“It will come to you, this love of the land. There's no gettin' away from it.”

            Where I live currently is NE Arkansas Delta farm country, home of cotton, corn, and soybeans. I watch as farmers agonize over the weather, whether it rains or doesn’t.  I listen to discussions of costs, prices, and water tables. Those enormous John Deere tractors and other devises roam the fields like prehistoric monsters. I’ve seen the pictures of St. Francis River swamp land that was bought and drained to provide excellent farm land in Clay County. Young men continue to enter family farm enterprises, beginning with the 40 acres, less the mule.
              Pine trees populate south Arkansas, my growing-up home land, and threaten to overtake the landscape, covering small towns that are now practically abandoned. With their prickly green needles and healthy cones contributing mustard-yellow pollen to decorate driveways, roof tops, and cars, these pine are those that shelter the city of Camden. They drop needles, provide mulch to protect the city’s azalea plants and enable recess architects to design multi-room houses. In south Arkansas, I watched my father tend to timber business in cultivating a pine-tree farm on 640 acres. I heard plans and dreams and watched as they dissolved in economically troubled family dynamics.  The timber business is lucrative, but slow. A windfall profit seemed preferable.
                 Camden also enjoyed the benefits of the Oil Boom in south Arkansas.  Several prominent businessmen opened wildcat wells in Smackover (Union County), and the resulting inflow of money into all of south Arkansas fueled a major swell in the economy. Our family had informational ties to some wildcatters and bought mineral rights to various small properties as the wildcat wells were drilled. All you needed was one well to come in.
                The family timberlands were sold, but we retain oil (mineral) rights for a number of land holdings in south Ouachita County and north Union County.   While the sale of Auntie’s Place (timberlands) in Union County devastated my father, it pained us most to see this land go into the hands of a conglomerate timber company.  Daddy had wanted to leave something of lasting value, land, a pine tree farm, to his family, and my brother had planned to manage the operation someday.  Land is the only thing that lasts, according to Gerald O’Hara and Goss Dansby.
               Interest in Arkansas oil has renewed. The drilling experts are offering oil leases in Union County, part of Auntie’s Place, part of the Smackover Brown-Dense, Shale.  Oil leases, however, are not the same as Land, Katie Scarlett.  We are not the surface owners, so these mineral rights and monthly/quarterly interest checks can be here today and gone tomorrow, if the owner does not keep up with the taxes.  We encountered Jonas Wilkerson roaming around south Arkansas, buying up pieces of Tara for unpaid taxes.
                  This oil baroness business is nothing to be sneezed at.  It does not pay worth a flip, but it’s all we have left of the family land, and Land is the only thing that lasts. ~
            You might enjoy the companion piece, posted on More Than A Bracelet.

Thread...Connections...Threads

             I use so many straight pins when I sew, pricking my fingers is inevitable.  Sleeping Beauty fell into a swoon when she pricked her finger…I just create new combinations of compound-curse words.
             During this particular creative period, sewing has taken a meaning far deeper than binding up wounds, more than creating something with fabric and thread.  Without a séance, without a Ouija Board or a Palm Reader, I have communicated with Mother. I have connected with thread, as in Woolco thread, Howard’s thread, and, of course, WalMart thread. 
             I open the tin in which are stacked and snuggled various vintage spools with thread in a kaleidoscope of colors. I’ve raided 3 sewing boxes for thread, notions, and ribbon.  A collection of trim, buttons, pins, and lace nestle in the top drawer of the chest in my guest room, Pam’s room, sewing room. Recently when I have needed a particular color thread, such as emerald green, lavender, lemon yellow, or magenta, it has been waiting for me.  I reach into the tin, the box, the drawer, and “voila’!” – as if by magic –exactly what I need is there.
                 Today, while holding a spool of never-before-used lemon yellow thread that Mother bought from Howard’s for 15 cents, I remembered when she laughed out a “hallelujah!” as I said, “I think I’d like a sewing machine for Christmas!” It was as if I had finally allowed her creative genes to take hold and she was there to see it happen.
                  My booth: Party Hostess, Tailgating Event, Grilling Guru Aprons; Garden Aprons, Couples Aprons….there are about 30 designs, each is one-of-a-kind.  My “business” will be called “Voila’!”- As If By Magic!

Voila'! (as if by magic): Home and Garden Show Booth

 I requested a SQUARE credit card reader so I'll be able to take credit/debit cards at my booth at the Home and Garden Show on April 27, at the Rector Community Center.
Inspired by  Elizabeth Scokin of Nashville, TN, with her Haute Coutoure Aprons, I launched a modification of the idea several years ago.  My first endeavor was as a Christmas gift for Brenda Pilant, friend and co-worker at Bartlett High School.  I designed for her a University of Memphis Hostess Apron,complete with jewels, netting, ribbon, and lace onto UofM fabric.  It was a hit!  In fact, I had requests for a UT apron which I never had time or energy to design.
Now, I have both time and energy and have been inspired to create more "designer" and "one of a kind" aprons.  Currently I have a Zebra collection with Arkansas motif, and some B/W zebra motif aprons ala Audrey Hepburn and Ann Taylor. With a salute to my potential customers, I am working on a John Deere collection (husband/wife duo barbeque designs), a Camo Collection (both manly and girly), and a Dessert Apron collection with styles I've entitled "chocolate covered strawberries," "butterscotch candy,"  "peppermint chiffon,"  etc.
Garden aprons and jeans aprons also will be in my booth.  I designed the jeans garden aprons from the back end of men's jeans so I could utilize the BIG pockets!  Inspired from a YouTube video, I must confess, I prefer prettier designs.  The fabric from Hobby Lobby, Hancocks, and Wal-Mart is so pretty and that makes it fun to work with.
On a card for one of the dessert aprons (Zebra and Pink with lace, ribbons, and bows) I advise that children be at grandma's house, because hubby will anticipate a special kind of dessert!

Arkansas Vistas: Dichotomy and Juxtaposition

               Gorgeous natural beauty positioned against pervasive poverty. Lush landscapes flourish within abandoned home sites.  Perky daffodils sway where families once worked and played.  Arkansas: The Natural State.  So many gorgeous vistas around Fayetteville, Hot Springs, and Mountain Home.  So much poverty around Camden, Pine Bluff, West Memphis, and Blytheville.  Shift your mind's eye to Rector and  then, to Roland, Arkansas.
                 If you have $90 per each to spare, you can tour Moss Mountain Farm, in Roland, Arkansas, the Garden Home Site for P. Allen Smith, consummate gardener and TV personality, Southern Living Home and Garden expert, and Little Rock, Arkansas, native. I adore a gorgeous garden, but prefer help and direction in maintaining my own.  Weeding is not my favorite activity.  Garden aprons, garden gloves, and a nice bench or stool would make my experience more inviting.  I love the end result and gain inspiration from the beauty of gardens well-kept.  The truth is, though, they have gardeners and architects, Vanderbilt money, and vision.
              A trip to Roland, Arkansas, would be worth the time and expense, I surmise. There, Warren Stephens, the Arkansas billionaire, built a private golf club called the Alotian, which rivals Augusta National. Warren’s dad, Jack, was former chairman at Augusta National, home of the Master’s Tournament.  Daddy was treated to playing rounds at Augusta National by his friend John Phillips, retired CEO of Louisiana Land and Exploration.  Marvin and I drove through the gates April, 2012, but that’s as far as we got before being greeted by armed guards.
              Both Moss Mountain Farm and Alotian Golf Club have been in my line of sight this week, so I investigated Roland, Arkansas.  Located  just west of Little Rock on Lake Maumelle, Roland is home to both P. Allen Smith’s Garden Home and Warren Stephens’ Alotian Golf Club.
              Arkansas:  The Natural State, Diamonds and Dearth, Dichotomy and Juxtaposition.

Childhood's Easter Magic

            I love the magic in childhood.  Honestly, I've retained a good portion of that magic for my everyday, adult life.  It allows me to see skies with sweet potato clouds  and helpful bluebirds when I clean the house.  It helps.  Within the holiness of Easter week resides a springtime tradition in my family, one of many that I treasure.

           We never feared the topsy-turvy Easter weather: our Easter Bunny, the one who returned to Capistrano year after year, found especially creative ways to lay Easter Eggs in the house. In fact, it was far more fun to find colorful harbingers of Spring on the toilet paper roll and in the laundry basket than to find deposits among the fresh onions and dewy grass. How did that Bunny jump all the way to the top of the refrigerator?
            The Easter Bunny lays Easter eggs. He does not carry them around in a basket and hide them.  No EB could ever lay 30,000 plastic eggs (bound to hurt) from end zone to end zone on a football field.  Whoever began that game was goofy.

                Merchants began the attempt to elevate Bunny to the status of Santa Claus, still the number one good-guy bearing gifts.  Easter Bunnies lay Easter Eggs full of candy corn, lemon drops, Hershey’s kisses, and other assorted tiny confections. Easter Bunnies do not bring presents, nor do they bestow cellophane covered, humongous baskets already filled with a variety of springtime goodies. An honest-to-goodness EB would never suggest feasting on giant replicas of himself, fashioned in chocolate, begging for his ears to be munched off in bite size chunks.
                 Bring back the REAL Easter Bunny. Encourage the minds of children to suspend logic and anatomy.  In the same fanciful imaginary world that permits Spider Man to string himself throughout a city, skyscraper to skyscraper, our children should free their creativity to welcome the EB with a return to  his glory days.  Egg Hunts are good fun, but there’s nothing quite like your own personal Easter Bunny laying his spring-hued candy-filled treasures. Childhood needs to celebrate the magic.

~Please read my More Than A Bracelet Blog.  In it today, I share a Gordon Family Traditon, complete with a couple of pictures of Easter, 1954.

Snowfall: Specializing in Surprise

                 "You've seen snow before.  Shut the door."

Like a child, I responded in sassiness, "But I haven't seen this snow. Not on March 21, 2013."
              After I snapped the picture, I shut the door.
Strange how no camera image can equal the crystal quiet of a snowfall played out in mental magic.
This snow covered the deck in planks of puffed powder.  Snowfog hovered in the lights and surrounded the pond and pasture.  Stacking flake upon flake, this Spring snowfall specialized in surprise.

Nothing's Like a Teenage Girl

                There is nothing like teen-age friends, especially 14 year-old girlfriends!  The girl drama shared at my kitchen table yesterday kept me smiling and shaking my head.  Their sense of humor is hysterical.  They’ve been my little buddies for 5 years, long before Sarah Beth could drive the “Gator” out to Aunt Mandy’s to jump on the trampoline. 

                Last evening, just as I put our stuffed bell peppers main dish into the oven, the doorbell rang.  It was Sarah Beth and Shelby, my buddies. They started talking when they walked in and did not stop. Leaving their pink and brown girl-boots at the door, they made their way to my kitchen table. Their conversational style is contagious, so I chuckled and giggled right along with them.  Marvin said that most of the time there were 2 females talking at the same time.  One just instinctively knows when to take a breath.
                       The topics of conversation ranged from “an older classmate who got 3 days or 3 licks for slapping a mean girl,” “growing out your hair, your bangs, your sides…” to “well, the recipe called for 18 minutes, but I cooked it for 45!”  And how did that work out for you?  The recipe was for cookie dough topped with a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup, topped with brownie batter, all in the cups of a muffin tin.  They promised me a sample for today.  This time with not so much overflowing brownie batter.
                            Getting to share parts of life through the eyes of a teen-age girl is an absolute delight. It’s like grandchildren: I don’t have to enforce clean-room rules.