Posts

Posted on

Family Dog

Boo Radley, listening for his dad’s truck at the top of the driveway

Boo Radley is the first of our three rescue Schnoodles. He was found by a landlord, abandoned in a duplex in a neighboring county by his family who had moved out two months prior to his discovery, there in a fly-infested apartment with very little food and water provisions remaining. This may explain his absolute panic mode with flies and any kind of ding or alarm. The rescuers named him Einstein; his hair was matted and went every whichaway. He’s the most human of our three boys, expressing emotion through his eyes, ears, and tail – to a much deeper soul-piercing level than our other two. We named him Boo Radley – – a character “behind the door” in a beloved American Novel, a character who rescued and is rescued in the novel.

And he wants both of his parents home at the end of the work day.

Not one of us.

Both of us.

His abandonment by his former family may explain why he runs for his dad’s truck every afternoon, to make the last little bit of the drive to the house in the driver’s seat with his soul human. He hears the tires a quarter mile down on the road before he ever hears the truck, and runs. His dad knows to watch for him – it’s the highlight of the day for both of them!

Boo Radley

he came with issues
we will never understand
neglected, abused

abandoned, alone
......trembling in a small kennel
we caught our first glimpse

through the matted mess
we fell in love with our boy
and made him our own
Posted on

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.

Posted on

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.

Posted on

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!

Posted on

Working Remotely In the Field

When it’s a remote workday, that’s a day to work overtime gathering data from the field. I gear up for the clinical setting of my workspace, and while there is no air conditioning in these areas, it sure beats a day in a windowless office!

So here I begin with my cheep entertainment for the day.

Answer calls and emails. Check.

Set up a meeting. Check.

These are things I do from the field, whether it’s stop one, stop two, stop three or four.

I put on my work hat and grab my keys, calendar, notebooks and computer.

I drive to Stop One.

As I leave my driveway, I put my window down so I can hear the sounds of nature all around me. I never know what wildlife will appear, so I keep my camera near to collect rich data in the field.

At Stop One, I check on the Blue-Gray Gnatcatchers in the tree by the park, and at Stop Two, I visit the House Sparrows under the pavilion. All the way to the Red Oak Covered Bridge, I listen and do a head count of my feathered friends. Some are pairs – they fell in love online, and the rest is history. They follow each other on Twitter, these left-wingers and right-wingers – – they tweet in unison.

These are my Georgia red clay dirt roads with the rocks that grit underneath the tires while warm air blows in through the windows and cool air through the vents with the only radio the song of birds – and crickets, even in the daytime.

Along the way, I have a chat. A Yellow-Breasted Chat, to be exact. Second one of these today. Add that to the count.

The tally grows. Collecting data in the field is hard work, but someone has to do it.

I like to use the data to bridge the gaps….so I’m always on the lookout for just the right bridge. Come along for the ride with me if you dare, and more alarmingly if you trust my driving. There’s only a 9-foot clearance (the sign says there’s also a 3-ton weight limit).

Mom waves a red flag over there from the bushes, reminding me to slow down, make sure my seatbelt is fastened, and drive safely. Thanks, Mom!

And my buddy the Eastern Towhee, in magnificent abundance here in this rural area of middle Georgia, reminds me to watch the ditches on the edges of the roads – – this is no easy place to have be “tow”ed.

A full morning of data gathering is complete, so I check my “calls” once again and return home to analyze my data.

I have no egrets about spending my morning working so hard.

It’s all in a day’s work.