About Dana

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I'm a dichotomy of blue jeans, pretty jewelry, frugalista, and Southern girl living the simple rural life. I want to live my life holistically, thoughtfully, economically, and most of all gratefully, and encourage other women to do the same.

Thursday, July 25, 2013

A Lick and a Promise

Perfection is not something I cling to around the house anymore. Perfection is a synonym of procrastination. I've written about this topic in a business blog. If you're interested, here's the link to Being a Perfectionist.

With a long-haired golden retriever in the house every day (as well as a nightly visiting American long-hair cat), it can get quite hairy downstairs. I'm talking mucho hairo. I used to fret that my house was never clean. I'm a busy person and kind of a neat freak - I run a business from home, help out at my husband's company, homeschool my son, run my son to every Boy Scout/swim team function in town, take care of pets and chickens, the garden, the house, and the cooking. I used to wait until I had the luxury of time to tackle an onerous chore such as vacuuming. Then I discovered my house became fantastically dirty because there was never a large enough cache to time to get it done "perfectly" and there was always someone or something waiting for my attention.



So I decided to listen to my Mama. Mama, did you hear that?

I decided that giving the downstairs floor "a lick and a promise" was really all that was needed every couple of days. Mama always said just getting something done OK - a lick (at the job) and a promise (to do it better and more complete next time) - was the way to achieve something sometimes. So I quickly vacuumed all the flyaway hairs and promised in a few days when I had time to do it again, I'd clean the baseboards and mop really good, too.

Sometimes GOOD is better than PERFECT.

So give your dusty furniture a lick and a promise and go outside on the deck and have a cold iced tea.

Love,
TCB

Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Reminiscing about Planting Southern Vegetable Gardens

I'm still reminiscing all this month here at The Country Belle, writing about family and family activities. I've been gathering (a little) produce from my garden - mostly herbs and a few tomatoes - because our excessively wet weather this summer has our Southern garden saying, "What?! What?!"

I can count on one hand the number of days we have not had any rain this summer. Talk about the opposite of the drought-land I'm so used to in South Carolina in July. And 80 degrees for a high temperature? Unheard of this time of year down South!

I'm not complaining, but my garden kind of is complaining. It makes me remember when I was a child, and we often spent spring and summer nights and weekends planting something in my grandfather's garden, shelling beans until my fingers cracked, snapping green beans until my hands were sore, or shucking corn off the back of the pickup truck (and trying to avoid yucky worms!) until the sun went down.

It makes me remember a story that I still sometimes get laughs about from my family members. I was a Southern country girl growing up in South Carolina but trying to somehow work some sophisticated "girlie" stuff into my life. So often on Saturday night, I would pull out my light blue manicure kit and give myself a full-scale mani-pedi.

I still have that kit after all these years.

I still use it.

Back to the story...I was getting my nails done for Sunday morning church. You know, looking all right.

Well, one weekend I got a little super ambitious and decided to work my manicure into my Saturday morning instead of Saturday evening. And then I found out we were going to the farm. And then I learned I would need to plant potatoes.

In case you don't know about these things, you can take a potato and cut a piece that has an "eye" on it, plant it in a hole in the garden and it will grow a whole new plant with a plethora of potatoes. (How's that for an alliteration?)

My grandfather hoed the holes and cut up the potatoes. So no problems there.

Then I  realized I needed to stick my precious manicured nails into the bucket of wet potatoes, pull them out one by one, and drop them in a hole to be covered.

Do you know how hard it is to do a job like that without getting dirt and other crud under your fingernails? You don't. And I protested. "But it will mess up my manicure!"

I was laughed out of the garden. But then I had to promptly return and do the job.

Rural lesson learned: No manicures on Saturday morning. Wait 'till the chores are done.

Hope you're having a wonderful day wherever you live.

Love,
TCB