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Archives for October 2012

Nature’s Symphony

October 7, 2012 By Talya Tate Boerner

dove
The field rests, preparing for winter. The temperature is thirty degrees cooler than before.

As I walk the perimeter, unsuspecting critters are surprised by my return. They have received no visitors since the combines moved out. Hidden, life waits for me to pass, then plops or jumps or slithers behind me just out of sight. 

I surprise a hawk on the ditch bank, and he surprises me. He swoops along the water, choosing a new spot to roost. The beaver dam has grown larger with sticks and brush woven tightly, a bridge to the other side. A brown grasshopper follows me, jumping at my feet, keeping pace and hitching a ride on my shirt for a few yards. Hello little fellow! He doesn’t answer back.
I visit my favorite spot, adding to the hidden treasures in my rusty hubcab – another shotgun shell casing, a feather, a piece of broken green glass, a shiny silver key. A bright pink candy wrapper half buried in the field proves a curious find…. Aren’t farmers and strawberry Laffy Taffy mutually exclusive?
The morning sounds are richly layered like an impressive symphony orchestra, well rehearsed and perfectly timed. Nearest to me, crickets chirp a steady melody, almost a recognizable tune. The occasional plop of a turtle into water adds deep bass sounds. Overhead, dove trill and whistle.  Nature’s high notes. Harmony surrounds me in the rustle of turning leaves. East across the fields, traffic hums on the interstate as trucks haul beans to the river, autumn’s final crescendo.

talya

Musical Pairing:

October, U2

For Taylor

October 4, 2012 By Talya Tate Boerner

Taylor Sandquist, my beautiful, twelve-year-old niece, wrote the following poem for her English class. 

Where Poetry Hides

In my fat, black and white cat’s crazy, teeny tiny
brain.
In the small #1 cabin on a lake in Arkansas.
In a nice, pretty resort in San Diego.
In my strange brother’s mind, who acts like a
crazy monkey.
In my pink Dell laptop.
In my nonie’s old, torn-up house.
In my dad’s clean, neat house.
In my oval/heart-shaped pool.
In the twisty, hilly and dirty campground of
Wyoming.
In the old basement of my other grandparents’
house.
Taylor Sandquist
Musical Pairing:
What Makes You Beautiful, One Direction
Taylor and Talya at the BAT cave.
Sammie

Oh the places you’ll go!

October 2, 2012 By Talya Tate Boerner

Fifty Shades of Grey - Going someplace different.

A friend recently asked what would happen if everyone now reading Fifty Shades of Grey read 90 Minutes in Heaven instead? I think he was annoyed that anyone would devote any time to anything unrelated to religion.

Interesting.

What if people who refuse to read one over the other, read both?  Or if those who never read at all read something? Just read. A paragraph, the comics, a children’s book, a blog post…

Oh the Places You'll Go through books!
Diversity stretches our minds, makes us think through the cobwebs. 

Books are great companions, some better friends than other. They find a way into our lives, drawing us in, teaching, helping us learn, unlearn, think, re-think. If we never grow and change, nothing changes. Or maybe a book reinforces what we already believe.


If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking. (Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood)

The places you'll go through books!

People who read a thousand books, live a thousand lives within the pages, connecting with the characters in the stories, the authors who formed the words, the other readers – those who suggested it, those who read it a hundred years ago. 

Certain books I read over and over, leaving a part of myself between the pages each time, taking something new with me at the end, a feeling, a thought, a memory. Years later, re-reading it, I find myself again, a younger person but the same person, familiar but with broadened horizons. Maybe I see it in a totally new light because I’m a different me.


Reading only one book, one genre, having one idea, one life is limiting. Never feeling the exhaustion of the Old Man fighting the marlin, never drinking a mug of butterbeer or eating a pumpkin pastie, never hearing the choiring of the trees… 

Never being sprinkled with pixie dust or reviving a secret garden or swinging through a jungle… Never journeying to Middle Earth or colonizing Mars….

Oh the places you’ll go!

Books are magical. 
Even the different ones.
They make you think.


talya

Grace Grits and Gardening
Farm. Food. Garden. Life.



Musical Pairing:

Narnia, Steve Hackett



“Think and wonder, wonder and think.” 
― Dr. Seuss
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Hi! I'm Talya Tate Boerner. Writer, Reader, Arkansas Master Naturalist / Master Gardener, Author of

THE ACCIDENTAL SALVATION OF GRACIE LEE (2016)

GENE, EVERYWHERE: a life-changing visit from my father-in-law (2020)

BERNICE RUNS AWAY (2022)

THE THIRD ACT OF THEO GRUENE (coming 2025)

Recent Ramblings:

  • Sunday Letter: 03.29.26
  • Sunday Letter: February 22, 2026
  • Our Garden Mission Statement
  • Goodbye, 2025. Hello, 2026.
  • Sunday Letter: 11.23.25

Novels:

Coloring Books:

Fiction-Themed Coloring Books

Backyard Phenology:

Children’s Nature Book:

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