Jan C Johnson, Author

It all started when my son Greg transferred to the University of North Texas and arranged to room with some friends. They found a great old home which, I am sure, has housed endless gaggles of college students over a period of decades. It’s full of character and possible fire hazards but hey, if it hasn’t burned down in all these years it probably isn’t going to, right?

My favorite feature in the whole house is a window seat in the oversized dining room. I’ve always loved window seats, and when I saw this one I promptly offered to make a cushion for it. Last Sunday Brent and I went up there to visit, and found the guys had painted their dining room a warm, cheerful yellow. Greg reminded me about the cushion for the window seat, so I got myself to the fabric store on Monday. Since the room already has a striped sofa, I decided to avoid stripes. I had dreams of a bold print incorporating green, dark red and just a touch of sunny yellow, but I didn’t want to use floral. Not for a bunch of guys. No stripes, no florals. After two hours I ended up with a length of solid dark green twill, pretty much the color of canned spinach, to cover the 6½-foot chunk of high-density foam that I found on sale for 50% off. (A good thing, too. Judging from the regular price I can only guess that foam has recently made the endangered species list).

For your future reference, most fabrics WILL NOT SLIDE over foam rubber. So I used an old sheet for an inner cover. I pinned it into place first, scratching my fingers multiple times as the foam resisted and boinged the pins right back at me. Then I tried to use the sewing machine to stitch close to the edge of the foam. I didn’t get very far before the machine jammed, I strained my wrist trying to turn the hand wheel, and the needle snapped in two. I ended up sewing the blasted sheet BY HAND directly onto the foam. Now the pins were in hiding, ripping off bits of fingers when I got too close. I quit worrying about blood on the liner after the first few spots; after all, it was going to be covered up. The giant foam twisted and fought, knocking loose items off the table in its fury, but I finally had it encased in easy-care cotton blend percale.

Then came the twill outer cover. The fabric was creased, so I got the iron out of the cabinet above the washing machine. In the process, I knocked a plastic spray bottle into the washer, somehow breaking both the bottle and the agitator. I had a few near-misses while setting up the ironing board, and one minor steam burn, which added to my stress. Finally the fabric was nice and smooth. Ready to sew!

The thing about a cushion cover is that the fabric must be taut, or it will wrinkle, shift around and look stupid. For this project, I just folded the fabric lengthwise and sewed it into a long tube, slightly smaller around than the perimeter of the cushion. Ah, I thought when I had accomplished this with no further injuries, now for the simple matter of easing the covered foam into its spinach-green tube.

Yeah. Simple as putting pantyhose on a shark. Perhaps the outer cover could have been another quarter inch bigger around. (Note to self: Next time don’t bother ironing the fabric.) I pulled and bunched, squeezed and tugged until the twill had swallowed the cushion whole, then sat down panting to figure out how to fasten the ends. A few folds, some almost-invisible hand stitching, and voilà! A downright respectable-looking window seat cushion.

If I were not a complete chump, I would have sat there thinking how Greg owes me big-time for this monumental effort, plus Bactine and damages. But as Shakespeare sort of almost said, “Chumphood, thy name is Mom!” And so instead, I just smiled and thought of how pleased and surprised he would be when he saw it, and what a nice touch it would add to the sunny yellow dining room.

Thanks for reading!
Jan

One of the most distinctive symbols of Texas, besides the Lone Star flag, is Lupinus texensis, the bluebonnet. Our state flower thrives in poor, rocky soil and tolerates drought pretty well, which probably explains why it is the state flower of Texas and not of, say, Florida or Louisiana. An annual,the plant lives only one year and must re-seed itself each season. It does so quite efficiently, thanks to its ingeniously-designed seed pods. When the seeds are mature, the pods dry out and burst apart, flinging the seeds all over.

We have two flower beds in our back yard where I try to encourage bluebonnets (one by the house, shown above; the other, out by the back fence, pictured on my “…And Writers Read” page.) I rescue stray seeds that fall on the sidewalk, and poke them into flowerbed soil where they will have a chance to come up. So where do the most bluebonnet seeds sprout each summer and fall? Right — the vegetable garden, of course. Never fails.

First I tried letting the vegetable-garden bluebonnets grow, bloom and go to seed, thinking I would capture all the seeds so the same thing wouldn’t happen next year. Hah. You can never catch them all. So last summer, I decided No more Mrs. Nice Gardener. I would put a stop to Bluebonnet Encroachment!

I really love the plants and would hate to lose any of them, so I decided to dig them up — not pull them up — and transplant them to the nice, sunny, rocky, flower bed where I could enjoy them. My trusty trowel and I got out there one hot day. I cleared off some spots among the river rock in the flower bed and made new holes, then traipsed back and forth to and from the veggie garden. On each trip I dug up a baby Lupinus with some soil and as much root as possible, and patted it tenderly into its new home with a drink of water.

As I dug up about the fourth plant, a whimsical notion popped into my head. Suppose the bluebonnets knew each other, and those still standing among the utilitarian carrots and onions worried or grieved over the ones that had been removed? Don’t worry, I wanted to reassure them. They’re just fine — they’re right over there, in the flower bed. Where they belong. I knew what I was doing, and I had the bluebonnets’ best interests at heart, whether they could see that from their mulch-level position or not.

Perhaps I had that fanciful idea of the plants missing each other because my father-in-law had passed away just a few months earlier. I missed Dad Johnson even as I gardened that day, and still do. But, even though he had retained his kind and humorous sparkle, the physical limitations of his illness had begun to cramp his style. It comforted me to think of the Lord Jesus “transplanting” him from this workaday world into a sunny and favored place of beauty.

Thanks for reading,
Jan

Last week I mentioned how adorable our dogs can be, whenever they are not doing something that is disgusting beyond belief. Sort of like very young children.

And so one night, when the back yard erupted into frantic barking in stereo, my annoyance was tinged with concern. Tipper (the one who looks like a little fox) barks at every bug and shadow, but Aggie is generally pretty quiet, so there had to be something unusual out there. I opened the back door to make sure the noisy beasts were all right. The clamor seemed to come from the right rear corner of the yard.

“Tipper? Aggie? Inside — and be quiet!” The words were no sooner out of my mouth than Aggie rocketed past me into the house. Not so her little buddy. Tipper got louder, if anything; she was not backing down.

About this time, I caught a strong whiff of skunk out there. Turning, I saw Aggie rubbing her face along the carpet in the living room in long and rather desperate strokes. Oh, great — she got sprayed. Noxious vapors began to fill the room so we opened all the windows on the front (non-skunk) side of the house, even though it was kind of chilly. Better to freeze and breathe than to be cozily cooped up with eau de skunk.

Tipper was still outside defending the homestead with shrill barks that seemed to say, “BRING IT ON!!” Braving the murky ambiance, I went out there and ordered her in. She finally went. Man, she reeked. I suppose Mr. Skunk trundled off and escaped the yard the same way he got in, under the fence.

Long story short, it took a half cup of tomato juice and a bath to get Aggie freshened up. I almost gave up on Tipper after two baths and a tomato-juice scrubbing that left her furry face all spiked up every which way.

Even though Aggie picked up some stink, she at least showed a bit of discretion by backing off from an impossible situation as soon as she could. Tipper, on the other hand, having no idea what she was dealing with, threw herself into the fray with unwavering determination. The thing is, she got hosed for nothing. If the pups had simply left the skunk alone, or contented themselves with barking at it, it would have left quietly. But no, they had to corner the harmless little thing, and we all had to deal with the consequences.

I think of Tipper sometimes when I read email spam, letters to the editor, or online forum arguments. It’s so easy to be drawn offside by some vague threat or imagined insult, and jump into a totally unnecessary or misguided fight. For my part, I hope I can remember to ask questions and make sure I understand the facts, rather than hastily judging other people. I think that would keep the atmosphere much more pleasant.

Thanks for reading!
Jan