Yes, really!

I was born in the mid-1950’s. My dad was a self-employed plumber and electrician who worked long hours six days a week. My mom was a stay-at-home mom. I am the oldest of four kids and that accident of birth set me up as the target for Mom’s Housework Apprenticeship Program (HAP). I didn't volunteer, I was drafted. 

I became eligible to enter the program the summer I was six years old. The first skill set was Introduction to Dishwater. Many would follow: Speck-Free Dusting, Porch Sweeping, Basics of Vacuuming, Floor Scrubbing, Spot-Free Bathroom Cleaning, Lawn Mowing and Laundry. 

The Laundry Apprenticeship was divided into sections: Proper Sorting, Clothesline Preparation, Clothespin Selection, Techniques of Hanging, Wrinkle-Free Ironing and Folding. Notice the Laundry program didn't include operation of the washer and dryer. We didn't own the latter. The former was a wringer washer which Mom operated because of the danger the wringer imposed. Besides, how could I successfully complete the apprenticeship if my arm was permanently flattened and the bones crushed from being pulled through the wringer?

The main event on Laundry Day was staged on our enclosed back porch. Besides the wringer washer, the operation required two rinse tubs: one for the first rinse and a second one for the final rinse. A few drops of bluing, a whiteness enhancer for grayed or yellowed white clothes, were added to the final rinse. The wringer apparatus on the washer swiveled to be repositioned between the washer and the first rinse, then between the two rinse tubs and, finally, between the final rinse and the clothes basket. Our enclosed back porch was pretty crowded on laundry day with just enough space left for Mom. Fearing she might change her mind about teaching me to operate the wringer, I didn't hang around underfoot, but waited in another part of the house until I was summoned to hang out clothes.

For Mom, hanging clothes on a clothesline was a science. White clothes were hung in the sun, while colors were hung in the shade, if possible, to minimize fading. We used two types of clothespins, spring-operated and one-piece straight pins, each of which was used on certain types of clothing. Some items were hung separately—underwear, shorts and slacks—using two pins; while others—sheets, towels and T-shirts—were strung together by slightly overlapping the corners and securing with a pin. Our clothesline was a masterpiece of laundry day efficiency!

The clothes were brought in as soon as they were dry to prevent further sun fading and weakening of elastic in waistbands. Underwear and towels were sorted, folded and put away. Sheets and pillow cases were put back on beds (mandatory hospital corners!). Most outerwear was made of cotton which required ironing to remove wrinkles. Mom didn't yet own a steam iron so some clothes were dampened with water from a sprinkler bottle— a Pepsi bottle with a sprinkler head set in a hollowed-out cork in the bottle opening. The dampened clothes were stored in a large plastic bag in the refrigerator until the next day. Some clothes were ironed immediately. 

Now, I use a clothesline on warm days when the temperature is at least 60 degrees. However, towels go in the dryer because we like soft towels. Despite using fabric softener in the rinse cycle, towels hung outside are still scratchy. What we refer to as our “good” clothes, those we wear in public, go in the dryer but only for a few minutes. 

One word of advice about hanging clothes outside when you live on a hilltop and the forecast calls for winds gusting in excess of 30 miles per hour: Don’t!

Shortly after we were married and living on a hilltop near Valley Falls, I learned the futility of attempting to wrestle a king-sized waterbed sheet on the clothesline on a windy day. This sheet was the type with the fitted and flat sheets sewn together at the bottom. When spread out in a single layer, there was enough yardage to outfit a fraternity toga party! One windy day, after I’d struggled for several minutes to drape this bedding behemoth over the line, a wind gust whipped it around me until I was wrapped tighter than a mummy. Since the sheet was nearly dry anyway, I shuffled to the house, unwound myself and crammed it into the dryer. 

One recent morning, when I hung clothes outside a nice breeze was blowing. But a couple of hours later, a powerful gust rattled the house. I looked out the kitchen window and saw underwear turbo-jetting across the yard. I sprinted out the door in hot pursuit, fearing our undies would end up in the next county before I caught up. Grabbing the rest of the clothes off the line required two of us: one to hold the clothes in the basket and the basket on the ground, and one to take down what was left of the clothes.

Did reading this account of my Laundry Apprenticeship exhaust you? It may seem primitive to those of you from Generations X, Y and younger. But Baby Boomers feel fortunate that we didn't have to heat a cauldron of water over an open fire and use homemade lye soap and a washboard to scrub clothes clean. Or, haul dirty laundry down to the creek and beat it on a rock. We count ourselves lucky, indeed!

As a kid, I didn't appreciate the home-making skills Mom taught me. Now, I consider those skills priceless! Thanks, Mom! 

I’ve decided I like exterior decorating better than interior decorating—no vacuuming, dusting of furniture and knick knacks or cleaning bathrooms. Just plant, water, fertilize and occasionally pick off dead blooms. Then, in the fall, empty the pots and store for the winter.

Our annuals of choice are: pansies, petunias, verbena, impatiens, geraniums, Shasta daisies and, this year, we added coleus. We try to plant mostly heat-tolerant flowers with the exception of the pansies, which we plant early, then replace with something else if/when they die. We also have to be careful with the impatiens, so we plant them in deep pots or tubs, or put the containers in a shady area.

Our containers of choice are old enamelware pots, buckets, tubs, dishpans, chamber pots, coffee pots, bread boxes and even an old crisper drawer out of a retro aqua refrigerator. The plant stands are old milk cans, various stands with peeling paint, old chairs, an old three-burner gas stove found in a junk pile on our property, a replica of an old bucket bench that Bill made for me, and an old bicycle with a repurposed freezer bin as a basket. These items are gleaned from antique shops, flea markets, estate and garage sales and junk piles.

Punch a few drainage holes in the bottom of the container, add a layer of gravel, a mixture of dirt and potting soil, a pretty flower or plant, give it a shot of water laced with plant food and, in a few days, we have…

We also have hanging planters—old funnels that were used on farms. These are suspended by chains from old pulleys. We use plastic containers that hanging plants are sold in as liners so we don’t have to add so much dirt mixture; plus using a liner helps preserve the funnels from rusting out so quickly.

The little enamelware bucket pictured below was a find from our trip to Alta Vista recently for a book talk at Ag Heritage Park. I browsed the antique shops and was thrilled to find this bucket at a reasonable price. Bill planted “Raspberry Blast Supertunias,” one of our favorite petunia varieties, in it.

I’m taking a little break from the Purple Profusion series to let the annuals in container pots fill in and spill out, a process that shouldn’t take too long with the recent rains.

In my essay, “I Am a Farm Wife,” I stated “I like rusty yard art.” In fact, we call our exterior decorating scheme “June’s Junque.” I’ll take you on a tour.

My last post included a picture of our clematis climbing a rusty, junk-yard pile trellis made from an old iron wheel and cot spring. Here’s another picture taken a week later. Clematis gone crazy!

This is our “Anything Goes” perennial bed. It’s filled with wildflowers, a few iris and daylilies, a couple of rose bushes, hollyhocks, larkspur, and too many other flowers to mention. The goal is to have something blooming from mid-spring into fall. The rusty yard art display in the center is almost swallowed up. It contains an old stump, iron wheel, small pieces of farm tools and equipment parts, and a wind vane—no longer functional—featuring a Golden Retriever that my dad made for us years ago.

At the far end of this “Anything Goes” bed is St. Barb, Patron Saint of Barbed Wire Fences—a barbed wire ball with a bovine skull enshrined on the top. As I said in my book chapter, “Don’t Fence Me In,” “Incur her wrath and risk shredded clothes, lacerated skin and cattle wandering all over the countryside…I pay homage to St. Barb, asking her blessing on our fences that they may have the strength to keep our cattle where they belong. But, if I fail to show the proper reverence, she’ll get even.”

Next stop, more iron wheels. When we moved here, some of the guys on our hay crew helped us with the move. They unloaded these wheels out of the stock trailer and leaned them against this shed just as you see them. I liked the randomness of the arrangement.

Anyone need a pit stop?  Just kidding! Although this outhouse could be functional, we don’t consider it as such. We converted it from an eyesore to yard art. The siding was corrugated tin—pretty boring—so we gave it a make-over and added some pizzazz! Bill attached old barn boards, mixed together various colors of old paint and rag painted the boards in barn red, white, Jadeite green and an interesting pinkish-lilac hue. Then we decorated with junk, antlers and cattle skulls. Pretty snazzy redo on a rustic outhouse!

Last stop—June’s Whimsical Junque. On one end of the bed are two old iron headboards from a bed. At the other end is one footboard. Because of the layout of two neighboring perennial beds, we could only use one. The side rails are old telephone phone pole crossbars with glass insulators. The centerpiece is my bottle bush, a shorter version of my bottle trees. It’s actually an old bottle drying rack. It’s filled with colored bottles and quite stunning when the sun hits it just right. Other whimsical pieces include glass garden totems I made, metalwork flowers and stalk of corn from a flea market, two croquet end stakes with croquet balls, a flywheel from a hay swather with a section from a rotary hoe as centerpiece, and the garden caretaker, Jerome, the Gnome. He was a gift from a friend. Just look at that grin! You can tell Jerome, the Gnome, likes his new home!

This bottle tree stands to the right of the Whimsical Junque bed.

In mid-May, it’s time for the iris—and we have a lot! We know very few of the variety names; we just enjoy their colorful display. Shown below are our many purple/lavender bi-color and tri-color irises. The first one, of course, is the “Batik” iris shown on my Facebook profile.

OK, so the two pictures in the next to last row are not of purple iris. I just threw those in to prove we do have other colors! The pictures in the last row are an iris nightlight and sun-catcher. 

Our purple clematis burst into bloom this past week. The trellis is made from repurposed junk pile finds: an old iron wheel with a cot spring on top and both are wired to my clothesline T-post. The finial on top is a rain gauge. 

The day lilies have buds, but no blooms yet. We don't have many true purple or lavender varieties. We'll catch up with those in a later blog post.