grace grits and gardening

ramblings from an arkansas farm girl

the morning after

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Just after I posted Mother Nature has a wicked sense of humor she pelts our Dallas neighborhood with softball size hail for twenty minutes. Long enough to break car windows, tree limbs, house windows and lights around the garage. My neighbor lost 23 windows…
All those things can be replaced. 
The morning after, our neighborhood looks like a monsoon swept down Worth Street. My car is dented and dinged, the window is shattered and a wiper was tossed across the yard. The morning after, I can’t imagine how people survive devastating tornadoes or hurricanes or tsunamis – losing homes, crops, lives, entire communities.

Mother Nature…

talya

Musical Pairings

Southern Rain, Cowboy Junkies
Have You Ever Seen the Rain, Creedence Clearwater Revival

Rain

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I awoke to clapping thunder and a downpour. Perfect dozing weather. Except in our tiny Fayetteville bedroom on the air mattress, it seemed the house would be whisked off to Oz. I was just being introduced to this home – its storm sounds new. The rain reverberated on the tin roof sounding like golf ball-sized hail. Nearby flashes of lightning illuminated the interior – partially painted, barely furnished. Lucy and Annabelle burrowed underneath the quilt thinking the end was near. It was peaceful.
Dallas rain from upstairs porch
The next morning back in Dallas, thunder and a much needed rainstorm drenched the already parched city. The weathermen were animated. Everyone breathed more easily.
One week later I spent my first evening in Piggott amidst a typical Northeast Arkansas tornado watch. The blackened skies immediately put me at ease, made me feel at home. With all my recent traveling, I was becoming a storm chaser. Or a storm magnet?
Growing up on a farm, there were many thirsty summers when no one dared look at Daddy or accidentally smile about anything, followed by days of rising flood waters. Mother Nature has a wicked sense of humor. We grew up studying the clouds and the sky, sniffing out wind direction and predicting rain by our achy bones. We did August rain dances, careful not to twist an ankle in the bone dry cracks splitting the front yard open. On Sunday mornings during the every-eye-closed-and-every-head-bowed part of Just As I Am, every farmer’s wife and child prayed for rain. The farmers did their praying out in the fields scouting for rain on the steamy horizon. 
Tate Farm (aka florida farm)
Spending the day out on our farm Saturday, I learned about new irrigation techniques and pumps, laser leveling to save water and increase yield, and the inner workings of center pivots. I can spot pigweed from the interstate. After a day of studying the slope of each field, I realized for the first time Mississippi County isn’t pancake flat. It started looking downright hilly by the end of the day as I noticed low spots around Little River and the built up banks along Kochtitzki. Even the topography has changed since Hernando De Soto explored the Mississippi River Valley. I wonder what Thomas Tate thinks about the  new fangled farm technology? Tractors drive themselves now…
electric pump Tate Farm
Leveled irrigated fields would certainly allow the farmer to sleep a bit easier during the long hot summer, if farmers slept. But they don’t.
When I water my herbs and flowers in Dallas during a string of 100 degree days, I can keep them alive. Barely. But if it rains, a steady slow soaking, they smile and grow. Nothing replaces the real thing when the heavens open and the rain falls. 
talya
Musical Pairing:
“Rain is a Good Thing”, Luke Bryan
The rain, rain, rain came down, down, down
In rushing, rising riv’lets,
’til the river crept out of it’s bed
And crept right into Piglet’s!  (Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day)

Remembering Large Marge (shudder)

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July is National Hitchhiker’s Month. When was the last time you saw a hitchhiker? Like pay phones, they are no longer commonplace. As kids, we always saw hitchhikers as we drove to Memphis looking for Elvis. We pointed them out like VW Beetles. Although we are not yet zipping around in personal bubble-lidded aerocars like the uber-cool Jetsons, travel is more accessible today, even for the man with no wheels.  Have hitchhikers somehow become charmingly vintage? Is it really necessary to draw attention to thumbing rides by dedicating an entire month? A broiling hot month?
I would never ever pick up a hitchhiker, especially after Pee Wee Herman hitched a ride to San Antonio with Large Marge. As frightening as Pee Wee was, the thought of Large Marge still makes me shudder. “On this very night, ten years ago, along this very stretch of road in a dense fog just like this…” I imagine she is behind the wheel of every eighteen wheeler I pass on the highway, especially in dense fog.
Driving through Oklahoma a few days ago I saw 4 separate hitchhikers (!) which was a bit unnerving considering the Department of Corrections is located in McAlester. The ominous sign on the highway warns, “Hitchhikers May be Escaped Prisoners.” This begs the question – just how often do these prisoners break out of this huge correctional fortress surrounded by tons of reinforced loopy nasty barbed wire? It obviously happens on occasion to warrant such a roadside warning. Government signs are only made after the fact, after a loss, after a lawsuit, after an escape. A reaction. I don’t stop to go to the bathroom around there. Oklahoma doesn’t seem OK to me. 
I bet no one celebrates National Hitchhiker’s Month in Oklahoma. 
Daddy always reminded us we would be murdered if we stopped at a rest area driving from Baylor to Osceola. This was his regular advice offered each spring break and Christmas holiday season. Never did he say, “don’t speed” or “study hard” or “buy low sell high, but always “don’t get murdered at a rest stop”. I considered his rest stop advice to be ridiculous until I learned of Large Marge. There are lots of big trucks at those places with motors eerily idling. 
Tomorrow I will be starting my big adventure driving from Dallas to Piggott – 10 hours – alone. I plan to leave super early, listen to a book on tape, avoid hitchhikers and murderers, and only use the bathroom at well lit McDonalds. I hope there is no fog.
talya
Musical Pairings:
The Champs, “Tequila”

Food. Farm. Garden. Life.

THANKS FOR READING!