grace grits and gardening

ramblings from an arkansas farm girl

Evolution of a Neighborhood

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 Evolution of a Neighborhood
I walk Lucy and Annabelle several times each day. No matter the weather. They sniff and strain on their leashes, never pulling in the same direction while I study the houses and trees and yards. Munger Place was developed over 100 years ago. We have lived here ten years. In ten years things change. The cute neighbor boy who was kicking around a soccer ball ‘yesterday’ ran down the steps from his front porch this morning and drove off behind the wheel of his dad’s SUV.StoppingMeColdInMyTracks!  In ten years things change.
Trees grow, babies are born, people move, new families settle into the neighborhood. Marian is no longer sitting on the swing with Harry.
Marian Gibson
Kids go off to college in the fall and a collegiate flag proudly pops up in the yard to signify the final choice. LSU, University of Texas, Arkansas, Texas Tech.
Our son was a 3rd grader when we moved into this house. Playing with legos and struggling with spelling words. Now he’s a sophomore Razorback and speaks of change management.
Our daughter was a 7th grader. Now she’s preparing for law school. Preparing to change the world.
In June, a huge hail storm pelted the neighborhood wreaking havoc across landscapes and rooftops and windows. The sound of roofers pounding in the heat has become commonplace, drowning out the city traffic noise. The houses will continue to stand strong.
Soon, children will return back to school wearing matching uniforms. Number 2 pencils were long ago replaced with iPads. Families will be buzzing with fall activities, football, cheerleading, homework.
Munger Place Historic District
The neighborhood continues to evolve. Things change in ten years. Things change in one hundred years. We are only caretakers.

Grace Grits and Gardening

Musical Pairings:

Temporary Home – Carrie Underwood

Don’t buy the house, buy the neighborhood – Russian Proverb

in the blink of an eye

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Life can change in the blink of an eye. In a heartbeat. We all know this but don’t expect it to happen. Not really. One minute things are customary and safe, the days filled with the familiar pattern of life, and suddenly nothing is ever the same again.

Tommy Van Zandt’s life changed on February 7, 2009. Trimming tree limbs on his property after a huge Northwest Arkansas ice storm, he fell from a ladder and suffered a severe neck injury which left him paralyzed from the shoulders down. In that one moment, his world was altered.

Tommy and my husband attended high school together in Ft. Smith, Arkansas. And college together at the University of Arkansas. Woo Pig Sooie! And we all three worked together in Dallas at the Bright Companies for several years until he moved back to Fayetteville to co-found a successful real estate company, Sage Partners.

He is an amazing spirit and still very much involved in the day-to-day activities of his company. But his daily struggles are significant, his journey difficult.

Tommy’s Nite Out III is scheduled for September 14, 2012 in Fayetteville, Arkansas. It will be a fun gathering of friends to raise awareness and support for Tommy and his family. His medical needs are great and insurance covers very little. Everyone should visit the site and participate in some way.
Even if all you can do is send a prayer for his recovery.
Tommy is one of us.
Grace Grits and Gardening
Farm. Food. Garden. Life.

“I thank my God every time I remember you.” Philippians 1:3

 

 

Cruel Summer

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Here we are again. Sitting smack dab in the middle of another sweltering summer. Another obscenely hot and cruel summer. Motionless and glaring. Water droplets from sprinklers evaporate before touching the parched grass. Mother Nature sends no rain for the crops.  Evidently she holds a grudge.

Yesterday I fried an egg in the backyard by the swimming pool. The pavement burned my feet and the skillet handle scalded my hand, as hot as the oven. The pool water is probably hot enough to poach an egg. Even the kitchen tap water is warm. 


Every night the super enthusiastic weathermen of Dallas try to inject a new twist into the forecast. Something to justify their time slot before sports. Before the Olympic news and Dallas Cowboys training camp. But there is nothing new. There won’t be anything different until that first cold snap on Halloween, if we are lucky. The high’s and lo’s are fancifully displayed and the heat index is thrown in for effect as the entire Dallas-Ft. Worth Metroplex collectively gasps. As if there is a distinct difference between 110 and 112.

No matter how high the mercury soars each day this summer, the record high temperatures hold firmly in place. From 1980. Nothing compares to the summer of 1980. The summer I graduated from Rivercrest High School. The summer we did rain dances in the front yard in air that cloaked our bodies like gauze.  The summer daddy had a scorched crop yet forked over college tuition. The summer we nearly had to bury him on the banks of Little River.

In 1980, thousands of lives were lost and crop damage totaled in the billions. Beer sales in Texas were at an all time high.
Irrigation. Rice. Tate Farm.
Thank goodness we irrigate the crops now. 

Only 51 days until Autumn….

talya

Musical Pairings:

Long Hot Summer Days, Sara Watkins
Cruel Summer, Bananarama

“The first week of August hangs at the very top of the summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning.” Natalie Babbitt, Tuck Everlasting.

Food. Farm. Garden. Life.

THANKS FOR READING!