Leslie Campbell no more than returned home from staying here with Mary Russell than she packed up for a trip to Disney World. She, Brandi, Blaire, Carly and Jackson Lankford were lucky enough to stay in a condo that Charlene Lankford donated after she won the use of it. She signed up for the condo at one of the home shows at the Civic Center earlier. Leslie is still trying to figure out why and how Disney World had neither flies nor mosquitoes. I could not believe that Brandi and Leslie were able to "outgo" the three younger ones. All of them had a great week. Drag out the dirty clothes and find clean ones.
Leslie and Joe Havard were counselors for church camp from Chestnut Drive Baptist Church. Our Anne Marie Morgan was the only camper I knew. Thankfully, the sleeping areas were air conditioned I cannot imagine sleeping in the same room with wiggling giggling girls and no air conditioning. Long years ago, I might could have handled the heat and the girls but no longer! Either would be enough!
One summer activity that has changed over the years is Vacation Bible School. When we came back here 31 years ago, every church in the area held a school and there was no lacking women and teen girls to help with the teaching and furnishing a snack for those at the church. The usual hours were 8:30 to 11:30 five mornings of the week. Most mothers did not work but stayed home with their young children so were available to help at church and school activities.
Then slowly the women began working outside the home and church schools had to change due to not enough workers. Getting together was changed to nighttime from 6:30 to 8:30 and they finished on Friday night. Now I see some churches who cannot get enough folks to help out for that. many nights, so some have cut their schools down to no more than four nights and one is for opening ceremonies and the last night concludes the training with a program to show off the kid's activities. Is this going to become another extinct program? No time, no interest, kills fun and learning quicker than you can sneeze. But then many good things have come to an end over the years.
More people who are gardeners or farmers have had to plant purple hull peas over several times. The weather had to be factored in but those peas usually will grow anywhere. The late Aaron Clark could throw anything into a garden and it would produce until all of us would be would be sick of putting stuff up for the next year.
On the corner coming to this house, there was once a snaky pond surrounded by grass, junk, weeds and trees. Not any too soon it was filled with dirt and smoothed over. Aaron asked to plant a garden on that corner. One year it was only peas and they truly vied for growing rights with weeds. Peas jumped up six inches, weeds shot up 12 inches. Due to Mother and my aunt Reba Clark having grown up during the Depression nothing from the garden was wasted. Even though the peas certainly did not suit me, I helped with the picking, shelling and processing. Finding them on the vines was indeed fun and games. The real fear was if I filled my bucket with wasps, bumblebees or snakes' heads. I tried to make enough noise to scare a possible snake back to Huntington and hoped I stunk enough from being sweaty that wasps and bees would be lured elsewhere. So I wonder if folks have gotten too much rain or quite possibly the seed are inferior that is being sold to the feed stores
Back in the spring walking through the dollar store, I found wild flower seed and brought Beamon four packs. He likes flowers and went to great lengths to plant them. I declared them mystery flowers but finally they broke ground and grew and grew to become a Jack with the beanstalk-likeness. He looked the flowers off them but finally reported they were probably "poke salad" stalks and they were big enough to be. Disgusted he pulled them up leaving only three plants that I can barely see from the house and one is full of pale flowers. We're still waiting on those, to bloom.
Last year we had beautiful and prolific marigolds and periwinkles; this time they promptly fell over dead. But we have zinnias that are showing out and lured colorful butterflies so we watch them. It might just not be a good season for certain plants be it peas or periwinkles.
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