November 27 – “Satsumas and ‘Merikins”

I played the farmer the other day and did some harvesting.  Our Satsuma orange tree in the back yard had about three dozen of them hanging on for dear life.  It was getting cold, so with Chris’ approval I picked them all and brought them into the house.  A week or so ago Mom’s friend Betty brought us some that she had picked from her tree.  They were fairly small, about the same size as the ones you get in the grocery store, and they tasted really good.  Ours are about twice that size.  In the realm of satsumas, they are apparently an anomaly.  Only problem is, I can’t say they have a good taste.  Can’t say they taste bad, either.  Maybe it’s just me, but I can’t taste anything.  It’s like drinking a glass of water in a restaurant when they have dropped a lemon slice in the glass without squeezing it.  There is a faint citrus-y after taste, but just not much of anything going down.  Oh, there are a few that have been fine, and I hope the ones that Christina and April took were some of the good ones.  Otherwise, sorry, girls.

I’m kind of rushed for time this morning.  I started the fires for frying turkeys today, and the grease actually got too hot.  Never a good sign.  The temperature died down fairly quickly, though.  I guess the combination of a cold turkey being dropped in and the thirty-seven degree weather outside had something to do with that.  Gotta keep an eye on them, though.  My fire watch fireman isn’t here yet.  Nathan and Cailyn are coming over.  He’s going to help me with turkeys and she’s going to help Chris bake some pies for tomorrow’s lunch.  Something about a feast that she’s been learning in school.  Pilgrims.  She wants to be a Pilgrim girl when she grows up.  Indians.  Well, she has been very careful to refer to them as Native Americans.  She brought home a little tepee they made, and I asked her if that’s what the Indians lived in.  I was soundly corrected.  “Not Indians, DadDad.  They were Native ‘Merikins.”  Of course. 

Well, I’m off to check the Native ‘Merikin turkeys.  Where’s my coat?  It’s cold out there.

Psalms 119:32 says, “I run in the path of your commands, for you have set my heart free.”

Father, thank you for the free heart you gave to me.  Help me to give it away just as freely.  Amen.