Patchwork Prose and Verse
Tiny ducks keep popping up everywhere!
Who could be doing this, sneaking into the office under the cover of darkness to let these cuties in, bringing smiles and prompting Post-It notes of thanks to “The Duckmaster?” No one knows.
witches on broomsticks
flying through the kitchen…..
and everywhere else
glittery pumpkins
backward Halloween laughter
nothing eerie here!
cool night for s’mores pie
after our chili supper
next to the campfire
family dinner
Sunday evening gathering
sharing old stories
new memories made
conversations under a
starry nighttime sky
Our son and his family gave us a fire pit last Christmas. They know we love camping and sitting outdoors by the campfire, so this fire pit has been a treasure – especially during the fall months.
But it needed a place to live. We’d been dragging it all around the yard, charring spots in the grass and even having fires on the sidewalk so we could put the TV on the front porch and watch baseball. That’s one thing we love about the country – we live on the backside of nowhere with no neighbors in sight, so we can get away with backwoods stuff like that.
But we needed a little more classy setup, so on Thursday, we invited some family members over on Sunday evening for a chili campfire dinner around the fire pit that we didn’t have yet – and a s’mores pie that lives in my mind but has never been made by me.
On Thursday evening, I asked a friend of ours who delivers wood to please bring me a load. He delivered it on Friday morning.
Project Fire Pit took place Saturday morning. We got up and got dressed – (a weekend accomplishment all its own) and headed out to find materials.
I had checked on Pinterest to scope out a plan and found a photo late Friday night – 10:36 p.m. to be exact. It seemed simple and pretty, so we settled on this design in the photo above. Even though our pit is square, we figured we could probably put a square pit in a round base.
We went to Lowe’s and purchased 20 rounded side bricks, 4 pavers for the fire pit feet, and several bags of white marble rock. We bought 5 busted bags since they were half price, 3 un busted bags, and used an old piece of steel we had in the barn to lay on the bottom.
Several years ago, we’d had a load of gravel delivered for our rock beds, so we jumped in the farm pickup truck and drove over to the gravel pile. We raked it off and used a load of this for the base rock under the pit. We positioned the tailgate over the center and offloaded the gravel, spreading it out as a base layer.
Next, we spread the white marble rock to cover the base layer and match the brick wall holding the rock inside.
I gave the top cover of the metal pit a quick coating of Rustoleum, and about two hours later, our fire pit had a nice new base – and a top that looks brand new!
No more charred lawn!
Next up: Project S’mores Pie!
Follow me for more daring dinner invitations to fire pits that haven’t been built and pies that haven’t been tested. The chili and cornbread? We rely on Bush’s Best Chili Magic and Jiffy Cornbread. There’s nothing like a family gathering to light a little fire under our feet to get things done!
I had a meeting in our local coffee shop yesterday and treated myself to a Hex Latte while projecting next year’s budget and goals with a community partner. From inside, the vintage paned windows make the outside world look a little bit like a dripping realistic painting – the kind of windows that have candles and snowdrifts in the winter and don’t have 20/20 sharp focus. It’s like I’m in a world of my own in there.
I confess: I was.
I had a moment, looking across the town square, when a brilliant flash of fall colors caught my eye. “I’m walking this square when I leave here. I’m sharing these pictures with others – this Hallmark Movie charm this time of year is too beautiful to keep all to myself,” I decided, right then and there in the middle of a business meeting.
We finished. I walked along, thinking in Haiku, as I mostly do. Here is part of my walk that I’m sharing with you:
charming small town vibes
fall displays on courthouse square
spiced chills in crisp air
Broom-riding witch ducks
Halloween shenanigans
coming on Monday!
tiny ducks popped up
everywhere in the office
bringing us all smiles
hidden duck prankster
spreading joy of quackery
with mini swimmers
Today’s host for our final day of the October Open Write is Anna Roseboro of Michigan, who inspires us to write Take a Word for a Walk poems. You can read her full prompt here, along with the poems of others and the responses to writers.
Anna writes: Take a word for a walk. Students might choose a word from the class generated vocabulary list or from a list of concepts or abstract terms. Move this word through the poem so that it appears in each “X” position. There can be six words in each line. Use color, abstraction, or other poetic devices in your poem. Use this formation:
X – – – – –
– X- – – –
– -X- – –
– – – X – –
– – – – X –
– – – – – X
Master of the House, Doling Out the Charm, Ready with a Handshake and an Open Paw
Boon – blessing, benefit, favorable, friendly, chipper
Everybody’s boon companion – one convivial mister
Les Miserables boon lyrics loop de-loo
We have a boon canine: Boo,
who sleeps under the boon moon
awakening soon, our Boo boy boon
Donnetta Norris of Texas is our host for the fourth day of October’s Open Write at http://www.ethicalela.com. She inspires us to write birthday poems, featuring the month we were born. You can read her full prompt here. I’m not quite lover of the heat with my July birthday, but I do love cool and cold temperatures. Because how can we feel all cozy and hygge in July when there’s no contrast to the warmth we seek?
I am using July by Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts as my inspiration. He writes:
I am for the open meadows,
Open meadows full of sun,
Where the hot bee hugs the clover,
The hot breezes drop and run.
I respond:
I am for the snow blanketing
the countryside quietly in the night
….and all day, too……
….and that glorious 6 a.m. phone call: School’s Out!
My husband and I attended the Southern States Little Guy Meet-Up over the weekend at F. D. Roosevelt State Park in Pine Mountain, Georgia. There were 21 Little Guy campers occupying campsites and probably 35 or 40 people gathered for the campfires each night, so I wrote a Luc Bat today about my weekend. At http://www.ethicalela.com, our third day of the October Open Write is being hosted by Wendy Everand of New York, who introduced this poetry form and inspired us to write one today. You can read her actual prompt here if you’d like to try one of your own! If you are interested in next year’s Meet Up, it will be at Roan Mountain State Park in Tennessee from October 16-20, 2024. Come join us – to write poetry, to camp, or both!
Notes about this form from Wendy: The luc bat is a poem with Vietnamese origins. It means “six-eight” and consists of alternating lines of six and eight syllables with an unusual rhyme scheme:
xxxxxA
xxxxxAxB
xxxxxB
xxxxxBxC
xxxxxC
xxxxxCxD
xxxxxD
xxxxxDxE
There is no set length to a luc bat: you can make it as long as you wish. And there’s no set meter.
Little Guy Southern States Meet Up
Southern States Campground Meet:
from all around, to greet the day
there’s just no better way
for LG folks to play and chat
we roll out welcome mats
put on jeans, don camp hats, build fires,
give camper tours, check wires
make our beds, shine our tires…….relax!
Today at http://www.ethicalela.com, Tammi Belko of Ohio is our host for the second day of the October Open Write. You can see her prompt and read her poem here as she inspires us all to write. Today, we are writing about what our shoes would say if they could talk. I got a little concerned about the reality of this ever happening…….all my secrets would be told!
If My Shoes Could Talk
If my shoes could talk they’d tell all my dark secrets: sweets-binge hiding spots
Common Threads 