Tag: Johnson Funny Farm

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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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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.