Talya Tate Boerner - grace grits and gardening

Fall Foraged Decor

October 12, 2015 By Talya Tate Boerner

I like to decorate with natural elements. Plants growing in the fields or along the ditch bank. Flowers from my garden. Pumpkins and gourds and apples from the farmer’s market.

Take a look at a few of my fall foraged decorating ideas. Yes, I use the term foraged loosely (creative writing, y’all). Foraged from the closet or flea markets or while on neighborhood walks with Lucy and Annabelle.

Use rusty old toys, wheelbarrows, farm implements, whatever, to display fall’s bounty inside or outside. In the picture above, my sister’s original Tonka Truck moves gourds around in the backyard. Yes, I still play in the dirt.

Pictured: Delta Cotton

October 9, 2015 By Talya Tate Boerner

P i c t u r e d: Delta Cotton

Cotton-picking time in the Delta is my favorite. This week when I haven’t been holed up working on my book edits (yay!), I’ve been driving from the bootheel of Missouri and along the Great River Road searching out magazine and blog post stories. The highways and byways of the Delta are roaring with trucks hauling soybeans and grain. The gins are ginning at capacity. I can often be found poking around in fields or parked on the side of the road taking pictures. So far, the farmers work around me. ? ??

A few Delta cotton pics. (The smoke in the first two pictures is from the adjacent soybean field—burning stalks after harvest.)

John Deere picker, Mississippi County, Ar.
Round bale, Mississippi County, Ar.
Adams Cotton Gin, Leachville, Ar.
Old cotton picking sack, Mississippi County Museum, Osceola, Ar.
Momma, my sister and me.
1910 cotton picking basket, Mississippi County Museum, Osceola, Ar.
Beautiful boll, Dunklin County, Mo.

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

[tweetthis]In them old cotton fields back home… @ArFB @JohnDeere #farming #Delta #Arkansas[/tweetthis]

Musical Pairing:
Creedence Clearwater Revival, Cotton Fields Back Home

meet Gracie Lee

October 7, 2015 By Talya Tate Boerner

It’s high time you officially met Gracie Lee, the nine-almost-ten-year-old protagonist of The Accidental Salvation of Gracie Lee. Over the next two months before official book release, I’ll be talking more and more about her. What she likes and says and does.

So who is she really?

Let me start by saying it’s true, the idea of “writing what you know”. Gracie Lee was born from a compilation of true life stories, what began as memoir. So it’s only natural that we share many memories. But Gracie Lee is her own person apart from me.

She’s precocious and mature beyond her years. And brave when it counts.

She counts the days until her tenth birthday, certain that ten will feel different than nine.

Her Momma sees to it that she practices the piano, a complete waste of time in Gracie Lee’s opinion. Instead, she’d much rather learn to speak French, a skill she’s sure will help her someday when she has an important job working somewhere other than in Arkansas.

She still plays with Barbie, but tries to keep this from her Daddy.

As Gracie Lee lies in bed at night, unable to sleep, her mind is chock-full of questions and notions and secrets that churn like the nearby muddy Mississippi.