My Jungle Adventure, Missouri style
At the risk of creating a great deal of envious resentment, I must inform my loyal readers and fellow bloggers that I experienced RAIN this weekend!! Yes, friends, real RAIN - wet, drenching, cool, thunderstorms!!
Where, you ask? Ah, if only it were on my parched Tillman farm! Sorry, no such luck!
I took my trusty work crew and drove the old farm truck over to the rolling hills of Southwest Missouri to help my sister, whose back yard looks like a South American jungle, complete with lost Mayan temples and a hidden tree of life. To complete the jungle theme, a torrential Friday night storm swept up from the southwest, filling Springfield streets and dry creeks with WATER! I couldn't believe it! Over here in the Southeast, we've forgotten what rain feels like.
The torrent swept right up the I-44 line (as usual), and bypassed Southeast Missouri, just as it did in that awful summer of 1983, when my husband were standing out on our farm, watching the sky and praying for a rain which never came.... Why does this climate DO that??
One look at my sister's back yard jungle (the reason for our journey), and I knew immediately that this part of the state had been keeping the rain to themselves!
I have never seen polk bushes so tall in my life! There was a veritable polk bramble in that back yard. The bamboo that my sweet, sainted mother had planted many years ago, pruning religiously every fall, was now woven into a mysterious inpenetrable labyrinth along the fence. Enormous piles of February ice-storm damage still dotted the landscape, furnishing more spots for a veritable forest of polk plants with stems larger than my wrist. Had it been just 3-4 short months since I last tackled that massive back yard? How could it have grown so big, so fast??
My daughter and her boyfriend, armed with machetes, disappeared into the polk/bamboo forest, hacking plants 10-12 feet tall. My sister and I attacked the mountains of broken, shattered tree branches, loading them into wagons and wheelbarrows and pushing/pulling them uphill to my truck, which seemed miles away in the front yard.
Ah, yes, folks, this is Ultimate Yard Work at its best. Man (and woman) against the elements of the Jungle, pitting our strength and wits against those ancient forces of primitive nature.
Beasts and poison ivy lurked in every darkened recess, as we hacked our way through the Great Polk Forest of the Southwest. I fully expected to see flesh-eating vegetation larger than a hippopotamus, reaching out to snatch us up like popcorn!
This must be what those intrepid explorers of that great southern continent felt like when they explored the wilds of ancient Brazil. I fully expected to meet Stanley Livingston deep under the branches of that rambling forest of polk.
"Dr. Livingston, I presume?" I would say.
"Why, yes, my dear lady. Would you like a spot of tea?" he would reply, as he gave me a seat beneath the bamboo trees... He leans forward to pour my tea....
"Madeline, what are you doing?!" shouts my sister. "Get back here and help me load this wood!"
"Sorry, Dr. Livingston. Perhaps another time," I murmur...as I pick my way back to reality...
Saturday evening finds us filthy, bug-bitten, and scratched, but happy. Though we have not finished my sister's massive brush clean up, we HAVE made a difference.
She treats us all to a delightful vegetarian dinner at Tasia, and we live to fight another day...another weekend.
I'm sure Dr. Livingston will wait for us under the bamboo, until we can all get another weekend off to go deep into the darkest Jungle of Southwest Missouri, searching for the key of life, the fountain of youth, the lost City of Atlantis...
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When you get to be my age, you wind DOWN, not UP!!
But thanks for the compliment. These old bones appreciate it.
Hahahaha! I had to laugh out loud at him - You don't refuse help from my brother! He doesn't OFFER help - He GIVES it, whether you want it or not!
I could tell that the guys were REALLY ENJOYING all that physical labor! The loads had to be strapped down. Ooooeeee! Ratchet straps! They LOVE to tie things down with ratchet straps! It's such a guy thing!
There's a bond between people who work together on a big physical project like that. It used to be like that when we hired hay crews out here on the farm -- but now nobody does it anymore. Such a shame! Guys could really get in shape during the summer, lifting hay bales - and it taught teamwork.
What do you think, cake lady? How would you fix kudzu??? I'm not sure I even know what it looks like in "person." I've googled it before and seen pictures. Not sure if I have it on my farm.... I guess if I had it, I'd know it, wouldn't I?
Next thing I know, you'll be posting recipes for possum pot roast, armadillo stew, and thistle salad!
I didn't know what ragweed looked like until a few short years ago, and I'm sure I'm super allergic to it! Also amazing how many people can't identify poison ivy. ICK!
I still don't know what poison oak looks like. I used to think that Virginia Creeper was poison oak, but, of course, it's quite harmless.
Sassafras root is supposed to be a very good tonic in the spring of the year. My dad always said that it "thinned your blood," and got you ready for hot weather. I know what the leaf looks like, but I don't know if I could identify it in early spring before it's leafed out.
As for Missouri mushrooms, I'm really out of my element on those. I wouldn't know a morrell if I sat on it. And, then, there's ginsing root. (Is that how it's spelled?) I know people who've made some good money digging that.