s more slime in a different area of the bed. Yeah, I have lots of it.

Scientist-types get excited over this sort of thing because there’s a whole ecosystem living and growing right here. In my opinion, this wasn’t nearly as cute as when Horton heard a Who on that speck of dust. But still, I was curious to know more.

When I was in seventh grade science class, there were only five kingdoms of life. Later a sixth one was added (and some argue there is now a seventh.) Do you remember them? Me neither. They are: Archaebacteria, Eubacteria, Plantae, Animalia, Protist, and Fungi. Although I thought I was dealing with Fungi, slime mold belongs to the Protist family. According to PBS, slime mold is a soil-dwelling amoeba, a brainless, single-celled organism, often containing multiple nuclei. Now, I’m clearly no scientist, and I’m sure there are a bazillion differences in these two classifications, but the thing that interests me most is that fungi “absorb” food while protist “feed”. (Think=monster.)

Although slime mold is unsightly*, it’s harmless. It grows in damp conditions and preys on decaying matter. There’s no need to remove it, but who wants to look at that? Plus, it’s a matter of time before my dogs roll around in it.

Or drag it in the house.

I promptly scooped it into a sack and very carefully (to keep the spores from scattering) placed it in my garbage where it is, no doubt, growing this very second and will smother our house tonight while I sleep.

The moral of this gardening story…sometimes a little mold may grow. It’s part of the deal.

Grace Grits and Gardening

Farm. Food. Garden. Life.

Check out this slime mold time lapse! Creepy yet cool.