Summer is Just Peachy

By Amy Coward

I just bought peaches the size of a baseball. Maybe even a softball. I’m not kidding. The basket called to me like a siren and I didn’t even have to think twice.

It’s been hot this summer in South Carolina, as if you hadn’t noticed. But I don’t care. The farmers’ bounty has made it all worth it to me. The big fat peaches, the multi-colored tomatoes, the okra and squash. I’m kind of a foodie and I only want the good stuff. South Carolina duly complies.

In just minutes at the Farmer’s Market, I load my bags with all things summer: watermelon and cantaloupe, blueberries and corn. I don’t even care if there’s meat on the table if the plate is full of summer vegetables (and maybe some homemade cornbread on the side dripping with butter.) It takes me back to summer lunches at home in Florida when I was young. My mom would simmer summer vegetables, fry okra, slice ruby red tomatoes, boil corn and bake “Thornton cornbread.” The cornbread recipe of white corn meal and water, baked in piping hot oil in the oven was passed down from my Grandma Thornton and is still, to this day, my all time favorite. (Though I don’t recall turning down any kind of cornbread, even the kind out of the box.) All this we enjoyed in our non-air-conditioned house with the fans running full blast. We didn’t seem to notice the heat, just the delicious plate of food before us.

So yeah, I’m hot this summer. I’m dealing with the sauna-like early morning runs, my clothes sticking to me before I can even get to work. But it’s all over-shadowed by the great things summer brings – the food, the beach, the flip-flops. All of this will soon be gone and we’ll all be complaining about the cold, the dreary days and the bundling up we have to do every morning. I’ll be right there with you.

But mostly, I’ll be missing the peaches.

Amy Coward is a public relations professional in Columbia, SC. When she is not managing the madness of event planning at Palmetto Health Foundation, she is turning her empty nest upside down looking for fun and finding it.