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Gratitude on Thanksgiving Day

Lately, I’ve been rereading Gladys Taber’s books, just for the sheer comfort they bring. I can slip through the veil of now and step back in time, to a day when things seemed simpler and more appreciated. My wish for you today is that you find a deep inner peace, full of gratitude for the simple joys on this Thanksgiving Day. Whether you share it with a multitude of people or alone, take time to reflect on the blessings!

This is from Stillmeadow Sampler.

Thanksgiving should be a time of prayer, of feeling humble, and of reaffirming our faith in God. When the grandchildren are propped up on the dictionary and encyclopedia and reach for a turkey wing, I look at them, and pray quietly that they may live in a world at peace.

***

But when I was growing up, the feast itself was more important. We never tasted turkey except at Thanksgiving, that was what turkey was meant for. We dreamed of it, rich, brown, savory with chestnut stuffing. The quivering cranberry sauce was only for Thanksgiving, too, and oh, the giblet gravy and the glazed onions and fluffy mashed turnips! Turkey for Thanksgiving was as special as the orange in the toe of the stocking at Christmas.

…

After grace is said, there is always a moment of silence at our table. What grave thoughts go through the minds of the younger folk I shall never know, but they have a quiet look. I think of all the Thanksgivings past, and of all the hopes for the future. Then the carving knife makes the first slice, and yes, the turkey is exactly done, tender, moist, rich. And pass the giblet gravy at once.

…

Later on, the table cleared and the dishwasher blessedly running, we can add an apple log to the fire and sit toasting our toes against the November chill, while the bowl of apples and nuts goes around and one of the family brings out the old corn popper. And I am always amazed at the fact that no matter how big the dinner is, around dark the younger members of the family get that hungry look again.

…

When the house quiets down, I have a glass of hot milk. Then I say my prayers and give my thanks to God who still makes Thanksgiving possible. On Thanksgiving night, I pray a long while for everyone all over the world who may not have a Thanksgiving.

***

These are words written on Taber’s farm in Connecticut 7 decades ago. I think of my own days of growing up, when grandparents came to our house and we ate at high noon, making memories with cousins and other family all afternoon. Board games, movies, desserts, and making Christmas wish lists (we did not wish for oranges).

Today, we are in a state park in Georgia and will later be joined by a few family members. We’ll eat our Thanksgiving feast in the early afternoon, hike a bit, and sit around the campfire sharing stories and sipping coffee and hot chocolate. And absolutely – we will roast marshmallows.

Be sure to check in tomorrow when I’ll share how to cook a Thanskgiving feast while camping, right down to a perfectly browned turkey. (And I don’t have an oven here).

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November Open Write – Day 5

Today is the final day of the November Open Write, but this is a fun form today. Fran Haley and I have enjoyed hosting this week. You can read today’s prompt at http://www.ethicalela.com here, or read below.

Title: Doggerel

Our Hosts

Fran Haley

Fran Haley is a literacy educator with a lifelong passion for reading, writing, and dogs. She lives in the countryside near Raleigh, North Carolina, where she savors the rustic scenery and timeless spirit of place. She’s a pastor’s wife, mom of two grown sons, and the proud Franna of two granddaughters: Scout, age seven, and Micah, age two. Fran never tires of watching birds and secretly longs to converse with them (what ancient wisdom these creatures possess!). When she’s not working, serving beside her husband, being hands-on Franna, birding, or coddling one utterly spoiled dachshund, she enjoys blogging at Lit Bits and Pieces: Snippets of Learning and Life. 

Kim Johnson

Kim Johnson, Ed.D., lives on a farm in Williamson, Georgia, where she serves as District Literacy Specialist for Pike County Schools. She enjoys writing, reading, traveling, camping, sipping coffee from souvenir mugs, and spending time with her husband and three rescue schnoodles with literary names – Boo Radley (TKAM), Fitz (F. Scott Fitzgerald), and Ollie (Mary Oliver).  You can follow her blog, Common Threads: Patchwork Prose and Verse, at www.kimhaynesjohnson.com. 

Inspiration 

We have enjoyed collaborating on this series of Open Writes inspired by the work of Poet Laureate Ada Limón! Next April, honor National Poetry Month with us by taking part in the discussion of Limón’s book, The Hurting Kind (you can join via Sarah Donovan’s new Healing Kind book club). 

In the past few days we’ve written along many themes in Limón’s work: Family, community, belonging, nature. 

Today we expand all that to include a celebration of our pets—in our case, dogs! We decided to end our Open Writes on a fun note.

Or should we say a punny note?

Time for some doggerel!

Process

Doggerel is intentionally bad poetry (what a relief)! Dictionary.com defines it as “comic verse composed in irregular rhythm…verse or words that are badly written or expressed.”

Many nursery rhymes are considered doggerel. Remember this?

I eat my peas with honey

I’ve done it all my life

It makes the peas taste funny

But it keeps them on my knife. 

—Frequently attributed to Anonymous and Ogden Nash

Speaking of Odgen Nash, consider these lines of his:

I sit in an office at 244 Madison Avenue

And say to myself you have a responsible job, havenue?

Why then do you fritter away your time on this doggerel?

If you have a sore throat you can cure it by using a good goggerel…

You can read that whole poem and more here. 

Today, celebrate the pets (hopefully dogs) in your life with a short whimsical, silly, rhyming or non-rhyming verse. Perhaps a limerick…

or write some haiku

and if you don’t have a dog

—sigh. A cat will do.

Just have pun! Er, fun!

Fran’s Poem

A Bit of Doggerel in Honor of My Granddog, Henry

Time for a nap

time to recharge

if only for a bit

on a teeny-tiny pillow

that ain’t a good fit

this is what comes

of living large

Kim’s Poem

(Texts and verse written with Boxer Moon as he delivered wood and saw the dogs at my house – I asked if I could use our texts for doggerel, and this is what we wrote in our rural Georgia vernacular):

Logs & Limbs & Dogs & Dem 

I hope dem dogs don’t get me, he sent

  In a text on delivering wood

Dey real visshus, I sent back

We put dem up

‘cause you need yo’ limbs

***

Did dem dogs get you? 

I checked on the poetic woodcutter

Dem dog’gerel visshus, 

but dem dog’dint get me, he replied.

***

The Woodcutter’s Afterword:

Dem Kim’s lims now

Dem dogs dint get me,

I stack’t da logs and lef’ dem dogs

-Kim and Boxer

Your Turn

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November Open Write – Day 4

Fran Haley and I are hosting this week’s Open Write at http://www.ethicalela.com as we prepare for April’s discussions on Ada Limon’s The Hurting Kind. You can read Fran’s prompt today here or below. Be inspired and come write with us!

Title: Birdspiration

Our Host

Fran Haley is a literacy educator with a lifelong passion for reading, writing, and dogs. She lives in the countryside near Raleigh, North Carolina, where she savors the rustic scenery and timeless spirit of place. She’s a pastor’s wife, mom of two grown sons, and the proud Franna of two granddaughters: Scout, age seven, and Micah, age two. Fran never tires of watching birds and secretly longs to converse with them (what ancient wisdom these creatures possess!). When she’s not working, serving beside her husband, being hands-on Franna, birding, or coddling one utterly spoiled dachshund, she enjoys blogging at Lit Bits and Pieces: Snippets of Learning and Life. 

Inspiration 

As previously mentioned in this series of Open Writes: Come April, Kim Johnson and I will be honoring National Poetry Month by facilitating discussion of The Hurting Kind, the most recent book by U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón (you can join us via Sarah Donovan’s new Healing Kind book club). 

In preparation for this event, I came across a May 2022 interview with Angela María Spring of Electric Lit in which Limón speaks of inspiration for her book and the way humans search for community: “It’s the Earth and it’s the animals and it’s the plants and that is our community.”

What a glorious opening for birds today. 

Over several summers past, I facilitated a writing institute for teachers. We spent a portion of one session crafting poems about birds, for, truth is, everyone has a bird story of some kind. Just as we went out for lunch, two doves flew into the building to land on the windowsill of our room. How’s that for symbolism?—and awe.

Process

Listen to or read the brief transcript of Episode 674 of The Slowdown, Limón’s podcast. Here she shares a poem by Hai-Dang Phan entitled “My Ornithology (Orange-crowned Warbler)”. Note Limón’s reflection: In observing birds and their world, we learn something true about ourselves. Experience Phan’s warbler up close and personal through every rich detail in the poem.

You might also read Limón’s “The Year of the Goldfinches”.

Now, consider what you’ve learned from birds in some way. Find a kinship. You don’t have to love or even like birds; you could contemplate the Thanksgiving turkeys sacrificed for your holiday table.You might go on a birdwalk or watch awhile through your window for birdspiration. 

Explore birds and their lessons for your life in a short form like haiku, senryu, tanka, or a series of stanzas with the same number of lines. Invent a form! Phan uses three lines over and over. Consider how enjambment and varying sentence lengths can create bursts and phrases like birdsong. After all, poetry is about sound. 

Play with form today. Let your lines sing.

What truths have birds taught you?.

Fran’s Poem


Harbingers

  1. That Morning You Drove Me Home From the Medical Procedure

back country byway, winter-brown grass
trees, old gray outbuildings, zipping, zipping past
small pond clearing, wood-strewn ground
bald eagle sitting roadside—too profound—

I thought it was the anesthesia
until you saw it, too,
before it flew.

And I knew.

  1. On the Morning I Returned to the Hospital After Your Surgery

lanes of heavy traffic, day dawning bright
our son says you had a painful, painful night
dew on the windshield, fog in my brain
all hope of moving past this gridlock, in vain
but for the glory of autumn leaves, a-fire
against cloudless blue where a solitary flier
glides by, white head and tail gleaming in the sun…

I promise, beloved one.

Your healing
has begun.

Your Turn

Kim’s Poem

Lesson Learned

It was only fair to each pick a tour

So he picked one, I picked two.

Sled dogs and glaciers: what fun!

But a hovercraft?!  He picked a hovercraft.

I willed a smile. 

This was his vacation, too. 

We fell in love with the dogs,

Laughed at Pumpkin, whose destiny

Was clearly supposed to be different

But oh, how she tried,

Tripping over her own feet,

Tangling the ropes.

“Pumpkin!” the driver yelled

A dozen times at least.

I could tell: she’d rather be

Chasing butterflies.

We held the next generation,

Puppy teeth nipping our ears.

He spied every seal on those icebergs

I photographed them all

We stood in awe as the glacier calved

Heard its thunder, saw its majestic crash

Into the bay, baby rainbows circling

But then came hovercraft day

My forced smile, my fake excitement

Was a Christmas sweater I’d wear once

Then pass along and forget.

We stepped aboard the yellow craft,

Took off like a racecar

Over the waters of Juneau

Then abruptly stopped in deep water.

The tour guide lifted the doors.

Had we broken down?

Were we swimming?

He reached down into a bucket

Pulled out a fish

Threw it high into the air.

From out of nowhere, the talons

of a huge Bald Eagle swooped in and

clutched the fish,

so close its mighty wingspan

made a cheek-brushing breeze.

It called its whole family

Uncles, aunts, cousins once- and twice-removed

“Fish! Over here!” it surely said.

Or perhaps they all knew to watch

For the yellow hovercraft,

Put on a show for the hovercraft wives

To redeem the husbands.

Baby eaglets at the tip top of a tall tree

Were the best “catch” of the day –

We caught a binoculared glimpse, but not a photo

Five hundred shots of eagles, two clear favorites

But most importantly, a lesson learned:

Step aboard, even when the smile is fake

It just might become the truest smile

Of the whole adventure. 

He won the tour picking.

(He knew what he was doing).

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November Open Write – Day 3

Fran Haley of North Carolina and I are hosting this week’s writing prompts at http://www.ethicalela.com for the November Open Write. You can read today’s prompt below or here on the website. We’d love to have you join us as we write and share!

Give Me This – an Ada Limon-inspired Poem

Our Host

Kim Johnson, Ed.D., lives on a farm in Williamson, Georgia, where she serves as District Literacy Specialist for Pike County Schools. She enjoys writing, reading, traveling, camping, sipping coffee from souvenir mugs, and spending time with her husband and three rescue schnoodles with literary names – Boo Radley (TKAM), Fitz (F. Scott Fitzgerald), and Ollie (Mary Oliver).  You can follow her blog, Common Threads: Patchwork Prose and Verse, at www.kimhaynesjohnson.com. 

Inspiration 

As part of Sarah Donovan’s Healing Kind book club, Fran Haley and I will be facilitating a discussion of The Hurting Kind by Ada Limon in April to celebrate National Poetry Month.  Preparing for these conversations led us to choose several of Limon’s poems this week as inspirations for topic, form, or title.  In Give Me This, Limon watches a groundhog steal her tomatoes and envies the freedom of this creature in the delights of rebellion.  

Process

Use Limon’s poem as a theme or topic, form, or title (or combination of these) to inspire your own Give Me This poem.  

Kim’s Poem

I’m using a moment I would love to re-live, a moment I did not want to pull away from, as my inspiration for today’s poem, and I’m choosing the Nonet form, in which each numbered line from 1-9, or from 9-1 has that many syllables on each.  I’m writing a nonet and a reverse nonet to form a concrete (shape) poem resembling a prairie dog’s hideout.  

Give Me Prairie Dogs

I didn’t want to leave our hotel~

prairie dogs were entertaining

me to no end, their antics

suspicious, unaware

of my watching them

skittering…. then

standing still….

seeking

ground

How 

could a

famous row

of graffiti’ed

buried Cadillacs

come close to competing

with Amarillo sunrise

prairie dogs in sheer merriment

of their Tru Hotel fenced-in playground?

Your turn.

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November Open Write – Day 2

This week, Fran Haley and I are hosting the November Open Write at http://www.ethicalela.com. Come join us as we write poetry together. You can read Fran’s full prompt on the website along with the poems of others or the prompt only, here below.

Title: Belonging

Our Host

Fran Haley is a literacy educator with a lifelong passion for reading, writing, and dogs. She lives in the countryside near Raleigh, North Carolina, where she savors the rustic scenery and timeless spirit of place. She’s a pastor’s wife, mom of two grown sons, and the proud Franna of two granddaughters: Scout, age seven, and Micah, age two. Fran never tires of watching birds and secretly longs to converse with them (what ancient wisdom these creatures possess!). When she’s not working, serving beside her husband, being hands-on Franna, birding, or coddling one utterly spoiled dachshund, she enjoys blogging at Lit Bits and Pieces: Snippets of Learning and Life. 

Inspiration 

As Kim Johnson mentioned in yesterday’s Open Write: Come April, she and I will be honoring National Poetry Month by facilitating discussion of The Hurting Kind, the most recent book by current U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón (you can join us via Sarah Donovan’s new Healing Kind book club). 

Let me linger a moment on the word healing. How often, how long, have we cried out for healing as individuals, families, communities, nations, humankind? When a group of students asked me what superpower I’d want most, that’s what I said. Healing. Oh, to lessen suffering, restore wholeness, impart peace…

In contemplating the despair and destruction of our times—of our human history, honestly—I cannot help picking up the inextricable thread of belonging. Think on this: How much pain stems from the need to belong? To know, to have, a safe place of being? 

In a May 2022 interview with Angela María Spring of Electric Lit, Limón speaks of inspiration for The Hurting Kind: “We are all part of a community, we’re all connected. And sometimes we work so hard at trying to fit in somewhere to find our community, to figure out what it is that makes us connected…you’re already connected. You already have all that you need. And it’s in everything that’s come before you and it’s in everything that’s going to come after.”

That is the spirit of today’s poetry writing.

Process

Read Limón’s poem, “Ancestors”. Note that her images and metaphors are drawn from nature. She writes, exquisitely, of being from rocks, trees, and the “lacing patterns of leaves,” concluding with “I do not know where else I belong.” There are telling lines about roots and survival.

Considering the whole of your life: Which places impart the greatest sense of belonging to you? Why? Concentrate on details and possible symbolism of these settings. What’s the story? Which people are connected to these places? They’re often, but not always, family. 

Try writing free verse or a prose poem incorporating these meaningful images, perhaps borrowing the phrases I’ve come here from and/or I do not know where else I belong.

Fran’s Poem

Origins

(after Ada Limón’s “Ancestors”)

I come here by way of the king’s river
a moody expanse, as vast as the sea
gray-green depths
with bell-topped red buoys
bobbing, bobbing
Right, red, returning
 —a rite of passage

I’ve come here from bridges
yes, most of all from bridges


traversed by my predecessors
seeking livelihood

—did they ever encounter
bridges in their dreams

the way I have?
Distorted structures of dizzying heights

spanning waters at dead of night
absurd angles

impossible to navigate


I never think I can

but I always
find my way.

Like a pigeon, released

driven by some coding
deep in my DNA

I’ve forsaken the riverside
the mammoth steel cranes

the sound of buzz saws, rivet-guns,

metal striking metal
—over time, making a man
lose his hearing

to return, to roost
here in the dawn lands
where abandoned gray houses
and weathered-wood barns
sink decade by decade
into the earth

—for it always
takes back its own


where white-spotted fawns

guarded by their mothers

step like totems from sun-dappled woods

swelling with cicada chorus 

—little living buzz saws
echoing, echoing in my blood
the generational song

—I don’t know
where else I belong.

Your Turn

Kim’s Poem

Ancestors Speak (inspired by Ada Limon’s Ancestors)

I’ve come here

from island and swamp

from Spanish Moss live oaks

from river and ocean

from marshland spartina

from cypress and mangrove

magnolia and black gum

Georgia roots running deep

all sunshine and black water

chaos and order

from hermit and hoarder

from ghosts that still speak

of lies that were spoken

of promises broken

of sermons not lived

the hard slap of truth

I don’t know

where else

I belong.

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November’s Open Write – Day 1 of 5

Fran Haley and I are this week’s hosts of the November Open Write at http://www.ethicalela.com. Each month, this writing group gathers to write for five days. We rotate as hosts and participants, and we provide encouraging feedback to other writers. Come read and write some poetry with us! You can find the direct link here. You’ll meet fellow writers who become the kinds of friends who know you better than those you see in person.

Instructions on Being a Dragonfly – an Ada Limon-inspired Poem

Our Host

Kim Johnson, Ed.D., lives on a farm in Williamson, Georgia, where she serves as District Literacy Specialist for Pike County Schools. She enjoys writing, reading, traveling, camping, sipping coffee from souvenir mugs, and spending time with her husband and three rescue schnoodles with literary names – Boo Radley (TKAM), Fitz (F. Scott Fitzgerald), and Ollie (Mary Oliver).  You can follow her blog, Common Threads: Patchwork Prose and Verse, at www.kimhaynesjohnson.com. 

Inspiration 

As part of Sarah Donovan’s Healing Kind book club, Fran Haley and I will be facilitating a discussion of The Hurting Kind by Ada Limon in April to celebrate National Poetry Month.  Preparing for these conversations led us to choose several of Limon’s poems this week as inspirations of topic, form, or title.  In Instructions on Not Giving Up, Limon illustrates the glory of spring through an unfurling leaf as a tree takes on new greening after a harsh winter. 

Process

Use Limon’s poem as a theme or topic, form, or title (or combination of these) to inspire your own Instructions poem.  

Kim’s Poem

I’m reflecting on a moment I spent beside a lake watching dragonflies dart around chasing each other as my inspiration for today’s poem, borrowing a couple of starter lines from our U.S. Poet Laureate to drive my thinking about form.  The greening of Limon’s tree leaves and new growth reminded me of the color changing moltings that dragonflies undergo throughout their lives as they continuously evolve.  

Instructions on Becoming – By a Dragonfly

More than our enchantment of

children who would tie a

string around our tails

and fly us around like tethered balloons

It’s our upside-down flight 

More than our beauty for

those who study us and wear our image

on metal amulets as symbols of hope

It’s our mid-air shifts

More than our presence-promising prophecy

of dinner-rich fishing holes

It’s our multiple color-changing moltings

     that keep our gossamer wings shimmering

       our sunlit bodies glimmering

         as we keep on becoming 

dragonflies

Your turn.

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Facebook Memory Book Tree

Facebook memories

Our book Christmas tree years back

Best Yuletide tree yet!

One decade ago – that’s how long ago we built this Christmas tree. We raided the reading room, where I used to have six bookcases crammed full of books (I still have the six bookcases, but I have done the anguishing work of paring down my collection over these years, letting go of some keepers).

I think of the work that we did. Find all the tall ones, and place them flat in a circle. Then, we discussed how to proceed. Find the next size down, a little thicker, and place them about a half inch inside the ring of the floor books. And so on, and so forth. String the lights, and light it up! At the top, as I recall, we’d placed a wooden chest with a Bible in it.

Every Christmas holds its magic, and over time, ideas and traditions come and go. I’m grateful today for the memories of the years, right back to the 1960s tinsel trees that I remember in my grandparents’ homes, the real trees that smelled like Frasier forests, and the Charlie Brown trees of the years that didn’t turn out like we’d planned. There was a tree that had little teeny spiders all in it the year I’d made a new sequined tree skirt, and they all climbed down and decided as a group to die right there in it, leaving little black spots everywhere. And, of course, the tree that leaned, that we fixed, then leaned, then we fixed, then fell with a hefty burglar size thud in the middle of the night, breaking precious ornaments and sloshing water everywhere.

To the magic of Christmas ~ and all it holds for us, past, present, and future – I raise my morning coffee. I’ll see A Christmas Carol on the stage of the Alliance Theater tonight in Atlanta, Georgia, and I’ll be thanking Charles Dickens for all of the versions of this classic Christmas tale as we know them today, as well as the traditions that had not yet arrived in England from Germany until he published this book – including the Christmas tree.

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A Hygge November

A few years ago, I began reading more about the Danish concept of hygge and learning about the ways to create comfort – at home and in life. Ambient candlelight, toasty socks, hearty meals of soups and stews, warmth of fireplaces, soothing sounds of music, and coziness of blankets and sweaters. The enjoyment sitting by the fire with the dogs as I write and sip hot tea. These small measures of comfort go a long way in self-care.

One author who brings all the feels of hygge is Gladys Taber. This morning, I read about November long ago from her book Stillmeadow Sampler, published in 1950. This book was a gift from my father last Christmas, and is signed by Eugenia Price in 1977 as a gift to Lady Jane.

Below, I share an excerpt:

Now, toward the end of November, rain falls steadily and it is a chilling rain. The bare branches look black and the browns in the meadows are deepened. The pond’s level rises and we can hear the water pouring over the dam and on into George’s brook. The small-paned windows of the house are a wash of silver. The lamps go on early in the day.

When we go out to do the chores, the air smells of wet fallen leaves. It is a curious musty smell, but pleasant. Jill brings in an apple log from the woodpile and the fire burns brightly. The Cockers and the Irish doze on the warm hearth. It’s a good time to have Brunswick Stew, that delectable combination of chicken, tomatoes, lima beans and corn simmered with seasonings in the old iron soup kettle.

When the rain finally ends, usually at dusk, the whole world looks polished. The horizon has a rosy glow. The air is like vintage wine, properly cooled. When we open the door, the dogs rush out and dash around the house. Rain’s over, rain’s over, they say, barking happily. Inside, with the rose-colored light coming in the windows, the house takes on new life. The milk glass gleams, the brass and copper shine. And the soup kettle is ready to be lifted from the crane, the popovers are hot.

“Next thing we know,” says Jill, dishing up the stew, “it will be snowing.”

I glance over at my dogs, deep in a morning snooze, and glimpse my mother’s rippled swiss dot milk glass on the kitchen counter. I think of her recipe for E-Z Brunswick Stew, and I take it from the recipe box to share with you today. Though Mom is no longer here with us, her legacy lives on through her recipes and memories.

This is hygge in its finest form.

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F. Scott Fitzgerald

Over the past ten years, we’ve rescued three Schnoodles and given them all literary names. Boo Radley (To Kill a Mockingbird) was found behind the door of an empty duplex, abandoned by his former family when they moved out. Ollie (named for my favorite poet, Mary Oliver) was a young stray found on the streets of north Georgia. Fitz (short for F. Scott Fitzgerald) came to us following a badly broken leg (the x-ray looked like a candy cane snapped off at 12:00 of the hook) that the vets barely managed to save. He also had extensive road rash, leading us to believe that he may have been thrown from a moving car. He’s had a large cyst removed from his neck and had most of his rotting teeth extracted since he came to us, including his canines because of CUPS Disease. He also has cataracts, but he can still miraculously spot a lizard from a mile away. Fitz is the happiest little dog I’ve known in all my years.

Fitz is my soul dog – he sleeps right next to me, he has to be in my lap, and he invades my space right down to the air I breathe (he’s usually checking to see what I’ve most recently eaten when he gets in my face, being the little foodie he is). He likes to do what I do, so if I get up from writing to refill my coffee, he assumes the writer position in my chair in front of my computer. He heard it was NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), so here he is – working on his first novel. He’s going for those 50,000 words this month.

And oh, how I wish I knew his story.

F. Scott Fitzgerald,

our Schnoodle “Fitz” for short, works

on his current book

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A Tree’s Season

All the breathtaking charm of the autumn season stops me in my tracks sometimes and fills my heart with the feel of cozy togetherness and reprioritizes my focus on the simple things. The cool breeze, the warmth of a fire, the flicker of candles flavoring the air, the cinnamon and nutmeg spiciness I add to my morning coffee, the softness of the quilts piled one, then two, then three thick on our bed to bring all the hygge comforts, and even my favorite sherpa-lined slippers for scuffing about the house and for porch sitting.

I began taking pictures of a tree on our farm in September here in rural Georgia so I could see the changes over the time span of a month or so. It’s one of my favorite views from my seat on the front porch, a place of birdwatching and reading, of talking and sipping a cup of hot tea at the end of the day, of phone conversations and FaceTimes with children and grandchildren across the miles, of prayer and meditation, of writing.

I’ve always wondered what they would say “if these trees could talk,” and perhaps in this modern age of AI, even the trees will start communicating with us and each other. If they do, this is the tree that would someday tell my story better than any other tree of my middle-age years.

Please meet my faithful friend in these photographs. She reminds me that cleaning out, renewing, and regenerating in a new and different season is a blessing and a lovely way to grow. And that every season is one to celebrate.

Thanks for reading today! I’m raising a mug of hot apple cider to you and waving my scarf in knitted kinship!