Sunday Letter: 05.13.18

Dear Sunday Letter friends,

Happy Mother’s Day to all the Mommas who make the world go around❣

This past week was busy-busy filled with lots of things I love except writing. I did very little writing. You may remember (or not) that my one little word for 2018 was balance. (Actually I chose two words, but…) I’m not sure I’m doing so well with balancing the things I want to do. This week I plan to devote several full days to writing.

Did you choose One Little Word for 2018? If so, how’s it going for you?

She Waits

This Momma Cardinal built her nest in a viburnum right outside my kitchen window. For almost two weeks, she’s been sitting on her eggs. Babies will come soon. Several times a day, I check on her. She’s always there. What a lesson in motherly devotion. Through thunderstorms and stiff winds that sway the branches of her home, through late afternoon sun that heats her feathers, she waits.

Tiny Basil

A tiny baby basil grows on my kitchen windowsill. She’s almost ready to move outside and live with her more established basil family and older herb cousins. But not yet. I like having her close by when I’m dicing green onions or mixing chicken salad or watching Momma Cardinal.

Butterfly Trail

The word squirrel sends Lucy and Annabelle scrambling outside to chase the critters from Schnauzer World. The girls always cut through our butterfly garden, so much so they’ve worn a path through it. Like a game trail in the woods. So I gave them their very own stone pathway through the butterfly garden hoping it will keep them from trampling the dill, away from the milkweed, between the flowers.

For the most part, it’s working! Now, Lucy races along the butterfly trail. Annabelle, being leery of anything new, jumps over it. She has mad high-jump / long-jump skills.

To All the Mommas

I’m grateful for my Momma. She’s always been the glue of our family. The peacemaker. A rock. Like the sun. Always there. Solid and shining.

On Mother’s Day, I always think back to my girlhood church days at Brinkley Chapel. On that special day, all the girls and women wore roses pinned to their dresses to honor their Mommas—red or pink to signify a still-living mother, white to celebrate a heavenly mother.

Staci and I cut pale pink rosebuds from the bush that grew beside the gravel driveway. Momma always bought Nana a white gardenia from the flower shop in town. Gardenia because it was her favorite flower. White because Nana’s Momma (my great-grandma Johnson) had died years and years ago. I knew her only as the young girl in a single black and white photo, dark hair in a bun on top of her head, honest eyes, ivory skin.

Momma wore a fancy corsage, a full grown rose that came in a clear plastic box with a long straight pin attached to the back for fastening to her dress.

I didn’t know if all churches followed this Mother’s Day flower tradition or if it was something unique to us. But special it was.

The pink roses blooming at our house today remind me of those pink roses that once bloomed in our yard at home on the farm.

School Kitchen Tip

Recipe No. 7 Chicken Sandwich (for Mother’s Day Afternoon Tea) : Cut very thin slices of brown bread; spread generously with creamed butter; chop the chicken and chop also part of the celery; mix it with the chicken; salt it well and spread it on the bread; wrap in a damp napkin. Use canned tongue in the same way if preferred. (The School Kitchen Textbook, Mary J. Lincoln, 1917, Lesson III, Proportion of Food Stuffs in Daily Meals, Afternoon Tea)

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Again Sunday Letter readers ~ Happy Mother’s Day! If your mother is no longer on this Earth, do something she would enjoy. I think she’ll know and have fun too.

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

[tweetthis]Dear Sunday Letter friends: Happy Mother’s Day! [/tweetthis]

Musical Pairing:
Miranda Lambert, Dear Old Sun