Postum & Porch Swings

Well, last week we reached the two-year mark of our grand free house experiment.

For those of you who may have forgotten, two years ago our family sold our house in La Grange and moved into a old farmhouse in the country that a couple in Dubina were about to demolish.

They were nice enough to give it to us for free if we paid to move it away.

That old house survived our recent cold weather pretty well. We had several water lines freeze during the midst of the storm, but when things thawed out, the water began flowing again, without a busted pipe to be found.

These first few years were filled with lots of fixes and renovations to the house, but now we’ve graduated up to the more fun touches.

We recently hung a pair of porch swings, one on either end of the big porch, facing each other.

Great way to have a conversation, facing someone else – both of you in porch swings. It’s even a situation that gets our teenager talking, and that’s quite a feat.

Speaking of our oldest, she was taking the SAT this week, so the ever-encroaching thought that she might be moving out one day is getting strong. That’s exciting and sad all at the same time. She was really worried about it, thinking that this one test might influence the course of the rest of her life. We broke form and all went to the donut shop before school that day. Maybe a good breakfast would help her feel less nervous. I remember having to go to Sealy to take the SAT when I was a junior, 26 years ago. I’m glad the school is able to host the test here now.

One of the most enjoyable projects I’ve done at our country house was to plant a bunch of young Mexican sycamore trees along each side of the driveway leading up to the house – seven on each side, 14 total. I had visions of proudly watching this tree-lined driveway mature over the years.

I did that last September right before it got really dry, and I had to haul a lot of water out to them regularly to get them through that dry fall we had. I had no way to really cover them from the recent winter storm. As the temperature dropped into the single digits, and we stayed freezing for a whole week, I figured those little tender sycamores were done for.

For the first two weeks there was no sign of life from them, but now all 14 have the littlest signs of new buds coming out.

We’re two weeks into Lent, and I gave up coffee – again. It’s one of the hardest things I do all year, but I drink so much of the stuff regularly, I think this annual 40-day cleanse has got be good for me.

My co-worker, and expert on all things of the plant world, Andy Behlen, suggested I make homemade Yaupon tea to tide me over. We have a bunch of yaupon shrubs around our house, as I imagine most folks do in this part of Texas.

Andy said the yaupon leaves can make a good tea.

I thought he might be after my job, so I looked up info online to make sure he wasn’t trying to poison me.

Sure enough, yaupon is North America’s only naturally occurring plant whose leaves contain caffeine, and even Indians used to brew drinks from the leaves.

You put the leaves in the oven for about 15 minutes at 350 degrees until they brown, crush them up and brew them with some boiling water for a few minutes and strain.

I got to say the drink tasted exactly like hot black tea. Our kids all tried it and liked it, but my wife, seeing that everyone in the house was trying it, decided to refrain –just in case there were some serious after effects. At least someone from the family would live on.

But we were all fine. I’ve made some yaupon tea twice, but I’ve never been a fan of hot teas, even ones from stuff growing around our house, so it’s mostly Postum for me until Easter.

Postum is a caffeine-free “roasted wheat-bran and molasses” dry powder you can mix with hot water to mimic coffee – and I use the word “mimic” very loosely. It was invented in 1895 by the founder of Post Cereal and you can still find it on the coffee aisle to this day at HEB.

Back in high school and college I worked as a stocker at HEB for years, and I never remember having to re-stock Postum, but it’s really not too bad – especially when enjoyed sitting on a porch swing.