Chapter 81 (part 2)
I had a ton of things coming up in the gardens and trees: Beans, Broccoli, Cabbage, Cantaloupes, Carrots, Cauliflower, Collards, other Greens, Pumpkins, Summer Squash, Sweet potatoes, Turnips. That’s just in the gardens on the property and the co-op gardens. I don’t have to, but I’ve continued to glean stuff where I can. One it helps the folks that I do it for – some of the old folks just can’t get up in the trees like they used to (and that brought memories of Yula Mae that made me “cranky” according to some folks that like to gossip without knowing the real reason. A) – and for another it lets me grab stuff for my own (mine and Em’s) supplies. I worked several watermelon fields on shares using Em’s truck to haul them to this place outside Lafayette where some Boy Scouts were trying to pull together a camporee for the Cubs in their district. They bought them for 25% of their value which paid for fuel and my time and paid me better in personal satisfaction that I haven’t abandoned everything that kept me upright and moving forward while I was growing up.
A man I met during that transaction said he had groves that he couldn’t get anyone to come harvest for what he could afford to pay. All my days off for three weeks I turned up at his place – and boy wasn’t he surprised for some reason – and I cleared a bunch of fig trees (100 pints per tree), apples, persimmons, pomegranates, and a greenhouse full of Meyer lemons grown in containers. Made a deal with the folks running the Fruit Stand and they took everything the man could give them. I got a nice bonus in product and pay for that one since I got a bit of finder’s fee to go along with all the rest. That man had an Auntie of his own who lived with his family to help take care of his grandmother who leaned way into the description of “ancient and frail with enough energy to be cantankerous” and she proved interesting and helpful in equal portions. Thanks to her I got lots of stuff made from raspberries as I helped her clear out the fence line of wild berries. Lost a few pints of blood before I smartened up enough to wear gloves, but it was worth it. My favorite is when she taught me how to make a concentrate called Raspberry Shrub that all I have to do iss add water to for a really nice drink. And if I want it fizzy I can add tonic water. Did that one night and got Em hooked on it. He helped out by finding bottles that we could process the raspberry shrub into for storage and then built another bottle rack for the storage locker.
This woman also taught me about some wild foods of this area. Possum haws are a kind of southern viburnum bush that the berries (or haws) turn red on when they are ripe. It is also called a Wild Raisin and you can use your imagination now for how most people use the possum haw if they know what it is at all. I still have my interest in wild foods left over from Scouts because I just don’t ever want to get as hungry as I did a few times when I left Florida. Where Em used to get upset when I would mention in, he has become a believer and says that since it hasn’t hurt either one of us to eat the stuff I experiment with that it might be a good idea if we keep on doing it “more and better”. He hasn’t said outright, but he’s gotten to where he is looking for a way to get out of working for Aunt Orélie as much as he does. He still cares for her like the auntie she is to him, but I think there’s coming a time when he can’t overlook some things that he feels bad about overlooking … namely things that I come into. I told him I’ll bolt before I create a family problem for him but he said I better not ‘cause … well I’m not going to go into what he’s said he’ll do. Not anyone else’s business but I’ll admit that it gives me ideas on a possible future where I just thought it was “moonbeams and dust motes” before.
Raspberries and Possum haws aren’t the only thing that Missus Honoree taught me about. Chinkapin acorns, Black walnuts, Hawthorne fruit, fruit of the black gum tree, hackberries, and something called a Callery Pear were some of the other ones. I liked everything but the pear thing. That Callery Pear is a hot mess and I gotta admit I almost gave up on it. For one the tree has a vicious personality and no I’m not kidding. Dang it makes a nasty thorn thicket when all its seedlings start popping up and growing like crazy. You need to wear armor to deal with it. For another? The tree stinks. Calling its smell “tuna on a trunk” is kind. Yuck. It was an ornamental that was planted all over the place when it was brought in from China in the 1900s but now its considered an invasive pest … like kudzu but less useful. I’ve participated in my share of invasive species round ups as a scout but my Lord that pear thing took the cake, especially the ones that had become full-grown trees that were fifty feet tall. Most of them were about 15 feet tall that I saw but just imagine a giant, people-eating, thorny tree with nearly inedible fruit the size of a wild cherry (in other words small). You can eat it I guess, but not until it has been cooked down for things like wine. Uh huh. About the only reason why you’d grow it is because it has really pretty white flowers … but pretty is as pretty does and I’ll give it a pass for growing. And nuke it from space if I every catch it growing in a yard I’m supposed to take care of. I accidentally sat on one of those thorns and … nope, still having nightmares of embarrassment at having to pull that thing out of my own backside and find a Band-Aid that would stick for more than two seconds when I got sweaty.
The other thing blooming this month is witch hazel which will keep on going until January if I understood Missus Honoree correctly. She wasn’t always the easiest to understand. Try figuring out her Creole slang when she wasn’t wearing her dentures. That was not fun. And she was quick with that flyswatter she took everywhere. Doggone that stung when I didn’t move fast enough. But I got over it because I now know how to make my own astringent which I gotta say has helped me to get rid of the sweat-induced zits that pop up too often for my peace of mind. Those ones on the back of my shoulders near my bra straps … ouch. Em still gets a few on the back of his neck on occasion that only seem to respond to the witch hazel I made. One night he was getting real silly and said that I was getting so useful that he might just change his mind about living in the swamp and cart me off there one day so he could have me all to himself. I think his sugar level was too low as he’d been working all day in an attic rewiring for a new breaker box. He certainly didn’t have a problem with me putting a pan of cool water down for him to put his feet in. It was one of those days I felt bad for how hard he was working because I know, from reading over his shoulder when he didn’t realize, that he had some idea of saving enough money to get his own place sooner rather than later as he was growing tired of being patient with the people around him and wanted us to have more privacy that he didn’t have to feel guilty for.
You’d think all my time would be taken up with gardening of one sort or another the way I tell it, but no. Mr. Hubert somehow fixed it so that he could get special passes to go hunting after curfew so long as we paid a percentage of our catch (or haul) to St. Bernards Church. So far they’ve taken everything we can give them and turned it into meals for the school and what’s left over from that, they put on a feed after church on Sundays. Might not be a big feed after the children are fed all week, but something is better than nothing and there were always some Feds around (not military) to make sure any ruckus was short-lived.
First half of the month I got to save some ammo due to it being archery season for deer. I used up a few of my tags taking bucks, one of them was a big ol’ boy that must have been getting fat on someone’s garden. He was a bad-tempered 8 pointer. He could have been a ten, but he was weird in that he had five points on one antler and three points on the other. He must have gotten into a head on collision at some point because the three-point antler looked like it had been broken or deformed in some way. Didn’t bother the eats, I still managed to get 70 lbs of meat from the animal. I took another smaller buck on another hunt and that left me with four tags. I’m actually down to two tags because I was able to get two does after that. I’ve given my personal portion of the venison to Em and he’s turned it into jerky and ground meat that he’s made summer sausage out of. I’ve also canned some of it too.
Went nutria hunting a few times and what a lot of work but with hungry kids to feed the church is grateful for whatever they are “blessed” with. I feel kinda funny when they call it that to be honest given all the “blessing out” that gets done during some of the hunts. Guess God knows what he’s doing using people like us to help the church do its job. The other things we’ve brought in are rabbit (daily limit of ten and be careful you don’t wind up with more than 24 in your possession at any one time), squirrel which they are even stricter on (limit of 3 per day with a limit of 9 in your possession), doves which seem to be multiplying out of control (probably due to a lot of cats being terminated with prejudice during the rabies problem), and one week when we couldn’t bring in anything else for some reason (things are getting hunted over) we brought the church ladies racoons, opossums, and blackbirds. They didn’t even blink but instead teared up and hugged on Mr. Hubert enough to turn him red as a beet. I guess they were worried they’d get nothing for the children.
We kept our eyes open for some Outlaw Quadrupeds but the hogs are hiding deep in the swamp, the few that remain. We shot a couple of coyotes because they are multiplying and getting into people’s chickens, but you can’t eat those scavengers though there’s one old man that pays us in fish he’s caught for the coyote pelts.
Speaking of fishing, when we aren’t on a hunt Mr. Hubert tries to fish though it is all freshwater these days. He also gets paid in fish for working on people’s boats which some say is a come down from being a captain. I think he might of thought the same thing at first but he seems to have come to accept this is just a season in life and he’s at peace with it … at least he is so long as the fish are biting and we can bring things in for the St. Bernards. I think it helps him to think he is providing real help for real people that aren’t in a place to help themselves as much as they want to. I like Mr. Hubert even with the complication of Thib and Vadie. He’s never gotten on to me about being angry at the way it was handled. On the other hand I’m careful about what falls out of my mouth on the subject since in a way it isn’t Vadie’s fault; she just got caught in Daniel Edgar’s strategy.
Every once in a while we’ve been getting coastal fish but not as often as people were used to. Same for oysters and shrimp though I did some shelving repair and cleaning at the Super 1 last week and the chief butcher – or whatever you call him – gave me a bag of oysters and a case of canned shrimp. The oysters I traded to Colonel Morgan for some shotgun shells (they were reloads but good ones). I held back just enough to make my mother’s famous oyster stew for Em and you would have thought I’d come up with the cure for something awful the way he acted like he’d died and gone to heaven. The smell would have drawn attention if all the soldiers hadn’t been at some special dinner where they were eating hamburger steaks. I was angry that Em hadn’t been invited which is what made me act out like I did. Only two other people got a taste … Mr. Hubert and Mr. Julius and they were nearly as silly as Em. Made me totally feel like a girl. Which is kinda what leads into the next mess I’ve gotten myself into and why I started out calling this month hypnogogic.