Off-Grid in West Virginia

Saturday
Linda

Last night before I went to bed I programmed my inner alarm clock to wake me up at 6:00 this morning and it went off right on time.   I quietly crept around the house in bare feet and tried not to disturb the snoring slumbers of my husband and in-laws. Like a stealthy ninja I prepared the two Corningware coffee percolators and placed them on the lit burners of the gas stove.   I hastily dressed in my gardening garb and slipped out of the door.   No one was the wiser.   The only evidence of my presence was the bubbling brew and the heavenly aroma emanating from the direction of the kitchen stove.

Through the Fence

I walked out of the mudroom door and stepped into the new day.  The ethereal morning mist still hung between heaven and earth. Although the sky was light, the sun had not risen above the mountain ridge.   The birds were in morning song and I could hear the hollow echoes of a Pileated Woodpecker hard at work in the distance.

My feet stayed dry in my rubber garden clogs as I walked through the wet grass toward the garden. The metal garden gate loudly scraped across a stone as I swung it open and I hoped the noise didn’t find its way through the open windows of the house.  I didn’t hear any muttering so I figured I was safe.  The plants stood at attention as I strolled up and down the rows for inspection.  Two sweet potato plants and a Roma tomato plant were the only casualties.   The string beans we had planted last week were breaking through the ground.  I needed to move on, the pumpkin patch was not going to dig itself.

I dug my spade fork into the bare patch of ground in the right corner of the garden. It should be the perfect spot to plant the Green Stripped Cushaw pumpkin seeds that Vickie ordered for me from R. H. Shumway’s.   She says these pumpkins make a creamier pie than a regular pumpkin and are less stringy.   Sounds like my kind of pie. The earth turned easily and I only hit a few stones and chunks of wood.

Dirty Garden Shoes

As I started to mound up the rows with my hoe I see Sonny saunter out towards me carrying his red coffee cup. I guess the aroma of freshly brewed coffee had titillated his nostrils and sweetly awakened him.

He helped me finish up the rows and we planted the seeds nice and snug. Hopefully this fall we will have a nice crop of pumpkins to make pies and to can for future use. It would have been nice though if Sonny had shared at least one sip of his coffee.

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 30th, 2010 at 7:34 am and is filed under Off-Grid. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.