grace grits and gardening

ramblings from an arkansas farm girl

Significant Number Seven?

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Along with eighty-something other writers, I am participating in the Write Tribe Seven Day Blogging event beginning today, September 1. 
The twist of this event is that I signed up without knowing the writing prompt. 
Seven days before the first post was due, I learned the prompt was the number seven. 
morgueFile

Hmmmm. There are no rules or guidelines for this challenge, other than for seven days in a row, write something associated with the number seven. I like rules. I prefer rules. Give me seven rules, and I’ll nail them. No rules is an intimidating proposition.

For seven days I’ve been thinking of dropping out, my typical safe reaction. Born in the seventh month under the astrological sign of Cancer, I prefer to hide in my shell, retreat to home base. That’s what we Cancers do.

Yet I forge ahead. Reluctantly. I hope you’ll follow along with me. I’ll try to keep it interesting.

For Post One, I thought I’d start with the number itself. Seven is often considered the most significant of all numbers, full of magic and mystery and superstition, the number most often repeated in the natural world. In the Bible, seven is the number of wholeness, completion, perfection.

Things that come in groups of seven…

Colors in the Rainbow
Notes on the Musical Scale
Sages of Greece
Dwarfs of Snow White
Wonders of the World
Sacraments of the Roman Catholic Church
Days of Creation
Chakras
Horcruxes
Last Plagues
Years of Bad Luck (broken mirror)
Seas
Virtues
Deadly Sins
Beatitudes
Food Groups

the signifcance of the number seven; rainbow

What can you add to this list?

talya
Grace Grits and Gardening

P.S.  I added food groups to see if you were really paying attention. Traditionally there are only five food groups in the food pyramid, but several years ago I added wine and chocolate.

Stay tuned for Post Two, unless I crawl back into my shell.

How to Make Pumpkins from Recycled Books

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 how to make pumpkins from recycled books

Once September rolls around, I am all about decorating for Halloween. I saw a similar recycled book pumpkin project on Pinterest and couldn’t wait to try it.The hardest part of the project for me was selecting which book to use. ‘Defacing’ a book is downright sinful; however, I decided an old Fodor travel book on the Caribbean was expendable. If I return to the islands, I’ll buy a more up-to-date issue.Continue Reading

Gosnell, Arkansas Murder: What Has Happened to Our Society?

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What makes a seventeen-year-old boy strangle and shove an eleven-year-old girl off a bridge to her death?  
Blytheville Courier News
Jessica Williams

(Click HERE to read the Blytheville Courier News story of this child’s death……)

There’s no sense trying to put our arms around it—we can’t, we shouldn’t. This should never, not in a million years, make sense to anyone.
But still we seek an answer, an explanation, a reason for such heinous activity. We need to understand in hopes it will never happen again.
I certainly have no answers. I’m merely an ex-banker, a would-be writer, a farmer’s daughter who grew up riding her John Deere bicycle from daybreak to well past sunset only fifteen miles from Big Lake where this incident occurred Tuesday. The underlying horror of this story is that these sickening incidents have become almost commonplace. Different atrocious details, different state, different people, similar results.
This one happens to be close to home.
Mississippi County residents are rattled to the core. I imagine the parents in Gosnell and Blytheville and Burdette and Luxora and Keiser and Osceola and Wilson are holding their babies closer, looking for answers, saying extra prayers and hoping to God this doesn’t happen to their family. 
Everyone wonders why. 
Why do humans no longer have moral compasses? 
Does this happen over time as society becomes completely desensitized by movies and video games? 
Does this happen because parents are spread thin simply trying to survive day to day, often in one parent households? Are children raised by television babysitters and schools already stretched paper thin? 
Is there a complete lack of control—with parents, schools, government, food, television…everything, everywhere? 
This is not a post about God or lack of God. This is about lack of common decency. No one gives a thought to consequences. Often there are none.
Miley Cyrus twerks on prime time television, and this is breaking news.  People are outraged by her behavior yet spend four days and nights watching her YouTube video and googling her name rather than having a dinner conversation around the supper table with their own kids.
I don’t even know what twerking is.
I feel sick.
talya

Food. Farm. Garden. Life.

THANKS FOR READING!