This afternoon I had one of the most exciting times of my nine years of newspaper reporting experience. If you'd like to see what it was all about, click on our newspaper's website
Then let me know what you think!

Hope you're all well and enjoying your summertime, getting to spend time with your families and friends.
We're looking forward to some company in the next month here in the Ozarks. First expected is my older son, who's moving from Mississippi to Lyons, Colorado, just outside Boulder, and plans to visit us on the way. He's an artist (painter) and cook/sous chef, a very funny and bright guy. I can't wait to see him! He hasn't been up here to visit since we've moved, so I'm anxious for him to see our new hometown and get a little taste of our beautiful Ozarks.
Next we're expecting Doyle's granddaughter (and now mine!) from Florida, Morgan, who's 10. She'll spend  a couple of days with us in early July. We'd love to take her on a float trip on the Buffalo, which she loves. And I'm sure she'll want to make a trip to Silver Dollar City in Branson if we have time. Morgan's a beautiful, sweet little girl, and we're looking forward to seeing her so much. Doyle and I hope to both be able to take a day or two off while she's here.
Next up is Doyle's only sibling, his sister Linda who lives in Spokane, where she's an English teacher and assistant principal in a Catholic school. She had planned to come here to Harrison and spend two weeks with her mom, Ruby, at Ruby's apartment. Linda will stay there, but Ruby is in a nursing home for rehab (for who knows how long.) She fell two weeks ago and shattered her ankle and is in a cast up to her hip. Had surgery on it, fragile bones, diabetic, osteoporosis...but she has  great spirit and strong faith, so we're hoping she'll make a complete recovery. At 82, this is a big challenge for her. If you have a spare prayer, please pray her bones will knit back together and be strong enough for her to walk again.
As you can imagine, D and I have been pretty busy!
I made a big pot of vegetable soup today with lots from our own garden....zucchini, squash, scallions, bell pepper, basil. Had to use canned tomatoes, but we have lots of green ones that will be ripe soon. We're really enjoying our little vegetable garden.
Let me hear from you. What are you looking forward to right now?

Rainy days make me think about snuggling down into a corner of the couch with a book.
A
voracious reader from the time Miss Linda Sparkman taught me to "sound
out" the words in the Dick and Jane first-grade readers,  I gobbled up
books like a greedy child gorging herself with candy, and my challenge
was always having enough books on hand to feed that hunger. My mother
wasn't a reader herself, but she did her best to keep me supplied with
books. School libraries were wonderful places for me, and the county
library in my grandmother's little town in Mississippi yielded
treasures.

The Christmas and birthday gifts I treasured most were
always hardback books, and the handful of volumes I owned were read
over and over again. I could probably still quote parts of them to you.
I
have a feeling that most of you who read this column are book-lovers,
too. Think back on the books you loved most as a child, the books you
can still vividly remember, the books that cast a spell over you and
beckoned you to lose yourself in their pages.
Looking back, most of
my favorite childhood books were classic novels that had stood the test
of years. They had strong themes of family love, of withstanding
hardship with grace, and of overcoming obstacles. In many of them, the
healing power of nature is woven into the story. Checking the
publication dates, I find that many of my favorites were written not
too far from the turn of the 19th century.
I bet I read my battered,
light-green copy of Lucy Maud Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables (1908)
50 times, and never failed to cry when I got to the deliciously sad
chapter about the death of Matthew, Anne's beloved foster-father.

I
admired the red-headed orphan girl's spunk, sharp mind and loyalty to
her family and friends, and enjoyed the book's sprinkles of humor. When
I found the other Anne books later, I devoured them in delight, too.
Some
wise relative gave me a copy of The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come
(1903), about an orphan boy in Kentucky before and during the Civil War
years.

 I dearly loved that story, and remember the themes of honesty,
courage and honor that were so strongly woven into John Fox' narrative.
Little
Women. Oh, I how I loved that gem of a book, written in 1868.  Louisa
May Alcott became my first heroine, a girl just like her character, Jo,
who loved to "scribble" and grew up to be a famous author. I vividly
remember slouching in an overstuffed brown armchair in our house in
Washington State, devouring Little Women for the first time when I was
in grade school. I fell in love with the brave sisters - Meg, Jo, Beth
and Amy, whose father was away fighting in the Civil War. I had no idea
what the Union or the Confederacy were all about then - I just knew
that our family had three little girls, and our military daddy was away
a lot, too. One of the reasons I was so excited when our fourth sister
came along was that our family was then more like the March family
in Little Women.

I think I even asked Mama if I could start calling her
"Marmee." I can still remember weeping bitter tears over sweet little
sister Beth's lingering death from scarlet fever, when she finally had
to put down her needle because it "just got too heavy." Family love and
loyalty, and learning to care about others less fortunate were strong
lessons of that wonderful book.

Some fairy godmother gave me two of
the best books ever written for little girls
- The Secret Garden (1909)

and A Little Princess (1905), by Frances Hodgson Burnett, with Tasha
Tudor's magical watercolor illustrations.

 I read them over and over
again, and can still see the illustrations in my mind. Overcoming
serious hardships. The life-changing love of friends and family. The
enchantment of a garden. My copies of those books got lost in the
shuffle at Mama's house after I grew up, but the publisher has
re-issued the identical editions, and I bought them for our
granddaughter Morgan last year. I hope she loves them as much as I do.
If you have a young daughter or granddaughter, please be sure they
don't miss these books.
Another favorite was Johanna Spyri's Heidi,
published in 1880. I can still see the Swiss Alpine meadows dotted with
Heidi and Peter's goats.

Maybe that's one reason why the Ozarks felt
like home the very first time I saw them, because of the hillside
pastures with pretty little white goats. The description of the melted
fresh cheese on homemade bread that the Grandfather would make for
Heidi's supper still makes my mouth water to think about it. Again, the
power of the love of family and friends, as well as the importance of
the natural world, are the lessons of this classic.
The best-loved
books of our childhoods leave deep impressions on our minds and color
the way we see life forever after. That's why I like to give the
children I love good books, because their words help form the lens
through which the young readers will look at the world for the rest of
their lives, and help shape the person they will become.

Hey, friends,
Sorry I haven't updated in so long. I've been reading, but not writing.
I spent a wonderful day last Saturday on a trek to Ozark County,
Missouri, to visit my old friend ozarksfarmgirl. We spent a lovely day
going to visit interesting sites in her part of the world, including a
rainbow trout farm, an abbey where the monks make and sell fruitcake,
an operating general store, and a mill perfectly preserved, exactly as
it was more than 100 years ago. I also got to see Janet's beautiful
home, their family farm, Janet's chickens, and have a big steak dinner
with her family, included grandmothers, daughter and son-in-law, and
grandson Wyatt. It was day full of great fun, and a wonderful visit
with a treasured old friend whom I've known since I was 19 years old
back in Mississippi!
This week brought our family a painful mishap. My sweet mother-in-law
fell and crushed her ankle, had to have surgery, and is in the hospital
in a cast to her hip. Ruby, 82, lives here in our town, and we're the
only family she has nearby. Up till now, she's been very
independent,was still driving and living alone, and it remains to be
seen how her life will be now, depending on how well her very fragile
bones will heal. She has a strong faith and a wonderful attitude, so we
believe she'll do well, but she's got a lot of challenges ahead of her.
Our GARDEN is doing great! We've already picked and eaten zucchini and
cucumbers, and today I dug our first NEW POTATOES and pulled some
little onions. Can't wait to have those tomorrow.
Tomorrow night, Doyle and I are going to Branson to see the Shepherd of the Hills outdoor
drama, the first tourist attraction in Branson, based on the book
Harold Bell Wright wrote 100 years ago. I'm writing a story about it,
so the theater graciously gave us seats on the front row. I hate it
Ruby can't go with us....she was really looking forward to it.
Hope you all have a great weekend! Let me hear from you.

On Memorial Day, I always think of my Daddy, and of Arlington National Cemetery.
I
guess the first time I remember going to Arlington Cemetery with my
Navy pilot father was in 1966, when he was stationed in the Washington
area.
I think it was just Daddy, my sister Cissy and me. I was about 11, and Cissy would have been ten.
I'll
never forget the rows and rows, acres and acres, of identical white
tombstones, shining in the sunshine against the green grass.
Daddy
told us this was a special cemetery, where only people who had served
our country in the military, and their families, could be buried. He
told us that he'd probably be buried there himself one day. We could
tell the idea made him proud

When I was 11, the idea of my daddy's
death was inconceivable. He was only in his early 30s himself then,
healthy and strong and smiling.
He showed us President Kennedy's
grave, and the beautiful white Custis-Lee mansion on the hillside, but
what I remember most about that first visit to Arlington Cemetery is
going to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
Standing on the curving
steps beside my father, looking down at the huge white marble tomb
gleaming in the sunshine. The uniformed honor guard marching back and
forth with his rifle on his shoulder, unbelievably straight and solemn,
shoes shining like mirrors.

Later, when I was in my twenties,
several visits to Arlington Cemetery linked that special place forever
in my mind with Memorial Day, and with my Daddy.
It was usually
around the end of May that I would make my annual pilgrimage from
Mississippi "home" to Alexandria, Virginia, where my parents were
living while Daddy served at various places in the Washington area
during the latter part of his Navy career, including the Pentagon,
where he was an assistant to the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
He was a
member of a national fraternity of military aviators called the
"Dadaelian Society." Each year on Memorial Day, a designated Dadaelian
would go to Arlington Cemetery to lay a wreath on the Tomb of the
Unknown Soldier.
For several years, Daddy was the one chosen for
that task. He would put on in his spotless dress blues, with his gold
aviator's wings gleaming on his chest, and the four gold stripes of a
captain on his sleeve. Mama, my three sisters, our little brother, and
me, with my first son in my arms, would watch the ceremony from the
marble steps while Daddy marched out, carrying the red, white and blue
wreath on a stand, and presented it, with a crisp salute, at the foot
of the Tomb.
Daddy considered it an honor to pay tribute to his
nation's fallen warriors. He had left friends behind in Vietnam, and he
had the greatest respect for the men and women who had died in the
service of the country he loved. His children were always very proud
that our dad played a role in helping keep our country free.
Being a
"military brat" defined much of my life. Growing up on Naval air
stations all around the country, I had been the perennial "new girl" in
15 different schools. I'd been left behind, with my mother and sisters,
for ten months at a stretch while Daddy served aboard aircraft carriers
around the world. I'd prayed every night that my daddy wouldn't be shot
down flying over North Vietnam, like several of my friends' fathers
had. I'd tried to comfort my mama when she'd cry because she missed her
husband. It wasn't always an easy life for our family, but it was one
we were all deeply proud to be part of. And Arlington Cemetery, with
its ranks of white tombstones, was a symbol of all of that.

My last
visit to Arlington was on a bitterly cold February day in 2005. My
family walked slowly behind a horse-drawn caisson that carried a
flag-draped casket. A 21-gun salute was sounded, and the heart-piercing
notes of "Taps" were sounded by a bugler on a nearby hillside.
This
Memorial Day, and last, a new white tombstone stands in the ranks on
one of Arlington's hillsides, within sight of the Pentagon. Captain
James Donald Taylor, USN.
A dear Navy friend of Daddy's was with us
when we laid him to rest at Arlington. Jerry, long retired from the
Navy, is now a businessman in the Washington area.
After Taps, after
the folded flag was presented to my stepmother, as we were walking back
to our cars in the bitter wind, we looked back toward the grave site to
see Uncle Jerry turn around and walk alone back to Daddy's fresh grave.
He just stood there for a minute, straight and tall in his civilian
clothes, and then, squared his shoulders, slowly raised his right hand
to his forehead and saluted his fallen friend.
These are images that
are in my mind this Memorial Day, images of Arlington Cemetery. My
father in his uniform, saluting the unknown soldiers in the Tomb, and
years later, my Daddy's silver-haired comrade, with tears in his eyes,
saluting his friend.
In my heart today, I'm saluting not only my
father, but all those who have served our country, especially those who
have lost their lives in that service.

By Celia DeWoody
PuUblished in the Harrison DailtyTimes, May 28, 2007
Copyright CPI, Inc. 2007

We're making a new flower bed in our front yard, around our maple tree. Last weekend, we chopped out all the grass, added many bags of topsoil, manure and humous, and lined it with bricks. Then we planted an outer ring of pink impatiens. My plan was to try to reproduce a bed I once had next to my old house in Mississippi, which had native fern in the back, then pink and green caladiums, then pink impatiens in the front. Well, tonight, we have it all planted. We found the caladiums in town, but we had to go out to the country to dig up wild fern.
Here are photos from our fern safari on a friends' farm this afternoon:

After we had dug a whole bucketful of
 little ferns, we stopped here and there
for me to shoot a few more photos:

Oh! Yesterday I forgot to include photos of our newly planted little shade garden.
Here it is...use your imaginations and see what it will look like in a month or so when the plants grow and the little ferns fill in between the flowers.....