Cajun Corner - Vol. 5, No. 16

 

 

 

 

Cajun Corner – Vol. 5, No. 16 – April 28, 2013

Bon Jour!  Welcome to Cajun Stitchery’s weekly email and welcome to our family.

 

ΘΘΘΘΘ

Don’t forget to visit us at www.cajunstitchery.com, www.flickr.com/photos/cajunstitchery, and, www.cajunstitchery.etsy.com often.   We are also on Twitter and Facebook. 

Visit our on-line catalogs at:

http://www.imprintit.biz/cgi-bin/cobrand/site.w?location=olc/catalog-home.w&top=catalog&frasmes=no&target=main&sponsor=000699

and www.companycasuals.com/cajunstitchery.

Boxes, boxes, and more boxes of Mama’s kitchen stuff.  It turned out that the thermometer posted last week is a commercial refrigeration thermometer.  Why would Mama have that?  Well, there are many do dads that we have discovered.  George says there are enough eating utensils to feed our entire neighborhood and then some.  Bless his heart, he has unpacked more boxes and washed more dishes this week than you can imagine.  We do, however, think we have finished with the kitchen boxes.  Although there are some things that I remember that are not there. 

We were able to give Mama’s microwave to a young, struggling couple.  The girl said she had been without a microwave for several months.  That would be terrible.  It’s the only thing in the kitchen that I feel I have a handle on operating.  How can a young couple live without a microwave?  Nevertheless, the young lady was so grateful and we were happy to give the microwave to her.

The garden is looking pretty nice right now.  George spent time today planting seeds.  We have more flowers than usual around the garden area this year.  We have nasturtiums, Johnny Jump Ups, pansies, mums, daisies, roses, and snapdragons.  Our blueberry bushes have more blueberries on them than I’ve seen before.   The Satsumas and lemon trees had flowers but there is only one tiny lemon on them now.  Our tomato plant from last year is still producing tomatoes.  So are our bell pepper plants.  We have carrots, sweet peas, horseradish, and lots of herbs.

This week I’ve been picking blackberries around the yard.  I have to get them before the birds and squirrels do.  Blackberries are very special to me.  Aside from the fact that I love blackberries and do know how to make a cobbler, they always bring back memories of my childhood in Georgia. 

Each summer Mama would take Nancy and me to spend the summer with my Grandmother Poor in Woodstock, Georgia.  At the time Woodstock was a very tiny town.  We would drive in from Marietta.  The 2 lane highway would turn into Main Street in Woodstock.  We would turn left onto Elm Street.  The chicken hatchery was on the corner.  There was a sign at the city limits of Woodstock that read “Woodstock, Home of the World’s Largest Chicken Hatchery.”  Grandmother Poor lived at the end of Elm Street which wasn’t even a mile long.  As we drove down the little paved street, we would encounter the big elm tree in the middle of the road and veer around it to Grandmother Poor’s house.  Across from the elm the landscape slanted into a small green valley with a creek running the length of it; then it turned up on the other side to Mills Street.  Directly across the front of Grandmother Poor’s home the valley was full of blackberry bushes. There are absolutely no bad memories of that house.  As we drove in front of her house the street curved to the left.  On the right was her flower garden.  At the flower garden there was a fork in the road.  We would go straight and park on the gravel parking area.  If we went right at the fork, it would take us just beyond the flower garden to the huge coal pile that was storage for the coal company.  The drive down Elm Street was always full of excitement.  Nancy and I could hardly contain ourselves to see our grandmother and begin the summer’s adventures.

Each year Grandmother Poor would give us each a bucket and send us into the blackberry bushes.  The bushes were much taller than we were.  There were rows and rows of blackberry bushes and just wide enough on each row for one child.  More than one child and someone got pricked by the sharp stickers on the bushes.   We would spend most of the day in the blackberry bushes picking and eating blackberries.  By the time we would finally go back to the house, we were scraped from head to toe by the bushes and covered in blackberry juice.  We always made a point of filling our buckets with blackberries because Grandmother Poor would make cobbler.  Grandmother Poor’s blackberry cobbler was out of this world delicious, but when you are a little girl and know that you picked those berries, well, yum yum the cobbler was very special.

There are numerous Woodstock stories.  We were related to almost everyone in town.  We were also a novelty.  The closest Catholic Church to Woodstock was in Marietta.  Each summer the little Catholic girls had to go to Summer Bible School.  We were allowed to choose which church’s Summer Bible School we wanted to attend.  My grandmother was Methodist.  My father and grandfather had been Baptist.  My great grandmother had been Presbyterian.  All of the churches wanted us.  Nancy and I would visit each church and inquire about the treats being served.  The Baptist church always won us over with chocolate.  Those Baptist people sure knew how to cook.

Have a wonderful week.

If you are not a subscriber and would like to receive Cajun Corner weekly, please email cajunstitchery@yahoo.com and let me know to put you on our email list. 

Peggy Henshall

Cajun Stitchery

(850) 261-2462

cajunstitchery@yahoo.com

P.S.  You are always welcome to stop by and look at all of the catalogs and pass some time with me, cher.