Category: Spirituality/Inspiration

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August Open Write with Wendy Everand

Wendy Everand is our host today for the August Open Write, and she inspires us to write odes to our favorite poets. You can read her full prompt here.

This brought to mind the first poet I ever knew. We lived next door to a retired school teacher in Reynolds, Georgia, and one day I got loose and barged into her house (no one locked their doors in that town back then)…..and the rest is history. After she died, two of her granddaughters compiled a collection of her poems, and I got a copy as a gift. I still believe that she pulled my poetry strings out and brushed them…..maybe even crocheted them.

Ode to Mabel G. Byrd (December 10, 1900-1/20/1987)

Mama Byrd’s poems
mainly quatrains
ABCB rhyme scheme
Crafting 4-line verse veins

Born in 1900, Taylor County
Little Sweet Georgia Peach
Died 1987, Taylor County
Lived her life to write and teach

I barged right in, in ‘69
(She was 69, I was 3)
I still remember visiting
Listening to poems at her knee

She went blind
But still knew color schemes
She’d crochet blankets as gifts for folks
In gilded yarns, bright blues, and creams

She still wrote, even blind
Poems were her favorite forms
And when I read her words today,
Time turns back, my heart warms

In 1987, I went for one last visit
Dad and I, next to her bedside
Told me she’d meet me at Heaven’s Gate
About a month before she died.

The very first poet I ever knew
Still speaks to me today
In rose gardens and peach blossoms
…..and in Granny Square crochet.  

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Sunday Morning on the Johnson Funny Farm

Aside from the usual blasts of neighbors’ target practice gunfire and tannerite explosions just to light up the Pike County Discussion Page at 8:00 on any given Sunday morning, the planes from the local airport flying low and the jets flying high along the flight path above the farm from the Atlanta Airport, and the roosters excited to see the sunrise after the long, dark night, the sweet notes of birdsong from the branches of the Loblolly pines brings peace and serenity.


One of our deer families has learned how to enter and exit the old goat pen, where they feast on breakfast and enjoy a little more security and thus a more relaxed dining experience than they normally have, especially with their little ones.

The white-breasted nuthatches laugh like evil circus clowns with their white-painted faces as they climb up and down the suet trees and keep watch while they eat.

And the hummingbirds engage in full-body air jousting squabbles over the sweet nectar at every feeder.

What I love most about my birdwatching time, despite all the best reasons I’d sometimes love a noise ordinance in our county, is that all deadlines and demands are on hold while I sip my morning coffee, never knowing what I’ll see or hear next.

This is wildlife as I’ve come to know it.

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Useful Souvenirs

I may not be sporting a Rockport, Massachusetts t-shirt, but I do have this.

Every time I scrub dishes, I think of that cute little Sail Loft in Bear Skin Neck, and it takes me back to one of the most scenic United States towns I’ve ever visited.

The VRBO unit had one of these dish brushes in the sink, and I fell in love with it right there in the standing-room-only kitchen in that iconic New England coastal town that still plays steeple hymns at 4 pm on the church organ, probably to remind everyone walking around in this much natural beauty that it might be the closest place to heaven on earth.

Even before I left Massachusetts, I went online and ordered one for myself from Amazon. The Lodge. They may specialize in cast iron, but they make a mean dish brush, too.

As I scrubbed the two crock pots from yesterday’s Meal Train Mississippi Pot Roast and our own MPR dinner with cooked-on carrots and potatoes, I thought back to my walks through this quaint little New England town to take photos of the rocky shore, the sunrise seaglass hunt, the angel wings I found on White Wharf beach in one of the least expected places to ever find a pair (an unquestionable hello from my mother in heaven), and the little wooden boats that looked like they were sitting on glass as they were anchored like lone ducks in the water.

Funny how a dish brush can do that.

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Savoring Saturday

I’ve been looking forward to this weekend for several reasons.

An Indigo Bunting performs acrobatic moves in a tree
  • I’m cooking dinner for a friend who is now cancer-free after radiation, chemotherapy, and surgery, and I’ll get to see her today for the first time since early June.
  • I’ll finally finish a quilt for my new granddaughter and get to see the true “rag quilt” look of the final product.
  • I’ll get to read from the next book in Sarah Donovan’s book club, even though the hammock is out of the question on what is supposed to be the hottest weekend of the summer here.
  • The weeds that are completely out of control will get handled by someone else.
  • There’ll be some time for birding before it gets hot outside, when the birds are most active.
  • There’ll be some time for writing chapters in two books I’m working on with my writing group.
  • Some pressure washing might happen.

And the other thing that might happen is a trip to an underground bookstore where they sell these candles that use the scents of things in the books they’re named after, like Alice in Wonderland with the unbirthday cake fragrance, and Anne of Green Gables with some lemon and jasmine. A co-worker told me about this place, maybe an hour from here, where she started Christmas shopping last weekend because of all the unique gifts she’d found when her husband took her there as part of her birthday celebration.

For now, I’m settled into my writing chair, enjoying the early morning silence of the house. I’ve taken the boys out for their morning relief romp, and they all came back in and settled back to sleep right away. I can hear a Carolina Wren singing at the top of its lungs through the kitchen window, and the faintest light looks like pinholes through the tree leaves against the eastern side of the Johnson Funny Farm.

Five minutes from now, at a quarter to seven, I’ll be outdoors with a steaming cup of coffee, starting a bird count to mark the species I hear and see.

And I won’t be rushed to get showered and dressed today. I’ll savor my coffee and my own private bird concert on the front porch way out here in our remote corner under the Loblolly pines of rural Georgia and give a thousand thanks for the blessings of another sunrise to enjoy the spectacular splendor of the woods.

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Showing Up and Showing Out

Nature has a way of showing up and showing out.

For weeks, I’ve been watching and waiting for the figs to ripen, and almost overnight the first wave is ready for the picking. I saw the purple-brown fruits last evening and ran inside to fetch a plastic bowl and summoned my husband to bring his long arms and reach the branches down for me so that I could pick them. Together, we got what we could reach. It was too late to fire up the tractor, though. Usually, he raises me up in the bucket so that I can pick from the tip-top of the tree. That’ll happen after work today.

For now, we have our first bowl full, and they are plump and heavy.

But that’s not all that happened yesterday.

I finally caught a glimpse a bird I’ve been hoping to see for the past few years. Up until yesterday, I had only heard them. They live here on this farm, and I hear them in the wee hours of the morning, when it’s still dark. Ironically, I’d conceded our long game of hide and seek in yesterday morning’s post and declared them the winners. It’s as if one of these birds actually read my blog and decided to show a little mercy.

I was in the reading room that overlooks the butterfly garden. From the window that faces southward, I saw a stirring in the trees. A large stirring – – really an extra-large stirring.

Surely not, I thought.

It wasn’t dark. Just a couple of minutes before 8 p.m. on the nose.

It couldn’t be, I told myself.

I ran for my binoculars and searched the dense tree line for the bird, hoping it was still there when I returned.

I turned the knobs to focus and zoomed in as close as I could get.

Sure enough, just as I’d thought.

There it was, sitting on a pine branch, facing the house.

I could barely contain my excitement, yelling for my husband to come quickly, but not yelling loudly enough to scare off my buddy. I handed off my binoculars to him, and counted back the trees, pointed to the limb and actually used fractions to direct him 2/3 of the way up the Loblolly Pine to the Great Horned Owl grasping the branch with both feet.

We stood in awe, watching this great nocturnal bird of prey turn his head all around, watching the ground below for movement, like the embodiment of a Mary Oliver poem with wings.

It was fantastic to see. I still have shivers just thinking about the magnificent stature of this amazing creature and its commanding but camouflaged and silent presence.

After a few moments, he dove to the ground in pursuit of something he’d spotted, and just like that he vanished into the woods to feast on his catch.

And I’m burning with owl fever now, wishing desperately that he had a little camera attached to him like a policeman wears a bodycam, so I could have his night vision and see where all he goes and what he does. I’d have to hide my eyes when it came time for him to kill the bunnies and field mice and other critters, but I’d lose sleep for weeks just watching how he lives his days and nights.

Today was a treasure – ripe figs and Great Horned Owls. Life doesn’t get much more exciting.

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Answers From the Universe

Any answers I will ever find from the universe won’t be written in the sky in trailing airplane smoke.

They’ll come from one of two places.

The most likely place will be in the lines of verse, whether Biblical or modern poetic. Those golden lines, illuminated not in their own context, but in the context of circumstance, hold ancient wisdom and divine truth.

The second most likely place is outside my bathroom window in the voices of birdsong as I’m getting ready for the day. I often crack the window open just a tad when I’m showering and putting on my makeup – just to hear the lilting melodies of my feathered friends. Sometimes it’s almost as if I can understand what they’re feeling, despite the lack of words. Just this morning, a Northern Cardinal called, “cheer-cheer-cheer, purdy, purdy, purdy,” like she was cheering my cosmetics to do their prettying.

The more I observe birds and use my Merlin app to help me identify the different species by their calls, the more I find myself focused on their messages.

Somewhere in between what sounds like I should make a call to report a Tufted Titmouse domestic fight and the cooing of pure love doves outside my windows, I listen. Quietly. The words and feelings I need to hear are no farther away than my own back yard…..

…..and resting on my bookshelves.

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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!