grace grits and gardening - ramblings from an arkansas farm girl

Redenta’s Garden

January 17, 2014 By Talya Tate Boerner

This week on Six Blocks from my house… Redenta’s Garden. Redenta’s is my go-to place for organic gardening everything. The staff is knowledgeable and friendly and willingly spreads gardening love via free Saturday morning classes. (Last weekend John and I took a vegetable gardening class—timely for us with our new community garden plot.)

And if free classes aren’t cool enough, on the third Thursday of each month (5-7 PM) Redenta’s hosts a monthly Happy Hour Potting Bar. Genius!

Last night my girlfriends and I checked it out. We studied the happy hour menu for quite some time. It was difficult to choose from all the options, plus there is the added option of a “market price” creation.

Your hostess will pot your new plant in the container of your choice while you enjoy cocktails and chips and salsa. Or, you can get your hands dirty and pot your own. The folks at Redenta’s are very accommodating and fun people.

Since John had to be out of town on the night of our 15th wedding anniversary, he bought me two plants:)

Very Dr. Suess-ish, don’t you think?

Follow Redenta’s Garden on Facebook for up-to-date happenings.

Grace Grits and Gardening

Six Blocks from my house is something new for 2014. Each week or two I’ll highlight a few things going on only six blocks (or so) from my house. Maybe a new place, an event, a person, who knows? East Dallas is funky and fabulous and filled with unique history. I plan to show it off.

There’s also disparity between the haves and have nots. The hidden, disregarded and not-so-clean-and-tidy will sometimes be included. That’s part of our neighborhood too.

Fifteenth Wedding Anniversary!

January 16, 2014 By Talya Tate Boerner

John and I said “I do” fifteen years ago today. Wow. Fifteen years skipped by in a blur of work and school and sports and drill team and boy scouts and church and life… (Seems like) only yesterday we were buried in Barbies and Legos and spelling homework. I couldn’t see beyond the end of the week, much less envision two college students and an empty nest…

By the sheer passage of time, so much has changed, yet thankfully so much is the same.

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

P.S. I love this picture of John and my mother taken after our reception dinner. Momma changed into her robe but still wore her corsage and pearls…

Musical Pairing:

Can’t Help Falling in Love, Elvis Presley

How did it get so late so soon? – Dr. Seuss

January Full Wolf Moon

January 15, 2014 By Talya Tate Boerner

According to the Old Farmer’s Almanac, January’s full wolf moon was named for wolf packs that howled outside Indian villages “during the cold and deep snows of midwinter”.

My fascination with the moon began in the fall of 1969 when Mrs. Hilliard wheeled the bulky black and white television between desks in our first grade classroom. Instead of doing alphabet worksheets, we watched Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong walk on the moon from high above our spot in Keiser, Arkansas. At the time I had no idea the news clip was a rebroadcast. (I was probably at the lake on July 20 when the giant leap actually happened…)

A few years later, Mr. Ring assigned a month long moon project in science class. I was just weird enough to love month long projects…especially about space.

Each night I stared at the black sky from my location in the backyard between the pump house and the cotton field. On a piece of plain notebook paper, I charted the moon’s positions and phases. In thirty days it waxed from new to full then disappeared again. I began to realize even though it looked different every night, it never changed. It was the same moon, the only moon, the moon that guided Columbus, the moon that had watched over our Earth forever.

By month’s end, my project was detailed and accurate. A work of art.

I’m pretty sure most of my friends threw their reports together without a glance toward the heavens…

Wherever you are, be sure to glance at our Full Wolf Moon tonight.

Grace Grits and Gardening

Farm. Food. Garden. Life.

“It is a beautiful and delightful sight to behold the body of the Moon.”
― Ptolemy

Musical Pairing:

Mindy Gledhill, Winter Moon