grace grits and gardening

ramblings from an arkansas farm girl

The Home Stretch

By

     Turning north at West Memphis, I breathe a bit easier. The air seems lighter, the skies clearer.  An ordinary trip driven countless times now fortifies me, replenishes memories, helps me remember.  
     A crop duster tilts his yellow wing in my direction, then turns and dips before misting fertilizer across winter wheat. Like crocus pushing through the cold, he is a first sign of spring.  To dazed travelers and long-haul truckers, the flat landscape appears dead and dull, yet I know life churns beneath wet fields. 
     In the distance, a recent thunderstorm hovers over the Mississippi River. Clouds hang heavy and purple.
talya

Musical Pairing:

Home Sweet Home, The Farm

Hello Autumn!

By

Autumn is the time we begin to wind down the year, rebalancing our bodies and minds as the days begin to shorten and cool. We breathe a sigh of relief at having survived another hot southern summer.
Into storage go those summer decorations, the bowl of seashells collected during annual treks to Destin, the sunflower door wreath. Into the back of the closet go the white linen pants and summer sundresses. Bring on cowboy boots and sweater weather!

Thoughts turn to family and football, chili and pumpkin spice lattes. Fall is a time for thanksgiving.
Surprise lilies bloom where none stood the night before. The air is filled with defoliant and the smell of cotton.
 
I wait for the Great Pumpkin.
The roadsides and ditch banks around our farm are tangled with tiny wild flowers and colorful foliage perfect for gathering into fall decorations. What better way to honor nature’s blessings than with vegetation growing wild near the fields? These fields which provide for us all spring…every spring, year after year.
 

ditchbank decor

ditchbank decor

Our rice field is peaceful now, resting, and nearly bare after harvest. The remaining dry stalks, interesting only to dove and duck, are in sharp contrast to the brilliant colors along the turn row and ditches. Cockleburs hang in clumps on scarlet stems. Peeking through the weeds, purple morning glories creep along the dark soil like ground cover. Silvery Johnson grass waves in the breeze. Growing wild, pink spiky flowers are unfamiliar to me, similar to salvia.
decorating with Autumn's offerings

decorating with Autumn’s offerings

 
You can easily transform your home at no cost with only a pair of scissors. A rusty bucket or tarnished silver bowl provides the ideal container. Any found object will do.
 
As poet Ella Wheeler Wilcox observed, a weed is but an unloved flower.
The beauty is all around.
decorate with cotton and wildflowers

decorate with cotton and wildflowers

 
Grace Grits and Gardening
Farm. Food. Garden. Life.
 
This post is Day 1 of the BLOGtober Fest at Arkansas Women Bloggers…

 


the grass grows

By

Yesterday I parked in Daddy’s parking spot. The place where he always parked his dusty farm truck, not in the carport but along the gravel road beside the field. Grass now grows through the gravel, nearly covering it. I guess he really isn’t coming back.

I still expect to see him dragging through the back door for supper, hungry yet too exhausted to eat, his jeans hanging loose and tired. I still hear him grumble about the rain shower today. Such terrible timing during cotton harvest…
On the porch, wheat from his last harvest still fills a vase. Eighteen years later.
At the Corral diner in Keiser … Are you Thomas Tate’s girl? I remember seeing your daddy drive up and down the road in front of my house at Coleman Lateral. Seems like I saw his truck ten times a day when they were pickin’ cotton… He’s been gone a long time, hasn’t he?
Yes ma’am.
In eighteen years, most everything changes.

The tree Daddy planted my senior year of high school soars over the back yard. Only a twig at the time, he transplanted it from the banks of Little River.

Grass now grows through the gravel, nearly covering his parking spot. 
I still feel the same. 
talya
Musical Pairings:

I Miss You a Little, John Michael Montgomery

Food. Farm. Garden. Life.

THANKS FOR READING!