Mississippi County - grace grits and gardening

Simple Pleasures #6

November 10, 2014 By Talya Tate Boerner

Last week was filled with some of my favorite simple pleasures. I spent time with friends at a Hemingway-Pfeiffer writer retreat which meant five whole days to talk about writing, share my writing, think about writing, and actually write. This is blissful. I followed that up at the Bat Cave with my Mother which always involves lots of laughing.

So a few of last week’s pleasures were…

1. A tranquil drive through the Ozark Mountains.

2. A glimpse of Lake Norfork, (my happy place), perfectly timed at sunset.

3. Sharing the first chapter of my manuscript with other writers and receiving wonderfully positive feedback. Yay.

4. A great night’s sleep at home in Mississippi County followed by a lazy morning drinking coffee with Momma.

5. Being surrounded by delta farmland for a few days! Look at all the beautiful cotton:))

Here’s wishing you a week of good coffee and lots of laughter.

Grace Grits and Gardening

Farm. Food. Garden. Life.

[tweetthis]Laughter, time to write, sleeping in my own bed. A few of last week’s #simple #pleasures. [/tweetthis]

Musical Pairing:

David Nail – Turning Home

Nana’s Cactus

September 27, 2014 By Talya Tate Boerner

My short memoir, Nana’s Cactus, was recently published in Arkansas Review. Arkansas Review, an Arkansas State University literary journal, is more difficult to find than a regular magazine so you likely haven’t read it. My story is about a cactus and Nana and Elvis and life and death. Although I’m not going to re-print it here, I will give you the back story on the plant itself.

As long as I can remember, Nana’s cactus thrived in a dusty glass terrarium on her carport at the home place. In the mid-1970s when Nana and Papa moved to Keiser, that cactus moved to their new carport in Keiser. Each time we visited Nana and Papa (daily?), we walked by her cactus to get to her back porch. Hundreds of times.

The cactus was a tangle of a plant that lived outside no matter the weather. During fall, the blades were often buried in layers of leaves. It spent many winters beneath two or three inches of snow yet always bloomed bright yellow in May.

I took a cutting with me to college. It traveled with me to several apartments in Waco, my first house in Dallas and my last home on Worth Street in Munger Place. Several years ago when it outgrew its largest pot (it’s not the easiest to transplant as you might imagine – see those needles in the picture below!), John planted it in the hottest corner of our Dallas flower bed.

Last week I started over with Nana’s Cactus. I took another small cutting, repotted it and moved it with me to Fayetteville. I think it’s happy to be back in Arkansas.