Feivel visiting the Johnson Funny Farm, Christmas 2021
My brother lost his dog recently – the dog that really was his child, as it was his only companion for most of the past 14 years. Feivel had been born on his front porch on his 18-acre farmland in rural Georgia. We all grew to love Feivel, but one morning it was clear that it was time to be merciful and let him go when the dog’s cancer had won.
Crossing Guard
to raise a puppy walk him across Rainbow Bridge ~ love and grief at once
“There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot.” – Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac
In 2008, I applied to be part of a scientist-in-the-field study for teachers through a grant study that invited teachers to gather at the Jones Ecological Research Center in Newton, Georgia to engage in scientific research in the areas of aquatics, forestry, wildlife, and plants. This was a life-changing experience for me, helping me to understand the reasons for controlled burns, showing me how trees talk to share the history of drought conditions throughout time, and helping me to develop an even deeper love of environmental science.
Each teacher chose two areas for the week-long study; my first year was spent studying plants and wildlife. I reapplied the following summer and was blessed to be able to attend a second time and complete the studies of forestry and aquatics. From the readings over these summers, I became a fan of Aldo Leopold’s Sand County Almanac; it is highlighted, with notes in margins, and each time I reread it, I find another favorite part. When the nation was mesmerized with Where the Crawdads Sing, I smiled at Owens’ first line – it came straight from Leopold.
As a teacher-scientist participant, I received a gift certificate to Forestry Suppliers, and I had not one moment’s hesitation about what to order. Bluebird boxes.
My love of birds was born as a child, when my mother taught me all the different kinds of birds that came to our backyard feeders. She was your typical birdwatcher – she’d don a bucket hat and sit with binoculars, watching for hours on end with a glass of iced tea on the porch and shared her love of birds she’d gotten from her own mother with both my brother and me. So I ordered 20 bluebird houses – some to be placed on school campuses, and a few on the Johnson Funny Farm, where I live in middle Georgia.
Bluebird eggs and hatchlings in 2015
And here is my moment: today, I have baby bluebirds in the same surviving bluebird house that has been in its exact spot for 14 years – as there have been every year since 2009. The house is not in great shape – it is weathered and worn, but it has drawn the bluebirds to it year after year to raise their young.
If you’re wondering what to do to honor Mom on Mother’s Day, give her a bluebird box. If she’s no longer here, put up a bluebird box in her memory to honor the motherhood of bluebirds! And sit back and watch.
One of our rescue dogs, a Schnoodle named Boo Radley, was abandoned and left behind when a family moved out of a duplex in a neighboring county; he was left with food and water and was not discovered for over a week. He was matted and shaking when I first saw him within moments of when the landlord brought him to the rescue in the back of a van. I applied for him right then and there and brought home a shaved dog days later – one that still has so many issues, from flying insects to dings on cell phones to humans. I often wonder about the mysterious mosaic that is Boo.
Mysteries
scattered, torn pieces tattered fragments, betrayal mysteries unsolved
As flowers open outdoors and the world awakens to the color of spring, here is a ghazal to celebrate the beauty of this day. The photo was taken in Gibbs Gardens in Ball Ground, Georgia the first week of April 2022.
Tulips at Gibbs Gardens
Bloom!
Rocky soil or boggy mire Summer heat or winter frost, Bloom!
Song of Solomon 2:13 ‘The fig tree has ripened its figs, And the vines in blossom have given forth their fragrance. Arise, my darling, my beautiful one, And come along!’”
Our ethicalela host in March inspired us to think about writing like a chef thinks about cooking and draw the comparisons. I married a 16-year bachelor after his divorce, three years after mine. The man still prefers to go out to eat meals, despite my best efforts in the kitchen……so here’s my Haiku take today:
Writing: much like lunch out~ where to go, what to eat? I need a spinner.
Is there an app for this?? I need a dinner spinner.
In rural towns in the southeastern United States, it’s not uncommon to think twice before approaching a house way out in the country. Neighborhoods are different. People walk past on sidewalks all day in their comings and goings. But the country is another story altogether.
Theft is an increasing problem. Secluded driveways and barns offer privacy for stealing things. Our community discussion page almost daily features the camera footage of as-yet-unidentified people under suspicion of stealing the truck or trailer they are seen rummaging.
When thefts began occurring on our road, we put up cameras and discussed where to put the video surveillance sign. My husband thought it would go best up near the garage, but I thought it would be better to put it down at the foot of the long driveway, next to the No Trespassing sign. There, at least, the burglars would have an opportunity to rethink and turn around before fully committing to the consequences of their crime.
We studied the camera and became proficient at setting off the sirens – – just in case.
Was there any question that when I saw the white van with no company or business markings on it the very next day, pulling up to the driveway and a man entering our garage that my heart skipped a beat?
Really? This soon? We already have a burglar?
So I did what I had practiced and began setting off the alarm immediately, in 30-second increments. I wanted this man to know that everything he was about to take would be caught on camera.
And he did exactly as I’d hoped he would do. He ran out of the garage, looked directly at the camera and made a phone call.
Hmmm, I realized. Calling off his posseafter checking the place out.
I started gathering my purse and sweater at work, heading right around the corner to the Sheriff’s Office on the town square to give a good description of the suspect and show them the footage.
And that’s when my phone rang.
It was my husband. Kim! Stop, stop, stop! Don’t set off the siren again. That’s our new pest control technician. Active was bought out by Allgood, and he’s there to spray.
Sheepishly, I simmered down and made my way back to my desk. I pulled up the side cameras, and sure enough – there he was, spraying for bugs all along the base of the house.
I asked my husband to call the technician back and explain – I was looking for a marked van. I’m thankful I wasn’t home. The other thing I really want is for our new bug man to make a PSA-type video testimonial that scrolls on a screen I can install on the tree next to the video surveillance sign, looking a lot like those bandits in Home Alone after Kevin McAllister gets finished with them – tattered clothes, tar-pitched faces, and hair everywhichaway.
“These folks are serious, y’all. You might want to turn around at this sign and not go up near this house if the Johnsons aren’t expecting you. It’s called the Funny Farm for a reason. These folks don’t play.”
What is it about A-1 Steak sauce that roils forth scoldings of diners with such fierce betrayal of steak flavor deep from within my husband’s soul? He can’t stand it. And he can’t keep quiet about it, either.
My sister-in-law loves A-1 on her steak. I, too, was a fan from an early age as a child in a poor preacher’s family. We put the sauce on our clearance steak to add flavor and liven it up a little bit. We even put it on our hamburgers from time to time and pretended they were “for real” steakburgers.
So imagine the scene in O’Charley’s Restaurant when both my sister-in-law and my husband ordered steak, medium rare, charred grill lines on the outside reading as perfection when the knife cut into the warm pink center.
The waitress asked, “Can I get you anything?”
“A bottle of A-1, please,” my sister-in-law requested.
Immediately the beef bully threw a jab. “You ruin perfectly good meat that way, you know. Why in the world would anybody do that? All you taste is the A-1 when you cover up the taste of the beef.”
I almost kicked him under the table, he was so passionate and feisty. Them’s fightin’ words, I thought. He’s going to start a family brawl over a steak right here in the O’ Charley’s in Griffin, Georgia.
His family grew up on a cattle farm, so they always had tasty steaks. My sister-in-law and I, however, grew up without the privilege of frequent red meat. I thought about this. A wine connoisseur acquires a taste for all that is perfection in wine and can tell the vintage year, the type of wine, and where the grapes were grown practically with a swirl of the glass under the nose and a mere drop on a single taste bud.
That’s what the Johnson boys can do with steak. They can smell a steak and tell which breed of cow and how old it was at slaughter, and where in the United States it ate which variety of grass and the pH of the soil that grew the grass that fed the cow that yielded the beef that’s served on the plate. They know steaks. They need nothing to enhance what they have been trained to savor.
Raised on the east coast islands of St. Simons and Hilton Head, I can do that with shrimp. I can tell someone whether they were caught in a cast net or a shrimp net, the exact GPS location of the river or ocean at the time of hatching, the day and time and tide on which they were caught, and whether they were boiled with or without the heads (not really, but go with me here…). Sweet Georgia jumbo shrimp caught fresh in the afternoons and boiled for supper need no cocktail sauce. But to those who grew up on cattle farms of middle Georgia, a shrimp is a shrimp. To a coastal Georgia girl, a cow is a cow and a steak is a steak.
Imagine my delight when my sister-in-law and I set out for the mountains of North Georgia and Western North Carolina for a girls’ trip and both ordered steaks for supper.
“Can I get you anything?” the waitress asked.
“A bottle of A-1, please,” my sister-in-law requested.
We both poured from the bottle as we properly sauced our steaks.
For kicks, I sent a picture of our plates to my husband, at home with the dogs, to let him know we had arrived at Stop One on our journey and were butchering our steaks.
Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.
Common Threads 