Month: February 2025

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PaintChip Patchwork Poem

When my husband goes into the local hardwares store, I never miss a chance to go and admire the paint chips and their color names. Secretly, I want that job. I want to name paint colors based on themes and even literary works. Little Red Riding Hood for the bread baskets in the pantry, lined with Bo Peep White-As-Sheep linen napkins, Little Boy Blue for the nursery, and Green Gables for the metal plant stand. I’m open for any job interviews a paint company would like to offer.

For now, though, while I work my way toward retirement from education as long as my mind will stay sharp enough to think and make sense of logical things, I press on and enjoy the creative side as I piddle in the hardware store while my husband shops for ideas on how to make a flag pole for our camper before camping season gets back in full swing.

I found these colors last night and began arranging them on a theme.

Next, created a chained haiku using the paint chips. I ordered the colors and imagined a countryside with a quaint cottage and a vegetable and herb garden, with a greenhouse right outdoors in the back yard inside a white fence.

And then I wrote in my backpack journal. 5-7-5, lines of haiku, loving the challenge and order of counting syllables and making things fit. I tucked the paint chips into my hand to bring them home and re-order them another time. I could have baskets and baskets of paint chips around the house and never grow tired of arranging them. Magnolia Home chips are my favorite – – they are just the right size and texture, have the most appealing font that even my aging eyes can see, are well-named, and are the most appealing paint colors of any of the other brands.

I could live

in the world

of paint chips and poetry

plants and herbal teas and

English gardens

with quaint countryside cottages

bell-peppered container gardens

wildflowers

a rope hammock

in the shade of a towering oak

and a local library within

walking distance so I

could pull my wagon there

and wheel home the stories.

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Fitz

My soul schnoodle, Fitz, has CUPS Disease. I suppose that’s kind of redundant – a syndrome with a disease. It’s Canine Ulcerative Periodontal Syndrome, and I can’t imagine the pain of chronic mouth ulcers. He lives on the fringes of household activity, preferring to spend his days under the bed or in a chair facing away from everyone. We have to give him Magic Mouthwash with Lidocaine to numb the pain. I can’t bear to lose him, and I can’t bear to see him suffer. We’re considering surgical options, and while we want all of the teeth removed at once, it’s not standard practice to do that. They do this in waves that cost about $2,000 per wave and cannot say how many surgeries will be needed. We’ve already had one a few years back, but the syndrome is progressing quickly.

Why, oh why has my sweet little rescue Fitz been dealt such a rough hand in life? Broken leg, barely saved…..cysts…..and CUPS disease. I’m starting to cry the tears, realizing that this dreaded day may be coming sooner than I am able to prepare myself.

my heart breaks for my

sweet boy who has CUPS Disease

he’s on the countdown……

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Slippery Elm

Photo by Julia Sakelli on Pexels.co

Over the past week, I’ve had two close family members suffer sore throats. One was the result of acute aspiration during a medical procedure in which his airway had to be cleared, and the other from the flu. In both cases, as I talked to them, I could hear the raspy crackling of the voice and felt their pain palpably. And in both cases, I wanted to steep each one a cup of Traditional Medicinal Throat Coat Tea, which has slippery elm as a balm for the throat. It soothes, it coats, and it comforts. Sometimes when I have a sore throat, I just want to turn the bottle of honey up and let it drizzle down my throat to keep it protected; this tea does exactly what honey can do without having to walk around with a bottle of upturned honey all day. They both tried it, and they agree – – it works! I’m not trying to be a commercial for this tea, but when I find something I like, I try to share it with others. Today, I’m grateful for these simple remedies for times when we need relief and want something that works quickly.

The Remedy

slippery elm tea

best remedy for sore throats

with a honey spoon

natural approach

(not relying on NyQuil)

~tastier option

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Boo Radley (Boo Badly)

We live in the middle of a forest. These massive pine trees surround our home on all sides and shelter us deep in the woods, basically cut off from any form of civilization. We have to get dressed and venture into society to see other living, breathing human souls. What used to be a fully operating cattle farm has been, little by little over the years, turned from cow pasture to pine tree farm – which is why, when I tell my work friends that I must go home and walk the dogs sometimes at lunch, I am met with blank stares. They don’t understand that when I say I live on the Johnson Funny Farm, this basically translates to the Johnson Wayward Wildlife Jungle.

We never know what we’re going to see, and we can’t take risks that our pack of house Schnoodles won’t go chasing anything that moves. Two of the three must be on leashes at all times.

Except Boo Radley~

his dad gives him a leash pass

(doesn’t see the need)

He saw it last night, for the second time in two weeks.

I’d just gone to bed and gotten settled to try to figure out Wordle at the end of a long day that included a two-hour extension to help with registration at our high school when I heard my husband frantically yelling Boo’s name. I sprang up, careful not to slip down on the wood floors after just putting the magnesium cream on my feet to help me sleep better, making it to the closet to get my slippers. I knew instinctively this would require entry into the thicket.

Sure enough, Boo Radley had taken off and was marking territory at the bottom of a pine tree, where once again he’d treed a coon. This happened for the first time less than two weeks ago, but here we were again, another (or maybe the same) frightened raccoon staring down into the high beam of our flashlight, wondering what kind of dogs we are raising in this house.

He gets proud of himself and tries to sport the Alpha Dog swagger after a thing like this, but it’s all lies. He is not the alpha anymore, and he knows it deep inside. He’s just obnoxious.

Take this morning, for example. I’m generally the first one up, and so I take the boys out around 5:00. They usually go right off the edge of the walkway and do their morning business, and it takes less than two minutes………until Boo decides to go over by the gardenia bush and gets wrapped around the birdbath and pulls it over, completely full, right at my feet. I was grateful it was not the block of ice it was two weeks ago.

Still, I laugh at the comedy of it all. We’ve often wondered why Boo was abandoned, needing rescue in his younger years. He isn’t an easy dog by any means…….but we love him, and if it weren’t for him and his brothers and all the wayward wildlife critters who wander up and want to be a part of life here, we wouldn’t be able to call it the Johnson Funny Farm.

You gotta be a little sideways to end up here.

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Tea and Writing With Friends

Unexpected kindnesses can happen anytime, in the most needed ways. A couple of weeks ago, fellow slicer and friend Barb Edler of Iowa reached out to see if I wanted to be part of a small group she was putting together for The Stafford Challenge of daily writers in our second year of writing a poem a day for one full year. Each of us writes in three common writing groups and have met in person to make presentations at NCTE. We keep in touch, and I’ve often thought that my friends in the midwest and west coast and I share deeper connections than friends sitting next to me each day at work – – because we share the bond of kinship through writing. And I’m so thankful for this, because along with Denise Krebs and Glenda Funk, we found we were kindred spirits all seeming to need a lift right about now. Each of us shared a poem via Zoom that we’ve written recently and found a common thread – a numbness, disbelief, sadness about what is happening in our world with its shocking politics, heartbreaking plane crashes, and other woeful wreckage.

There are no words to capture the deep feeling of comfort that comes when you sit with friends, near or far, with a cup of tea and spend time sharing writing. I’m thanking each of you today, because that’s what slicing does, too. It brings us together to share what is foremost on our minds and hearts and keeps us in touch with what is going on in our lives across the globe. I love having my gardening friends, my RV bloggers, my travel buddies, my fellow grandmothers who share amazing ideas, fellow readers and birdwatchers and more. Thank you for being a writer in my life.

I’m sharing my tricube (three stanzas, three lines per stanza, three syllables per line) that I shared last night (below). I’m also making plans for March slicing – – I’ve sectioned out the waking hours of a typical day, and I plan to write a poem for every 31-minute time slot about something happening during that time, just to feel the real-lifeness of each moment, just because there can be deep comfort in things as simple as stirring honey into a cup of hot green tea and accepting that it’s okay not to want to read the tea leaves.

Photo by Leeloo The First on Pexels.com

I don’t know

I don’t know

what to say

words fail me

I don’t know

what to do

verbs fail me

I don’t know

what to think

thoughts fail me

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Barndominium Dreams

A friend’s unfinished airplane hanger/barndominium over near the Peach State Aerodrome in Williamson, Georgia

I never in a million years would have thought I’d want to move out of a traditional home with central heating and air conditioning into a metal barndominium with alternate sources of heating and cooling, but that is exactly the direction of our dreams – going from 2400 square feet to between 1200 and 1500 – half of the space we have now, only a much bigger workshop space for our cars, camper, and tractor. We started the journey a year ago, our 2024 full year’s mission to clean out the house, attics, and the barn. We’ve pared down to essentials (except for shoes, plants, and books) and have chosen a floor plan and a spot on the back of the farm. Now the task of actually putting the house on the market…….this is the plan for 2025…..to live in a camper while we build a much simpler home.

Here we go, about

to make the dream come alive

…..still biting my nails……

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Boots and Machetes

We put on our boots, grabbed machetes

took to the woods to find a spot

for a barndominium

bushwhacked through dense thickets

(probably have ticks)

he found the creek

I watched for

birds to

show

where

because

feathered friends

always know best

where to build a nest

to feel safe and secure

free as a gentle breeze

to come and go as we please

to have the whole world at our feet

in a downsized home, simple and neat

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Next Steps Nonet

Boo Radley and Ollie where the new house will be

today we take the next steps toward

building our barndominium

it’s all part of the process

in our retirement plan ~

simplify, downsize,

anticipate

ease in days

ahead

now