Month: July 2023

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Goal Update Ending July, Beginning August

Osprey flying over Lake Juliette at Dames Ferry Campground in Juliette, Georgia

At the end of each month, (or beginning), I review my yearly goals and spend some time reflecting on how I’m doing in living the life I want to live ~ a way of becoming my own accountability partner and having frequent check-ins to evaluate my progress. I’m still in the process of revising some of my goals as I encounter successes…..and setbacks. New goals have asterisks for the month of August, when I will report on them in a few weeks. For the month of July, here’s my goal reflection:

CategoryGoalsMy Progress
Literature*Read for Sarah Donovan’s Book Group





Send out Postcards




Blog Daily

* Write at least 2 chapters for
writing group’s book		Ethicalela.com has a new
book group! First Book: Healer
of the Water Monster by Brian Young (https://shorturl.at/coAHN) and our group will meet this week. I’m halfway finished and will be ready by Tuesday evening for our discussion. I’ve purchased the book for August and I’ll be ready to begin that one.

I continue to send out postcards – every month, I mail something to my grandchildren so that when I am gone, they will think of their Nana as an adventurer who loved to get out and see the world!

I continue to blog daily, and the daily writing and reflecting is a wonderful habit for me. I don’t feel complete without some form of daily writing, and the blog is a way of continuing the habit.

My writing group is writing a series of new books, and I will spend time editing the chapters we have written. I will continue to add 2 chapters to one book this month and edit the chapters in the other book. It’s a work in progress. Our proposal went out last week.
Creativity

*Make a rag quilt for a new grandbaby

*Create Shutterfly Route 66

I have a new granddaughter, and I’ve purchased and cut the squares for the rag quilt that I will begin sewing this week. I hope to see her next weekend, so I’ll need to hit the fast button on the sewing!

I created a video, but I didn’t accomplish this goal, so I’ll continue this one: I’ll create a canvas or two, along with a photo book using our Route 66 photos! (Oh, and I got creative with spray paint, too – graffiti is fun!).
SpiritualityTune in to church

Pray!



Keep OLW priority		We will tune in to church by radio or YouTube and catch up with services missed while on the road traveling.

My car is still my prayer chamber for daily prayer, and there’s so much to give thanks for. I continue my conversations with the good Lord each morning and afternoon.

I’m still keeping my OLW my priority: pray!
ReflectionWrite family stories

Spend time tracking goals each month		I have shared family stories through my blog this month and will continue this month to do the same. Especially when the figs ripen and we make “Strawberry Pigs.”

I’m tracking goals, revising, and considering some new categories as I look at my goal table.
Self-Improvement*Reach top of weight range
This is a setback for me this month. Part of May and all of June was not a good one for weight. I’ve gained back about a third of the weight I had lost, and I need to transition to Weight Watchers point counting, which has been the plan since starting Optavia. I need to make the shift for July – and stay out of the retro diners with burgers, fries, and shakes. Update: I’ve joined WW and lost 5 pounds in the first week. I’ve managed to stay out of the retro diners, so this month I’ll focus on losing the craving for coconut cream pie.
GratitudeDevote blog days to counting blessingsThe gratitude category was strong for the month of July. I have a new granddaughter, and one of my daughters celebrated one year of sobriety this past month. I have gone back to work for another year in a job I truly love, and as I sit on the shores of Lake Juliette this morning surrounded by birdsong, I realize now more than ever that the blessings of this life far outweigh the struggles.
ExperienceEmbrace Slow Travel

Focus on the Outdoors		July was a month of both slowing down and returning to work. We started the month camping at Dames Ferry Campground and cut that trip short, since the heat got the best of us. We finish the month here on a more shaded campsite, and give thanks for the beauty of the outdoors and the gift of time together sharing the simple moments of peaceful solitude.

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The Whistle Stop Cafe

Some days we get as close to our Georgia cultural roots as we ever can, and Saturday was one of those days.

Whenever we visit Dames Ferry Campground in Juliette, Georgia, we like to have lunch at The Whistle Stop Cafe. There is always a wait, and today’s wait exceeded an hour.

The long wait is worth it, though, even without air conditioning when temperatures are scorching in the upper 90s in Georgia. They turn on all the fans and it feels like we’re back in the 1930s.

Waiting on a table in the Georgia heat

The Whistle Stop Cafe is based on the novel by Fannie Flagg, entitled Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe. You can even order the actual fried green tomato batter mix from Amazon! They made a movie, too, and we love watching it before we visit the restaurant each time we come.

They serve their drinks in ice-filled Mason jars with lemon rinds garnishing the rims, and the servers take time to show diners the window with the bullet hole and the booth where most of the movie scenes in the restaurant were filmed. Outside, you might see the train – or trains – whistle past the Whistle Stop and think of the touching scene at the end of the movie when you think there’s been a train accident death – and realize the truth. And sigh with great relief.

If you’re feeling especially brave, you might try the Bennet’s Barbecue, but we weren’t feeling all that courageous in this sweltering heat.

The front porch ceilings are painted haint blue, a tradition in southern towns that originated on the islands of the South Carolina Lowcountry. One paint company actually has a color named “haint blue,” to ward off spirits from coming into homes or businesses.

There’s plenty good reason for a coat of ghost paint here.

If you’re ever just a few miles north of Macon and want a down-home Georgia experience, visit the small town of Juliette, Georgia. The southern culture doesn’t get more authentic than right here in the very heart of Georgia.

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Family Dog

Boo Radley, listening for his dad’s truck at the top of the driveway

Boo Radley is the first of our three rescue Schnoodles. He was found by a landlord, abandoned in a duplex in a neighboring county by his family who had moved out two months prior to his discovery, there in a fly-infested apartment with very little food and water provisions remaining. This may explain his absolute panic mode with flies and any kind of ding or alarm. The rescuers named him Einstein; his hair was matted and went every whichaway. He’s the most human of our three boys, expressing emotion through his eyes, ears, and tail – to a much deeper soul-piercing level than our other two. We named him Boo Radley – – a character “behind the door” in a beloved American Novel, a character who rescued and is rescued in the novel.

And he wants both of his parents home at the end of the work day.

Not one of us.

Both of us.

His abandonment by his former family may explain why he runs for his dad’s truck every afternoon, to make the last little bit of the drive to the house in the driver’s seat with his soul human. He hears the tires a quarter mile down on the road before he ever hears the truck, and runs. His dad knows to watch for him – it’s the highlight of the day for both of them!

Boo Radley

he came with issues
we will never understand
neglected, abused

abandoned, alone
......trembling in a small kennel
we caught our first glimpse

through the matted mess
we fell in love with our boy
and made him our own
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Strawberry Pigs

Lately I’ve been grounding myself in my rural Georgia blessings by rereading Gladys Taber‘s books about her life on her farm, Stillmeadow, in the hills of Connecticut. Every sentence she writes, it seems, takes me to comforting places that fill me with the joy of memories and the inspiration to carry on the traditions and legacy that my mother left.

In the August chapter of Stillmeadow Calendar A Countrywoman’s Journal, Gladys shares, “Corn stands silken in the field, chicory stars the roadside, and goldenrod mints her coin. The kitchen smells of spices and syrups, ming and sweet pepper. It is the time of “putting up,” a rewarding time for country-folk. I believe it is an instinct in man to store things against the winter, even when there is a supermarket a few blocks or miles away. It is part of the rhythm of life.”

When my children were young, I’d meet my mother at the halfway point so that the kids could visit a week every summer with their grandparents. Just a few weeks ago, as I was visiting one of my girls, we passed a Dairy Queen.

“That makes me think of all those times Mimi would take us to get a Cotton Candy Blizzard,” she shared. “Those were the best days of my life. I loved making strawberry pigs with Mimi.”

My mother had a fig tree, and they’d all go out and pick figs in the back yard and strawberries from a neighbor’s patch. Mom would get out the pressure cooker and a box of clean Mason jars and lids. Everyone had a job to do well beyond the picking – – washing figs, hulling strawberries, slicing fruits, measuring sugar, stirring. It was a day-long event with everyone fully-aproned, and they stocked our pantry and theirs with all the toast topping they needed for the coming winter months.

My grown children still call strawberry figs “strawberry pigs,” from their days of childhood mispronunciations.

When we moved onto the Johnson Funny Farm in 2008, I found a little twig of a scratch-and-dent turkey fig on the clearance rack at Home Depot and bought it for $3.00. My husband put up the orange plastic netting around it to keep from running the tractor over it, and today it stands taller than a clown on stilts and is more solid than any prize bull.

My scratch-and-dent clearance fig

I walk out to the fig tree this morning, inspecting the forthcoming fruits, anticipating their ripening. A fig harvest heralds the end of summer and beginning of fall – my favorite time of year! And I feel my mother’s arm around my shoulders, erasing all distance between heaven and earth, assuring me that the time spent doing simple things with those we love is the best gift of all. The simple act of making memories transcends years, space, and distance and preserves the togetherness and belonging – – the “putting up” of love scooped and slathered freely like a medicinal balm at the twist of a jar lid when it’s needed in the winters of our lives.

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My Dear Friend Gladys

Several years ago, my father sent me a stack of books from his collection by Gladys Taber.

“Read these,” he urged. “You’ll see yourself in these pages.”

So I did. And he was right.

Gladys Taber lived on a farm named Stillmeadow in the Connecticut hills, where she wrote for Family Circle, Redbook, Ladies’ Home Journal, McCall’s, Good Housekeeping, and other popular magazines. She published over 50 books.

I live on the Johnson Funny Farm in middle Georgia, where I make a feeble attempt to add to my blog every day.

Gladys was a lover of animals. She raised her precious, spoiled rotten Cocker Spaniels and treated them like her children. She even made friends with 2 skunks.

I’m smitten with our three Schnoodles. We call them our four-legged sons and share our meals with them at every sitting. I watch birds and serve them specialty seed.

Gladys and her friend Barbara Webster exchanged letters for years, even publishing one full year of correspondence between their farms in Stillmeadow and Sugarbridge, sharing details of farm life in the 1950s.

I’m fond of mailing postcards to family and friends.

Gladys’s love of the countryside is evident in every carefully crafted sentence, rich in her descriptions of the simple pleasures of farm life.

We, too, are so fond of our corner of this planet that we audibly say, “Ah, back in God’s Country,” when we come back home from anywhere else. We’re “those folks” who take Sunday evening drives just to admire the landscape and praise the Creator for the rolling hills and the cows in the meadows. We catch our breath with every rustic charm – split-rail fences, old barns, rocking chairs on porches, sweet tea in mason jars, sheets blowing in the wind on a clothesline, clumps of wildflowers at the base of a mailbox.

I turn to the July pages of Stillmeadow Calendar and begin.

“July comes to Stillmeadow clad in silk-blue dawns, blazing gold noons, and violet dusks. Heat glazes the air, leaves droop, and the pond level begins to drop. But night is lovely as a dream, and we can go outdoors without a sweater. Sitting in the garden is inadvisable because the mosquitoes and gnats are busy, but a brief walk is possible.”

I connect with Gladys. These could be my own words now, 80 years later.

I glance out at the drooping leaves, heavy with the heat of the day here in middle Georgia and look to the western horizon, the copper tangerine sun hanging low in the branches and think, “What did I ever do to deserve this slice of heaven on earth?”

And for a moment, I feel the knowing spirit of Gladys here with me, nodding enthusiastically, urging me to love it while I can. She’s smiling from a better place, assuring me that for now, this’ll do.

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Savoring Saturdays

Saturdays in 2023 are still savory. We begin the day with coffee and a bite to eat somewhere before spending the day together. We are blessed that our jobs allow us to have some common weekend time to get out and enjoy life, and we don’t take that for granted!

Smitty’s in Woodbury, Georgia was our choice on Saturday. Our friend Bob Oxford owns this restaurant, and his brother Mike helps out on weekends. Their mother, “Miss Jewel” Oxford, was the oldest living member of Concord Baptist Church, where we attended years ago. Her fried pies were delicious, and Bob still makes those pies from time to time, taught by the best! When I served on a pastor search committee with Bob, he’d bring those pies to the meetings, and they went lickety-split!

I enjoy rereading some of my rural life go-to books occasionally as we wait on our breakfast to arrive. Yesterday’s choice was Stillmeadow and Sugarbridge by Gladys Taber and Barbara Webster. Their exchange of letters from the 1950s between their homes in Pennsylvania and Connecticut describes country living at its finest. I like to feel part of that, particularly when my biscuit is made from scratch that very morning, and with each bite I think of the simple joys of rural life not afforded in big cities.

We also made a rare discovery: Georgia peaches! Most of Georgia’s peach crop was lost this year, so coming by Georgia peaches has been close to impossible – – until yesterday! We stopped at a produce stand in Woodbury and found them. I bought two large baskets to slice and eat with our yogurt this coming week. It’s breakfast today, before tuning in to You Tube to hear Dad preach at St. Simons Island First Baptist Church. Our son and his family, home waiting on Baby #5 to make her appearance, will be watching, too!

Our time yesterday was spent driving and birdwatching. My husband is a former deputy in the county where we live, and as a current elected official, he also enjoys time to get out and ride the roads to check conditions and washouts on the dirt roads. We both love this quiet time for different reasons, but it works all the same. He reminisces about the experiences he’s had here throughout his life, and I watch and listen for birds.

Way back in the day, Flat Shoals was filled with hundreds of people on weekends (“mostly drunk,” my husband added, thinking back on the times he had to respond to calls out in this area). It was a popular place to bring a cooler and an inner tube or raft and find a spot in the rock shallows on the shoals to stay cool all weekend. Today, you might see a few fishermen angling to stock their freezers for the next fish fry.

We were there for the birds.

I logged seven new species in the county yesterday along the waterways here at Flat Shoals. Through birdwatching and long Saturday drives followed by coffee together in the morning, I find that I get through the stress of the work week better when I know I have the weekends just around the next corner.

While others are packing our local air-conditioned movie theater to see Barbie, we have a front-row seat to the birds!