“For every house is built by someone, but God is the builder of everything.”
‭‭Hebrews‬ ‭3:4‬ ‭NIV‬‬

One of my fondest memories is sitting as a little girl on the front porch of the farm house, my grandma in the chair to my left. She had the beat up lid of an old roasting pan turned over in her lap and it was filled with washed green beans fresh from the garden. These were old fashioned string beans, not the stringless bush bean variety you find nowadays. They were a bit more work to prepare. You took a paring knife and cut the tip of one end almost all the way through and pulled. This removed the long, stringy piece from down one side. Then you turned the bean over and did the same thing from the other end. Then you snapped the bean in half, or thirds, with one hand and dropped them in a cooking pot.

When you were done, you rinsed the beans again, and filled the pot with clean water to barely cover the beans. You cut up an onion or two and threw that in along with a few pieces of ham, salt pork, or fried bacon and the grease they were fried in. You might add a little black pepper and salt if the bacon wasn’t too salty. You covered the pot and set it to simmer midmorning, adding water when necessary. Come suppertime, the house smelled wonderful and the beans were nice and tender. Here in West Virginia, we COOK our green beans. None of this crispy “al denté” stuff! Oh, there’s nothing like green beans cooked Grandma style.

We have had rain every day this week and are expected to have more for the next ten days. The yards and fields have all been mowed, and while there are a thousand things we could have done over at the Ponderosa yesterday, I awoke with one thing in mind…rain on the tin roof of my favorite farmhouse in the world. I asked Mr. FixIt if he’d like to spend a couple days over here and he is such an accommodating guy. He knows how much I love it here. And, while I certainly don’t need his permission and could come here anytime I want, I do so enjoy it when he is with me. So, we packed up a cooler with some chicken I cooked the day before and some other sundries, grabbed our usually-always-packed overnight bags, and headed for the farm.

Mr. FixIt had stopped at the produce stand Sunday afternoon and bought some fresh green beans. Ours didn’t grow in our garden this spring and we’ve been hungry for them. Unfortunately, when we opened the bag to cook them, they were all moldy. We were so disappointed. Then I remembered the neighbor across the road saying he had canned all the beans he was going to can out of his garden and I was welcome to come pick some whenever I wanted. It was pouring the rain down when I donned my boots, grabbed a big golf umbrella and a bowl and headed across the road. My neighbor’s garden is surrounded with electric fencing to keep the critters out of his garden. He said the other day he made the mistake of touching it when he was mowing and the new, higher power charger really packs a punch so I was extra careful. I unplugged the charger and tried to open the circuited gate wire, but I wasn’t strong enough and there wasn’t enough slack. I remember him telling me he had a solar charger and I wasn’t completely certain I wasn’t dealing with “hot” wires. The gated wire was low enough that I could step over it so I did so, gingerly. I set to picking and had to sort through older, woody beans to find younger, more tender ones and soon had a bowl full.

I retraced my steps, being careful not to brush the wires, in case they were live, and plugged everything back in. I cleaned the beans like Grandma taught me, remembering her old, knotty fingers working over them, and soon had a whole “mess” of beans to cook up. Mr. FixIt had fried up the bacon for me while I was picking so I dumped that, and the bacon grease for good measure, into the pot. I forgot to bring an onion so I added onion powder, a little salt, and some black pepper and set the pot on the back burner to simmer. Before long, the familiar smells of my youth began to waft through the house. I had stretched out on Grandma’s bed for a little snooze, which came easily to the tune of the steady drumming of rain on the tin roof and the fans that circulated cool air through the house. It was heavenly!

Supper consisted of the pre-cooked chicken heated up in a skillet with a little butter, a couple ears of corn, a fresh tomato from the Ponderosa garden cut in chunks, and the divine green beans with bacon. Top that off with a cold beverage while sitting on the front porch watching the rain and you have a meal worth more to me than any Five Star restaurant in the world! After supper, Mr. FixIt and I played Uno with his new set of cards that my brother sent him from Colorado. I am telling you what…that was a perfect day right there.

As I wrote this last night, I was propped up with all the pillows on my Grandma’s bed, watching the rain and the evening birds at the feeder outside the bedroom window. Mr. FixIt was watching the evening news then Big Bang reruns. After the terrible news of the past couple of days, this was a welcome respite. My friend Jea is still very much on my mind and every time I think of her, I send up prayers for peace and whatever comfort she could possible attain in all of this. My comfort is knowing she has a relationship with God and that He will never leave her and her family.

❤