grace grits and gardening

ramblings from an arkansas farm girl

Archives for 2012

Munger Place Days

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In January 1977, the National Apartment and Home Builder Convention met in Dallas. On the agenda, a home tour of newly built Fox & Jacob homes, zero lot model homes at the Villas of Las Colinas, several recently constructed multi-family developments scattered throughout city and almost as an afterthought, a remodeling tour with stops in Munger Place and along Swiss Avenue.
These turn-of-the-century-built homes were slowly being saved thanks to a handful of tireless folks with the grace and forethought to recognize these treasures were worth saving.
The first unofficial Munger Place home tour?

This year’s home tour, Munger Place Days, kicks off Friday night with a wine walk and intimate preview of the homes on tour. Saturday’s activities include a tour of six historic homes with riveting histories – including a ghost and an Olympic gold medalist. The tour will continue on Sunday along with an old-fashioned street festival, complete with live music, six food trucks offering everything from whoopee pies to grilled cheese sandwiches, a pet parade, cakewalk, an art fair with over fifty artisans, and much more.  
If you live in the metroplex area, take a few hours to step back in time at Munger Place Days. If you live elsewhere, it might be worth a road trip!
talya
Musical Pairings:
I looked to the past for guidance…We may talk of saving antique linens, species, or languages; but whatever we are intent on saving, when a restoration succeeds, we rescue ourselves. – Howard Mansfield

Blackbirds

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Throughout the spring and summer they send up silent prayers. These rough, hardworking, strong farmers ask for very little else other than ideal growing conditions. Not too hot. Perfect rainfall.
Just one more good crop.

Self-taught, yet like highly educated scientists, they control weeds and pests and test soil for nutrients, constantly patrolling the fields, sensing the slightest alteration in the landscape. They hear the wind change direction and feel the days get shorter.

The rice grows. Flat green blades, heading and flowering, ripening into a milky stage.  Finally golden brown, heavy, dry. Ready for harvest they pray once again for late summer storms to scatter, to blow over the county, leaving them at peace to work into the night.

Combines, massive and roaring, move into the fields, threshing and cutting, churning up dust and debris, leaving jagged stalks and stubble behind. Leaving duck blinds, partially revealed.
Duck blind pit mid-field…
Thick flocks of black birds circle at a safe distance, curious, panicked. They watch their summer food vanish. Winter is not far behind.
talya
Musical Pairings:

The Unloved

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I am cultivating the largest Johnsongrass I’ve ever seen. It sprouted up in our Fayetteville flower bed between visits and is so impressive I feel compelled to watch it grow. It wants to live.
It’s my personal 4-H project. I wonder if I could enter it in the State Fair of Arkansas? 
Daddy would be mortified. Thomas Tate had some of the cleanest fields in Mississippi County. Driving anywhere with him meant factoring in lots of extra time. Like all great farmers, he drove slow enough to watch cotton bolls open from the highway. And he stopped unannounced to chop the errant Johnsongrass growing mid-field.  On our way to anywhere, like playing a game of I Spy, we scanned the fields looking for offensive weeds standing taller than the crops, a slightly different shade of green, showing off, teasing Daddy, testing him. He stopped the truck, grabbed his trusty hoe from the back, walked to the annoying thing and whacked it down.  No matter how muddy the field. No matter where we were going. To a basketball game or wedding or funeral… 
We patiently sat inside the musty truck watching and waiting. We had no Iphone entertainment. No Angry Birds to pass the time. Just conversation and maybe a Barbie in tow.
Growing up that way, I am naturally drawn to weeding pulling and flower deadheading. Even at a friend’s house or restaurant, I can barely restrain myself. I’m surprised that I drove back to Dallas and left that mammoth Johnsongrass free to grow in Fayetteville. A weed is but an unloved flower.

talya

Musical Pairings:

Song Sung Blue – Neil Diamond

A weed is but an unloved flower. – Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Food. Farm. Garden. Life.

THANKS FOR READING!