I Heard My First Cicada Today

I heard my first cicada today. It seems early in the summer for them, but, as I've gotten older time slips by much faster than it did when I was a child. When I saw my first Junebug this year I knew they'd not be around long, relatively speaking, and that the cicadas weren't far behind.
It's strange how, as children, summer seemed to go on forever, I remember sitting outside at night with friends and watching junebugs cling to the screen doors, trying their best to get inside the house.
But this year the junebugs seemed to come and go faster than I could turn around. Things just moved slower when we were children, or they seemed to. Now, as adults each season seems to rush by faster than we can tend to all the things we are attempting to fit into it. There's no time to sit and think, mull things over, we have to strike while the iron is hot as they used to say.

It seems like just days ago that the cucumber seeds were planted in the garden, and today I have a large pile of them awaiting pickling jars. This must be done tomorrow or they'll be inedible. Then there will be the tomatos to can, and the peas and beans will follow. I just don't know how my grandmother did it all with nine children during the depression. But she did, and with that knowing smile on her face that I always loved.
At least these days we have freezers and that's such a blessing, now because I also have a large pile of squash calling my name.
Tomorrow I'll cut it into slices, cook it with some black pepper and butter, and let it simmer until the squash is limp. We'll save some of it for Sunday dinner, but the rest will be divided into portions for two, and put into the freezer for winter.

I remember when we'd go visit grandmama and the uncles and aunts when we were kids in the summertime. We'd always come home with bushels of black-eyed peas, or butterbeans, or corn.
We'd spend the next few days shelling peas, or beans, or shucking that corn, then mama would put it all in the freezer. The corn she'd cut off the cob and cook a bit with some butter, like I do my squash, and then it'd go into the freezer.
My sister and brother ALWAYS complained about helping with this, but I enjoyed it, although I never told anyone that I did. It's the repetition...the flow of the process that I enjoyed. It was fun to get a black eyed pea pod open enough so that I could stick my thumb into the end and just zip down and have a dozen peas fall into the pie pan I had in my lap. When my pan was full I liked to stick my fingers into the peas and feel their coolness on my hands, then let them fall, once again, back into the pan. Butter beans took a little longer to get the rhythm going but once I did I was a bean shellin' fool!

I remember one summer when daddy had brought home a pick up truck load of corn. We weren't as young that summer and we all had other things we'd rather be doing. But I still liked working with them to get the food put up, so while my sister and brother acted like babies about having to help, I kept quiet and shucked ear after ear trying to clean as much of the cornsilks off as I could. Mama was working the hardest, standing over a hot stove and watching several pots at one time. She had the knack for cutting the corn off the cobs and wouldn't let any of us try for fear we'd cut too deeply and get cob into the corn. When I grew up and had my own kitchen I found a gadget in a hardware store that was made for cutting the corn off the cob and thought I'd struck gold! I sort of wished I could go back in time and give one to my mama.
I'm looking forward to using it again this summer.

Next summer we're going to have double the size of garden we have now. The raised beds just didn't get started on soon enough to be assembled this year. Life kind of has a way of stalling us on projects like that. But thankfully we're both determined to grow enough organic food for the two of us, as we're doing our best to help both the planet and our own health.