Cooking the GRITS

I don't know what I would do without my husband. He has diligently watered the plants so that we can continue to have veggies this summer.

With temperatures hovering around 100 degrees, the plants are wilting from the heat, not a lack of water. If I was standing around outside in 100 degree weather, I certainly would be wilting with the drenching back and brow sweat.

I mean sweating not perspiring as Southern women are taught to say. Women who grew up in the South, or as we are known GRITS, had manners drummed into their heads. The English influence in the South gave us the need to have good manners and polite speech.

Girls Raised In The South is one of the best descriptions for me and other women who grew up in the deep South. As a child one of my favorite pastimes in the summer was eating ice cold watermelon and spitting the seeds in the grass. My childhood playmate, Janet,could sit and spit with the best of them and we had spitting contests. We played in the pool we had in the backyard and then snacked on the watermelon, we did anything to stay cool.

Southern women or GRITS were expected to have gardens and they typically tended the gardens themselves or with a gardener, but they did work in the garden. My mother had beautiful flower beds and I did learn about flowers from her. She once remarked that maybe I had a little gardener in me because I just wanted to grow vegetables.

Men were always trying to impress my mother and one man asked what she would like to have. She said she needed compost for the garden and that is not exactly what she got.

I came home from school one fine spring day and there was a huge mound of manure, not compost. My experience as a CPA has taught me that the mound was about five yards of prime manure. I had clients in the sand and stone business and I know what a five yard payload looks like.

Well, a couple of weeks later, that man came into my mother's grocery store and wanted to know how well she liked her present. Since my mother was known for telling it like it is, she had a ready remark.

She drawled "I have received many presents over my life and I can truly tell you that this is the first time I have gotten a pile of shit for a present." Like I said, she always had a ready retort.