“Don’t you have more to write about than just the weather?”
Frankly no. Summer starts here way before the calendar makes it official and ends just after Halloween. That’s why in all our Halloween photos our witch make-up has puddled around our ankles. And you thought that was witches brew.
Summer here is like a relative that you were anxious to see come to visit but then overstays her welcome until you want to move out of your own home and just leave it with her, if only you could. Summer in Big Thicket comes with a big suitcase full of humidity, mosquitoes, fleas, red bugs, and canning.
When I first moved to Big Thicket, I tried to remain outside the loop, so to speak, of the canning circle. After all, there is only me and my occasional roommate to feed, so why would I go to the trouble of putting something into jars that I can happily buy down at the supermarket in a can that has an expiration date of 2017?
Because it tastes better, it supports the local farming economy, and because people are hell-bent on giving you their excess produce; their plums, their okra, their berries. And what kind of ungrateful wretch would I be to turn down food grown in the heat of summer that was sown, fertilized, hoed, nurtured, debugged, picked, washed, and delivered to you with a bedraggled look of desperation:
“Puleeze, take these squash, and I’ve got three rows of onions and the tomatoes are coming out of my ears.”
Well, if you insist.
Maybe summer won’t be so bad after all.
Have a creative week,
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