Close to Nowhere

I love to sit out on the deck or the front porch in the rain. Or in the cool of the morning and evening. Actually anytime that it’s not hot. I don’t do hot anymore at all.

Oldest granddaughter Merideth’s hubby Tim borrowed his dad’s pressure washer and Mere scrubbed my front porch and my deck and she and Tim cleaned the carport.

I go sit on the deck at every opportunity, especially if it’s rainy and it’s been raining a lot lately.

I’ve had a couple people laugh because there’s still one spot near my front door that’s brown and yucky and covered with insect stuff.

That’s where my spider lives. She’s one of those huge, yellow ones; we call them garden spiders. I can find at least two egg sacks and what I think is a third. Pop used to cultivate those spiders on the deck. He said they ate mosquitoes and wasps. I can deal with that.

I’m deathly afraid of spiders. I’ve been bitten by a brown recluse spider, so my terror of the creepy crawly things is justified.

A couple Sundays ago, Mitch and Remy were at the house finishing my birthday present. They’d worked really hard on my front yard -- mowing, weedeating, scrapping, killing weeds, etc.

They were back now to put flowers out. I’ve only had daffodils mostly because it’s hard to grow stuff in the hard clay soil (it’s actually not really soil, but...). Also, I am not a gardener. I’m a sewer.

Many years before we moved to Mississippi, the late Pop, his late brother Paul and his late cousin David hauled petrified wood out of the creeks around his grandparents’ land near Banner. Lots of petrified wood.

Mitch and Tim moved the petrified wood (it took both of them to move it) that lined the front of the house and made a border with a garden inside full of bushes and plants.

It’s so pretty. My front yard has flowers.

I sat out on the front porch that Sunday and watched them work. Remy and Mitch really outdid themselves for my birthday.

I had the baby, Shepard, outside with us. He loves outside and playing with the dogs. We had to put him in the puppy pen to keep all the puppies from overkissing him and he loved it.

Outside on a cool afternoon in Mississippi is pretty close to heaven.