Mountaintop Mary and I had a most marvelous adventure in her big blue truck on a perfect spring day in the southeast Tennessee mountains. She picked me up at eleven, so we could start our day of dawdling with dining. This entailed a leisurely lunch on the Tellico River at my favorite Panini place, Kat’s Deli. Of course, because I’m doing Atkins, I had to forego my own Panini; in its place having a chef salad. But Mary’s Reuben made my mouth water just looking at it.
We met a bunch of Coker Creekers hanging out there, and had a grand old time making their acquaintance and inviting them to our First Friday supper. Mary never met a stranger, so it was easy getting involved in conversation with this bevy of “boys.”
One of the guys with whom Mary struck up conversation was telling her how to catch trout on the Tellico. Mary was very interested in this subject, as she wants to learn to fly fish. She says her favorite part of fishing is casting, so fly fishing would seem to be perfect for her.
Since Mary and I are planning on joining forces for Granny Camp this summer, I was interested in the fly fishing subject as an activity to add to our “keeping kids busy” repertoire. Our informative friend, Joe, suggested that we buy worms from the service station across the road. Mary and I found this funny, as we both know that we could keep the kids busy all morning with unearthing earthworms, with which her manure piles are quite literally crawling.
When I asked Joe whether he lived nearby, he allowed as he lived in the house with the dragon. The dragon he referred to is a huge topiary that faces the Cherohala Skyway. I connected his name and the dragon and almost jumped out of my skin with excitement. I was talking to Topiary Joe, the world-famous topiary artist. I’d been wanting to make his acquaintance ever since I got to these parts. Who knew he was so approachable?
We then wandered over to McMinn County to purchase plants from the Future Farmers of America program at a local high school. What a find that was! These kids start seeds in their school greenhouse, and raise them until someone adopts them. Mary and I scored all kinds of well-on-their-way-to-fruition vegetable plants for a fraction of what they would have cost at a nursery. Mary is just a wealth of win-win information.
While we were focused on farming, and we were so close to the Mennonite community farm in Delano, I asked if Mary had ever been there. I was amazed that she hadn’t been, so we took a little detour. Even though it was still early in the season for their farm stand to have much in the way of garden goods, I was able to purchase some of their outstanding baked bounty.
The sights that we saw were worth the trip all by themselves. There is probably not a more pastoral picture than that of the Mennonites and their beasts of burden plowing and planting in the spring. We were even rewarded with a parting pleasure of finding some of the children playing near their parents in the newly plowed and planted fields. The rewards of rural life…
Friday, April 30, 2010
Thursday, April 29, 2010
The Daring Dandelion
I’m sure God has reasons
For the daring dandelion.
I hear that their leaves make good eatin’,
And that their flowers make fine wine.
Richard says their latex
May be used for industry.
Any useful thing that’s done with them
Would be just fine with me.
When we lived in the city,
It was considered quite absurd
To allow the plants to come to seed
To feed the hungry birds.
We’d attack our lawns with Round-up,
And hunt for the offending critters.
Here, the spent seed spore sentinels
Are our lawn bugs’ babysitters.
For the daring dandelion.
I hear that their leaves make good eatin’,
And that their flowers make fine wine.
Richard says their latex
May be used for industry.
Any useful thing that’s done with them
Would be just fine with me.
When we lived in the city,
It was considered quite absurd
To allow the plants to come to seed
To feed the hungry birds.
We’d attack our lawns with Round-up,
And hunt for the offending critters.
Here, the spent seed spore sentinels
Are our lawn bugs’ babysitters.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Fairy Wings and Webs
The snowball bush is blooming
At our home in Coker Creek.
The azaleas will need pruning
When their blooms have peaked,
Except for the wild ones
That grow among the trees.
These are always nice surprises
That never fail to please.
There are trees with fairy wings
That drift down on the deck.
I know that I should sweep
Them off, but oh what the heck!
It’s not often fairies come to play
In one’s own back yard.
Last week they were spinning webs;
I have to thank the Lord
That I am here to see this spring
The dandelions and dogwoods.
I’m such a creature of nature’s whims,
The seasons are my moods.
At our home in Coker Creek.
The azaleas will need pruning
When their blooms have peaked,
Except for the wild ones
That grow among the trees.
These are always nice surprises
That never fail to please.
There are trees with fairy wings
That drift down on the deck.
I know that I should sweep
Them off, but oh what the heck!
It’s not often fairies come to play
In one’s own back yard.
Last week they were spinning webs;
I have to thank the Lord
That I am here to see this spring
The dandelions and dogwoods.
I’m such a creature of nature’s whims,
The seasons are my moods.
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Technology Tantrums
Now, I’m not ragging on the performance of all technology, all the time, but I do have a few bones to pick with the cyberspace invaders. My GPS did get me to Nancy’s house, which is a good thing because my cell phone only works in areas that are well-populated, with lots of places to stop and ask people for directions. Fat lot of good that does me!
Nancy doesn’t have internet service, probably because the only kind she could get would be dial-up, and that’s almost as good as snail mail -- But not quite because snail mail doesn’t tie up your phone line. This fact makes it necessary to meet with Nancy in person to complete her book set-up. This is good because I really enjoy her company; she’s a very peaceful lady, unlike yours truly. She and her husband call their woodland home “The Sanctuary” for good reason. It does, however, create some interesting challenges.
I downloaded all the templates that we needed to finish formatting her beautifully illustrated book of poetry and prose, and headed over to her neck-of-the-woods with full confidence that we’d simply drop her pages and cover into their respective templates; I’d email the files to Gayle for final edit; and we’d be good to go for our initial printing. But, nooooo.
It seems that some of my programs don’t function properly without an internet connection. “No problem,” I thought. “I’ll simply copy Nancy’s work onto my laptop and upload everything to Gayle when I get home.” This appeared to be an easy solution. Except, as Richard says, “There are so many ways to get busted.”
Nancy was good enough to completely format her work in Word. It was even in an older version of word than what’s currently available. This would make it easy for Gayle to work with it, no matter what version of Word Gayle has. Ha!
Because Nancy embedded her illustrations in her text, the files exceed the maximum size for attachment to my email. I can’t simply attach and hit “send.” I first have to “ungroup” all her illustrations from all her text, and resave it as a text document; then I hope to be able to send it on its way. I still have to figure out how to dump her cover art into the template without messing up all her hard work, but I should probably not think too much about that until I get her text to our editor.
Richard has another favorite saying, “There are no easy jobs.” I guess that’s why they’re called “jobs.” Nancy’s book, Am I Grown Up Yet? -- A Wonder Journal will, hopefully, be available before Memorial Day.
Oh, and another, technology-free gift that my trip to Nancy’s got me was a couple of plants for our “sanctuary.” All these peaceful people have lovely plants that they swear are easy to grow. We’ll see. At least they don’t require an internet connection.
Nancy doesn’t have internet service, probably because the only kind she could get would be dial-up, and that’s almost as good as snail mail -- But not quite because snail mail doesn’t tie up your phone line. This fact makes it necessary to meet with Nancy in person to complete her book set-up. This is good because I really enjoy her company; she’s a very peaceful lady, unlike yours truly. She and her husband call their woodland home “The Sanctuary” for good reason. It does, however, create some interesting challenges.
I downloaded all the templates that we needed to finish formatting her beautifully illustrated book of poetry and prose, and headed over to her neck-of-the-woods with full confidence that we’d simply drop her pages and cover into their respective templates; I’d email the files to Gayle for final edit; and we’d be good to go for our initial printing. But, nooooo.
It seems that some of my programs don’t function properly without an internet connection. “No problem,” I thought. “I’ll simply copy Nancy’s work onto my laptop and upload everything to Gayle when I get home.” This appeared to be an easy solution. Except, as Richard says, “There are so many ways to get busted.”
Nancy was good enough to completely format her work in Word. It was even in an older version of word than what’s currently available. This would make it easy for Gayle to work with it, no matter what version of Word Gayle has. Ha!
Because Nancy embedded her illustrations in her text, the files exceed the maximum size for attachment to my email. I can’t simply attach and hit “send.” I first have to “ungroup” all her illustrations from all her text, and resave it as a text document; then I hope to be able to send it on its way. I still have to figure out how to dump her cover art into the template without messing up all her hard work, but I should probably not think too much about that until I get her text to our editor.
Richard has another favorite saying, “There are no easy jobs.” I guess that’s why they’re called “jobs.” Nancy’s book, Am I Grown Up Yet? -- A Wonder Journal will, hopefully, be available before Memorial Day.
Oh, and another, technology-free gift that my trip to Nancy’s got me was a couple of plants for our “sanctuary.” All these peaceful people have lovely plants that they swear are easy to grow. We’ll see. At least they don’t require an internet connection.
Monday, April 26, 2010
Cruising and Cumulus Clouds
Woke up with a wild hair;
We were going to get out of here.
Spring was calling our names;
It was time for us to hear.
At first I thought that a hike
Would be the perfect way
To see what we could see
And enjoy a sense of play.
After driving down to Tellico,
It was almost time for lunch.
Would we have Sunday dinner,
Or a nice Sunday brunch?
We took a leisurely Sunday
Drive, to Maryville and back.
We lunched at Giovanni’s,
Then we were back on track
For cumulus cloud watching
Over the mountains of Tennessee,
Another dimension to the vistas
Of Appalachian hill country.
We were going to get out of here.
Spring was calling our names;
It was time for us to hear.
At first I thought that a hike
Would be the perfect way
To see what we could see
And enjoy a sense of play.
After driving down to Tellico,
It was almost time for lunch.
Would we have Sunday dinner,
Or a nice Sunday brunch?
We took a leisurely Sunday
Drive, to Maryville and back.
We lunched at Giovanni’s,
Then we were back on track
For cumulus cloud watching
Over the mountains of Tennessee,
Another dimension to the vistas
Of Appalachian hill country.
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Gardening, Garlic, and Great Guests
Thanks to a gift from my niece Ginette, I finally got around to some outdoor work in my own yard. I’ve been so sedentary with all this driving around and writing that I hadn’t even thrown out the dead potted plants from last fall. Ginette’s gift of phlox and grape hyacinth from her garden got me moving in that direction; I needed the dirt from the potted plants for my new deck décor.
While I was outside potting, I did a little more digging in the dirt to clear some of the “wildflowers” – otherwise known as “weeds” from our flower beds. The dandelions are everywhere this year, including growing with great abandon between the granite chips that make up our front walkway. With a “yard” of over four acres, I rally needed to pick my battles, so I decided that anything green growing in the lawn could stay, while any wild thing growing in granite or my garden has to go.
I was really moving along, happily harvesting the weeds when I came upon a conundrum. I greatly admire thistles, and have photographed many a beautiful butterfly on their blooms. Directly in front of my azaleas, right next to our front steps, is a big thistle in all its prickly perfection. There was no way I could bring myself to uproot such a gift. So much for that well-groomed cottage look; you just can’t control Mother Nature.
The evening hours brought hailstorms and bluegrass. The crowd was small at Charlie and Deborah’s Coker Creek Saloon, probably because of the severe weather warnings. The weather didn’t deter Richard’s preparation of dining delights, however. Everyone enjoyed his sirloin tip tacos, even though I was a bit worried about how they’d be received; I had never before seen a recipe that called for a cup of fresh garlic.
His mandarin orange cake was so good and beautiful that Trailrider Nancy declared that she felt like we were back at the Whitestone Inn where we celebrated Charlie’s birthday. A friend of Charlie’s visiting from Alaska ate three pieces. I guess it was better than good!
One of the great things about the bluegrass pickin’ is that Charlie and Deborah host so many people from so many places. I could have spent about a week with these folks from Alaska; they were so interesting. In the brief time we were with them, we learned that he was a home builder to the rich and famous in this life, and that he had a very story-worthy, if not story-book past life.
He lost his parents in an automobile accident when he was two-years-old. After a series of foster homes he “struck out on his own” at the age of eleven without ever having attended school. By the time he was fourteen, he had acquired his first golden glove award. At seventeen, he retired from prize fighting after a concussion so serious that it caused him to stutter. By this time he had also had his nose broken ten times.
Like this wasn’t enough hard luck, within a couple of months, he was drafted and sent to Vietnam. While there, he was stabbed once and shot twice, once in the back. He was released from duty with the prediction that he’d never again walk. He says that a violent sneeze led to the return of feeling and mobility in his legs. Must have been some sneeze!
The up side of his infirmity is that a corpsman taught him to read. He’s been married to the same woman, a professional photographer, for forty seven years. She showed me stunning photographs of their area of Alaska.
Mr. Bluegrass, Charlie Harper, was also in attendance with the demo copy of his latest upcoming CD. It couldn’t have been a better crowd.
While I was outside potting, I did a little more digging in the dirt to clear some of the “wildflowers” – otherwise known as “weeds” from our flower beds. The dandelions are everywhere this year, including growing with great abandon between the granite chips that make up our front walkway. With a “yard” of over four acres, I rally needed to pick my battles, so I decided that anything green growing in the lawn could stay, while any wild thing growing in granite or my garden has to go.
I was really moving along, happily harvesting the weeds when I came upon a conundrum. I greatly admire thistles, and have photographed many a beautiful butterfly on their blooms. Directly in front of my azaleas, right next to our front steps, is a big thistle in all its prickly perfection. There was no way I could bring myself to uproot such a gift. So much for that well-groomed cottage look; you just can’t control Mother Nature.
The evening hours brought hailstorms and bluegrass. The crowd was small at Charlie and Deborah’s Coker Creek Saloon, probably because of the severe weather warnings. The weather didn’t deter Richard’s preparation of dining delights, however. Everyone enjoyed his sirloin tip tacos, even though I was a bit worried about how they’d be received; I had never before seen a recipe that called for a cup of fresh garlic.
His mandarin orange cake was so good and beautiful that Trailrider Nancy declared that she felt like we were back at the Whitestone Inn where we celebrated Charlie’s birthday. A friend of Charlie’s visiting from Alaska ate three pieces. I guess it was better than good!
One of the great things about the bluegrass pickin’ is that Charlie and Deborah host so many people from so many places. I could have spent about a week with these folks from Alaska; they were so interesting. In the brief time we were with them, we learned that he was a home builder to the rich and famous in this life, and that he had a very story-worthy, if not story-book past life.
He lost his parents in an automobile accident when he was two-years-old. After a series of foster homes he “struck out on his own” at the age of eleven without ever having attended school. By the time he was fourteen, he had acquired his first golden glove award. At seventeen, he retired from prize fighting after a concussion so serious that it caused him to stutter. By this time he had also had his nose broken ten times.
Like this wasn’t enough hard luck, within a couple of months, he was drafted and sent to Vietnam. While there, he was stabbed once and shot twice, once in the back. He was released from duty with the prediction that he’d never again walk. He says that a violent sneeze led to the return of feeling and mobility in his legs. Must have been some sneeze!
The up side of his infirmity is that a corpsman taught him to read. He’s been married to the same woman, a professional photographer, for forty seven years. She showed me stunning photographs of their area of Alaska.
Mr. Bluegrass, Charlie Harper, was also in attendance with the demo copy of his latest upcoming CD. It couldn’t have been a better crowd.
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Heady Happenings
How heady is this? I have a second author all set to publish. Nancy and I met only less than one month ago, and she told me then that she was very anxious to get her work in print. Man-oh-man, did she ever mean it! Not only is Nancy a talented writer, she’s also a professional illustrator and graphic designer (or are they the same thing?) She’s already got her pages formatted, her illustrations in order, and her cover created.
For my part, I’ve registered Nancy’s book for its own ISBN number; we’ll copyright it just before sending it to the printer. All she needs now is for me to run over to her house and dump it onto my computer and then upload it to the printer by way of the internet. I’ll arrange for a final edit, and Nancy’s book will be ready to retail.
As unbelievable as it may be to many who spend most of their waking hours in cyberspace, there are still many who choose not to have the whole world invading their living rooms and home offices. It just so happens that a lot of these people are of an age that they have many valuable life lessons for us, but no good way to get their messages to the masses. I may have found a real publishing niche. How cool would it be to be the publisher of the wit and wisdom of the seniors who’ve seen so much change in their lifetimes and survived, with their wit and wits intact, to tell about it?
I’m really excited about Nancy’s book. I’ve been seeking to hear the voices of women’s spiritual journeys, especially as exhibited in the arts. Nancy’s first published work is what she calls a “wonder journal” -- and for good reason. Her poems, stories, and illustrations are whimsical and witty, while still being positively passionate about her faith journey. I like it when people share the laughter of the Creator, not just the hellfire and brimstone.
For those who are anxiously awaiting Jack’s next set of stories, he’s not forgotten. It’s just that it takes a bit more effort to publish anything typed on a manual typewriter. We are slowly getting his work scanned into our computers for first review by the copy editors. I’ve already had a couple of potential editors scared off by the volume of the work coming out of my computer across the wires to their email inboxes. If all goes well from this point forward, we hope to have Jack’s collection of refreshingly righteous romances ready for the fall season of tourists in Tennessee.
My book based on my blog is at the editor now; if she doesn’t run screaming from her office when she gets the entries, we may have it ready for retail by mid-June. Since Susan has edited my work before, I hope my latest recipes and rants won’t be too scary for her.
For my part, I’ve registered Nancy’s book for its own ISBN number; we’ll copyright it just before sending it to the printer. All she needs now is for me to run over to her house and dump it onto my computer and then upload it to the printer by way of the internet. I’ll arrange for a final edit, and Nancy’s book will be ready to retail.
As unbelievable as it may be to many who spend most of their waking hours in cyberspace, there are still many who choose not to have the whole world invading their living rooms and home offices. It just so happens that a lot of these people are of an age that they have many valuable life lessons for us, but no good way to get their messages to the masses. I may have found a real publishing niche. How cool would it be to be the publisher of the wit and wisdom of the seniors who’ve seen so much change in their lifetimes and survived, with their wit and wits intact, to tell about it?
I’m really excited about Nancy’s book. I’ve been seeking to hear the voices of women’s spiritual journeys, especially as exhibited in the arts. Nancy’s first published work is what she calls a “wonder journal” -- and for good reason. Her poems, stories, and illustrations are whimsical and witty, while still being positively passionate about her faith journey. I like it when people share the laughter of the Creator, not just the hellfire and brimstone.
For those who are anxiously awaiting Jack’s next set of stories, he’s not forgotten. It’s just that it takes a bit more effort to publish anything typed on a manual typewriter. We are slowly getting his work scanned into our computers for first review by the copy editors. I’ve already had a couple of potential editors scared off by the volume of the work coming out of my computer across the wires to their email inboxes. If all goes well from this point forward, we hope to have Jack’s collection of refreshingly righteous romances ready for the fall season of tourists in Tennessee.
My book based on my blog is at the editor now; if she doesn’t run screaming from her office when she gets the entries, we may have it ready for retail by mid-June. Since Susan has edited my work before, I hope my latest recipes and rants won’t be too scary for her.
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