Hi all and hello to High Summer!
We had two rains last week so my lawn no longer looks like a brown doormat and the full-summer blooms, vegetables and fruits have arrived!
This morning's breakfast was crowned with a sliced fresh peach while I looked at a vase of zinnias and sunflowers named "chocolate brown" for their brown petals and heads. Yesterday, I had fresh tomato with the classic real bacon sandwich. I did yard-work-for-hire; digging, mulching, weeding and pruning flower beds in town for a lady I have worked for, for nine years.
A granddaughter of hers was going off to college and they were all a bit teary at the departure. Both she and my daughter were little 4th graders when I started at that house and now, they are young women full of promise and eager to begin their own lives.
Since I last wrote, I went to Tipp City Ohio, home not only of Springhill Nursery (mail order flowers and bulbs) but also Christian Family Fellowship where I spent a weekend soaking up teachings like fertilizer and water to a dry flower bed. I think we all need refueling some times, even if you don't "do spiritual" as one of my friends says, somehow, we need to get out of ourselves and get soul food in some way.
From there, I had a whirlwind business trip to New Orleans, from Cincinnati where I rented a car and did take myself to the Garden District on St. Charles Street. I stopped at about 4th Street, parked and walked for a few blocks admiring the street cars and had lunch at a wonderfully restored restaurant named Superior Seafood Company and superior, it was.
Long open windows, dark panelling, red leather seats fastened with brass hob nails, open brick work and the food? Oh my word! Gumbo that was thick, rich and spicy over perfectly cooked rice and a shrimp Po'boy. For those of us not from the South, it is not pronounced "Poor boy" but as it is written "Po". Traditionally, they are either shrimp, oyster or some other seafood, very lightly fried in panko bread crumbs. The result is very, very light and succulent, not full of cornmeal or floured breading like we Northerners tend to do when something is fried.
The french baguette it was served on was incredible in itself; very light and crusty on the outside...very tender bread on the inside. French bread tends to be very chewy as well as heavy but not so, this. Hard to describe but when you have bread like this you want it all the time. As a baker, this is something to strive for because people would line up for bread like this. It was bliss on a plate.
My hotel was Covington, LA which is across Lake Pontchartrain. Pull out a map and look at that big lake smack North of New Orleans. The fastest way across is right through the middle on a four-lane bridge that is 24 miles long. There are 7 turn-around spots and spots that are causeways; the car sections lift up to allow ships to pass through underneath. Beautiful but a little disconcerting! This is from the return trip after calling on a client up in Bogalousa, LA, headed back toward New Orleans in the distance.
These shots were all from my cell phone, but there is no place to stop and shoot from anyway. Also, in full bloom were the Crape Myrtles. Sometimes spelled "crepe" like in crepe paper (pronounced with a long-A). In the South, there are more variations of color; hot pink, burgundy and almost a lilac color, and white. I have some shots from the dwarf pink ones in my front yard. These would be the ones that got frosted, I trimmed back a little and as you can see, they have bloomed profusely and wonderfully. The spikey ones are the Cleome which I listed in an earlier spring blog, now in full bloom.
That's the thing about summer that I love. Long, long days of daylight, all the blooms in the garden, the hummers that come to visit, porch and barbecue gatherings, summer concerts, light, light and more light! Tomato sliced very thinly with salt and pepper, zucchini squash fixed ten different ways, the smell of freshly mown grass and walking through the blooms in the yard just to see what happened today. It is health to the soul.
We have to allow ourselves to ask for help, we have to say to God, to a friend or both, "I need some help" and know that you can get help when you need it (Hebrews 4:16).
Sometimes that grace is a small thing like helping you find your seat again on an airplane. Embarrassing, but I came out of the loo and walked up the aisle twice, was getting mortified because I could not find my seat. Oh, yes, the empty one, you igit. Well, I just did not remember where I was seated, no one was familiar of course, and when you travel all the time, one flight is the same as the rest. It's like waking up in the hotel and asking myself "What city am I in?"
Grace and Mercy in time of need. Grace for my friend whose adult daughter uses her grandchildren as a weapon, not letting her see them when my friend comes to town because she knows it hurts her mother and, she can inflict the hurt.
Grace to my friend who just lost her brother. I have all my siblings. Both her parents are gone and now, it is just she and her brother left.
Grace came to me when I was driving around New Orleans, lost, trying to get back to the airport. Yes, my phone has GPS, yes I had a map but you can't look at the map and the phone and drive necessarily in the order that you need to to keep from getting lost. I kept my wits about me and found my way back, but it was the long way and this is why these trips stress me out.
Thanks be to God for grace; we can't earn it, we get it as a gift. Grace shows up. God shows up.
Thanks be for that!
