Interests:Reading, writing, photography, hiking in the mountains, people, knitting, gardening, walking, Catholicism, politics, current events.
Expertise:I'm a reporter/columnist/photographer for our local daily newspaper. I don't know if I'm an expert on anything, but I'm a pretty good listener. Occupation:Other Industry:Media
Hey, friends, I don't have any photos tonight - just a quick note to say I hope you've all had a good week and that you'll be able to have a refreshing, rejuvenating, FUN weekend!
We just got back from going out to eat catfish with D's mom, Ruby, who shares our home. D was in Nashville almost all week on business, and we were glad to get him home last night. I missed my sweetheart!
In the morning, we're going to meet some new friends for breakfast at the Ozark Cafe' in Jasper - one of our favorite spots in the world, in the HEART of the hills, near the Buffalo - then the four of us are going to hike up to Tim Ernst's photography studio at Cloudland, near Whitaker Point (also known as Hawksbill Crag, one of the most photographed spots in Arkansas) for an open house. It's a hike we've never made, and we're looking forward to being with our friends and seeing some gorgeous scenery and the work of one of the finest photographers around.
Wish you could all come with us! Hopefully I'll have photos before long ...
Raking leaves might sound like a chore, but it’s something I secretly
love to do. Like all yard work, it’s a way of interacting with your
very own little piece of nature. A kind of dialogue, if you’re
imaginative and your heart yearns toward outdoor things. A conversation
that involves trees and squirrels and breezes and watching the clouds
while you’re working.
Last week’s weather, you remember, was sunny and warm and October-like
— and it was hard for everybody who loves the outdoors to have to stay
inside of four walls during the short daylight hours.
The weekend weather was an Indian summer gift, so I grabbed the chance
to get outside as soon as I could. Doyle was tied down doing teaching
chores, but I enlisted Hagrid, our Great Dane, to be my yard-work
companion. Wearing my favorite baggy hiking pants and comfortable
boots, I headed outside, with Hagrid racing in happy circles. I grabbed
my gloves and rake and clippers, and got to work.
There’s just something soothing about raking leaves, to me, because it
means being outside in the healing fresh air and sunshine.
Raking, like mowing, is satisfying because you can see that what you’re
doing is making a difference. When all the maple leaves were freshly
fallen, three weeks ago or so, our front yard looked like it was awash
in gold, but last weekend, the yard just looked dreary and unkempt,
with a tattered coat of ragged brown leaves that had seen better days.
As I raked, the uncovered grass looked fresh and green, in its last
spurt of growth before the inevitable freeze finally browns it for the
winter.
Raking is a way of making friends with every nook and cranny of your
yard. When you rake, you discover every low place and every slight
slope, every new volunteer privet bush, every dandelion. I had to turn
my rake sideways to scrape dried leaves out of their snug little
crevices between the roots of big trees, like the elm that towers next
to the driveway and the regal maple that presides over the front yard.
I raked leaves out from their hiding places under the spireas next to
the alley, and brushed them off the tops of the yews in the front beds.
My rake snagged in Virginia creeper around the trunk of the elm tree,
and in the lowest branches of the forsythia. I raked around the baby
azaleas I planted last winter, my first gardener’s mark on Squirrels’
Leap, and around my confetti lantana, still blooming at almost
Thanksgiving.
I raked elm leaves from around the dying hostas, and gently nudged them
from the pansies that border the walkway to the side door. I raked dead
leaves from the base of the yellow climbing roses and fading hyacinth
bean vines we planted to grow up the pergola — the one that Doyle
rebuilt after it was smashed during January’s ice storm — and from
around the still-green native fern that’s nestled next to
lipstick-colored impatiens, still valiantly blooming their pretty
little heads off.
Our first year at Squirrels’ Leap has come full circle. It was almost
exactly a year ago that we first looked at the house, when the
neglected yard was covered in dead leaves, and overgrown vines tangled
in scraggly bare shrubs. As we walked around the property then, we
discovered the naked rose by the driveway, and spotted the
winter-stripped forsythias — and wished for azaleas. We imagined what
the stark maples would look like in October, and dreamed of an April
bride’s dress on our very own dogwood tree.
Over this last year, we’ve begun making our yard our own. I’ve trimmed
and cleaned up and pulled vines and raked and pruned, trying to bring
out the best in the pretty growing things that somebody else planted
with love in this yard years ago.
And Doyle and I have made our own mark already. There are azaleas at
Squirrels’ Leap now — because this Mississippi girl had to have
azaleas. And on the north side of the house, the row of hydrangeas I
had dreamed of — like so many pretty old homes back home have — has
been planted and lovingly tended since last spring, and those big old
purply-blue and pink blossoms delighted us all summer, and can still be
found, dried, in pitchers and bowls all over our house.
We’ve had our sweet Dogwood April, and our longed-for Maple October at Squirrels’ Leap. And they were good.
I enjoyed raking leaves. It was good to visit with my plants, to tuck
pine needles around the little azaleas, to watch the fat squirrels jump
from tree to tree, and to laugh at Hagrid plopping his big self down in
the piles of leaves like a little kid, grinning his happy doggy grin.
Simple outdoor pleasures. Soul-soothers.
By Celia DeWoody Published Nov. 18, 2009, Harrison (Ark.) Daily Times Copyright 2009 Neighbor Newspapers, Inc.
I haven't blogged here on my dear old Annie Mockingbird Xanga site since March 22, and tonight, I just had to face the facts and admit to myself that I miss blogging here.
I stopped mainly because I had gotten hooked on Facebook, which is "Blogging Light." You don't really blog - you just write quick status updates of a sentence or two, but mostly what I find myself doing is reading lots of status updates from my friends, and the comments others put up. I can't explain why it's so addictive - but it is. Maybe one reason it is for me is that most of my many, many Facebook friends are people I know in "real life," many of whom I had lost touch with for years before reconnecting on Facebook, and it's been lots of fun to see their photos of their children and grandchildren and their homes and their vacations. But I've missed posting blogs here about our rambles in the hills and things like that, and I've missed reading your blogs. So I'm back - at least for a while!
Here are a few of my favorite photos from our delightful ramble last Saturday with our good friends Joe and Katherine in the October Ozarks!
Here are some photos from today ... we took a drive down into the Boxley Valley in Newton County, a beautiful spring day. Then came home and worked in our yard for a few hours. It's taken a lot of work to get it all cleaned up after the ice storm. We're making progress, and are so excited about our first springtime at Squirrels' Leap!
Would somebody please open this gate for me ? The Rocky Mountain elk were imported into the Ozarks back in the 80s, trying to re-establish an elk population. The native elk were all gone from our old hills. The experiment has worked almost too well .... the farmers complain the elk eat their crops, and in certain places, the highway is often lined with cars, sightseers and photographers stopping to see the elk, which in some spots are getting as tame as cows, they're so used to people stopping to look at them all the time!
I loved the way the forsythia looked against this abandoned old store in Deer, Arkansas...
Back at Squirrels' Leap ...
January 28, 2009 ...
Doyle has almost finished rebuilding the pergola, which we will paint white, and plan to plant a climbing yellow (or maybe pink) rose on....there's a big old wisteria vine on the right front side, which we may let grow as long as it doesn't try to take over the new roof! There's already some hostas and native fern along under the pergola, which I'm adding to. Can't wait to have a pretty shade bed going there by the door we go in and out of ...and picture walking under an arbor of roses!
Ruby (Doyle's mom who lives with us) enjoyed sitting outside this afternoon while we were working in the yard .. she even pulled some weeds for us on pretty afternoons earlier this week, as she sat in her chair.
I planted some azaleas that are already budding out! Hope they'll do well here in the Ozarks...this Mississippi girl longs for azaleas in her yard!
Doyle tilled us a vegetable garden spot ...
Are you enjoying the early springtime where you live? Have you planted anything yet?
Has the concept of “tackiness” been just completely wiped out of our culture? In
my youth, it seems like I spent a lot of my time worrying about whether
or not something was “tacky.” Now that I’m eligible to join AARP, the
concern about tackiness rarely crosses my mind. Maybe it was just
living in the Deep South. Maybe other parts of the country just aren’t
as concerned about avoiding tackiness as I was in my growing-up years,
being raised by two expatriate Mississippians, and later in my college
and younger-adult years living in the Magnolia State myself. Mama
and Daddy had both been raised in what would be considered “genteel”
Southern homes, where good table manners were stressed and linen
napkins and sterling silver flatware were part of daily life. Having
each graduated from Ole Miss, where they had lived in the rule-bound
Greek culture of the Fifties, and then living the etiquette-bound lives
of a U. S. Naval officer and wife, they were very aware of the dictates
of polite society. Neither of my parents were the least bit snobbish or
snooty, but they were products of their upbringing and culture, and
they each had firm ideas about the “nice way to do things.” Our
family ate dinner together at the dining room table most nights. We
always enjoyed visiting with each other at the table, but we were
taught never to talk with our mouths full, and we were encouraged to
put our forks down after each bite, and to carefully place our knife
and fork across the top of our plate when we were finished. We kept our
napkins — and our left hands — in our laps. Putting the ketchup
bottle or the mayonnaise jar on the table was tacky, and was just not
done except in the most hurried-up, emergency situations. Mama would
spoon relish or mayonnaise into a little dish and put it on the table.
We learned not to butter our rolls with the butter knife, but to scoop
some butter up out of the dish with the butter knife and put it on the
edge of our dinner plate (my grandmothers used bread-and-butter
plates), and butter our roll with our own dinner knife. Mama did break
with our grandparents’ family tradition and stooped to using paper
napkins, but with five kids and no household help to iron the napkins,
our grandmothers didn’t blame her. The concept of not being tacky
encompassed not only table manners, but almost every area of life. For
example, tattoos, especially for a girl, were so tacky they were off
the chart. My daddy even thought pierced ears were not for “nice
girls.” As the oldest of his four daughters, I was the one who asked
first if I could get my ears pierced, probably when I was about 14. He
grinned and told me I could only get my ears pierced if I got a tattoo
first, which in those days was a totally outlandish and horrifying
idea, so I knew he didn’t mean it. The only people we knew who had
tattoos were older Navy enlisted men — certainly not teenage girls. It
was okay for children to go barefooted when we were at home or playing
in the yard, but for a child to go to the grocery store or anywhere but
the swimming pool barefooted was tacky. When I went down to Columbus
at age 17 as a freshman at Mississippi State College for Women in 1973,
I learned a whole new set of rules of propriety. We were not allowed to
walk around campus with our hair rolled up. We could smoke in our dorm
rooms — and I’m not proud to say I burned through a whole lot of
Virginia Slims Light Menthols in those days — and we could smoke
outside on the campus, but the rules said we had to be sitting down,
not walking around with a lit cigarette. So my well-groomed friends and
I would sit down on the curb under one of the ancient magnolia trees
and fire up a cigarette anytime the urge hit, and for some reason, that
WASN’T tacky. Most of us “’W’ girls” had been raised by Mississippi
mamas, and as hard as we tried to be cool, we still couldn’t get past
the major rules that were tattooed into our genetic code. We were so
terrified of being tacky, you couldn’t pay us to wear white shoes
before Easter or after Labor Day. If we had on a skirt or a dress, we
had on pantyhose — it was REAL tacky not to wear stockings. At least we
were a little more liberated than most of our own mothers and all of
grandmothers, who were still under the impression that a lady wore a
girdle at all times, no matter if it was 104 swelteringly humid degrees
outside. And for goodness sake, wearing pants to Sunday morning
church would have been the tackiest thing we could imagine. Up until
the 90s, we were all wearing heels and our best dresses — and of
course, stockings — to the First Methodist Church. I can still remember
my shock the first time I saw an out-of-town visitor at a church
funeral wearing a dark pantsuit. A lady wearing pants to church! Lawdy,
Miss Scarlett. We’ve come a long way, Baby. Most of the time these
days, I live my life free of the burdens of being worried about
tackiness, but I’m not sure whether that’s a good thing, or a loss. We
use paper napkins at our house with impunity. I’ve been known to put
the ketchup bottle on the table (forgive me, Poppy). I wear pants to
church all the time, and sometimes even jeans. I even finally got my ears pierced — but no tattoos for me, Daddy, I promise!
By Celia DeWoody Published March 11, 2009 in the Harrison (Ark.) Daily Times Copyright CPI, Inc. 2009
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