When one begins dreaming about their, well, dream home many things can make the list. Pinterest boards are filled with open kitchens, granite countertops, perfect playrooms, wrap around porches, tubs you can sink into and showers with walls of gorgeous tile. I've got gobs of the same things pinned and saved because a dream is a dream and as long as you don't become discontent when your home does not live up to your dreams it's just such fun to plan and wish.
On the top of my list were three things, very different from what seems to be becoming the norm. I wanted an old unique home, not in a subdivision, with pecan trees. I knew everything else I could do over time and have fun doing it but those three 'dreams' were downright impossible to create on my own.
When we pulled into the driveway for the first glimpse of our current home I might have been a bit speechless at what was before me. This old 1950s home in a neighborhood without a name checked two criteria off the list. Then with a slow glance and the knowledge gained from my own childhood home's trees I began counting and saw 7 pecan trees. Tears commenced.
Fall is here and from those seven trees three have produced pecans. No worries because I've been told by more than one, more than ten if truth be known, that they only produce every other year. There are two five gallon buckets in my kitchen that keep getting more and more full as we go outside to play and grab a few more. I even paid the boys to help pick and at a penny a pecan I've shelled out $11 and some change with the most going to Micah who definitely understands the value of a dollar.
I hope it doesn't seem odd to get so much joy from a nut that falls from a tree or to literally tear up when you break the first one open and it does indeed hold that brown funny shaped goodness. Besides the complete miracle it is that a seed grew into a tree that has been around for decades and feeds you with its fruit, this specific one brings forth one of my favorite memories of the fall.
I can not think of pecans without thinking of my Granny. That smiley, generous, loving, stubborn, country woman with her kool aid socks and sleeveless white blouse despite the temperature outside was in love with these trees as well. And because her love of my little brother was greater than her love for anyone else on this earth, and she wasn't afraid to tell you often, he was always roped into spending an hour or so on Thanksgiving Day throwing his basketball as high as he could into our trees so the last few pecans on the branches would come pouring down and there she would go filling her grocery sack or bread bag or whatever else she happened to have to fill up.
So as I stomp around my side yard with my slippers and my hoodie sweatshirt filling the pockets to overflowing I feel like I'm channeling my inner Mary Keel and I kind of love it!
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