grace grits and gardening

ramblings from an arkansas farm girl

Time in a Bottle

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removing curtains and rods
There is no free lunch at the Bat Cave. In five days I shortened curtains, removed huge cornice boards and curtain rods, vacuumed the bugs between the windows on the sill, changed two light figures, decluttered and rearranged 4 rooms, made several trips to the grocery store, Walmart & the post office, cooked dinner, and removed and replaced the trim around the laundry room door so the new dryer could be moved inside. I returned to Dallas exhausted.
I got 30 minutes for lunch.
One of my projects was cleaning out drawers in my bedroom. Every drawer was stuffed with cards and letters and papers and report cards. And pictures. School pictures of everyone I ever went to school with from 1st grade through high school graduation.

I opened the top drawer and there was Charles Mobley staring at me. Charles Mobley, my 8th grade boyfriend, in his football uniform. Vinnie Barbarino-y. Handsome as ever. And pictures of Anita and Becky and Judy and Jackie and Trina and Craig and Graham and Vic and Doug and Carrie and Mary and Bryan and Robert and TimH and TimA and TimS. Pictures of everyone I ever knew. From every year. A time capsule.

Does everyone open random drawers and find elementary school photos of classmates from the 1970s? Or does this only happen in my family? To hoarders? To people who live in the same spot on Earth for eternity? I hope NO ONE has any pictures of me in their junk drawer. Frightening thought.

I straightened and organized the photographs, disposing of only a handful – those with giant fingers blocking the entire picture and the Polaroids with totally bleached away images.

If anyone reading this needs an old photo of anyone from Keiser or Rivercrest, let me know. I bet I can find it. I have a few Osceola folks too.
talya
P.S. Gary H….I found a picture of you too.

Musical Pairings:


Lisa: Someday when I’m a grownup, maybe I’ll go back and look fondly at our house.
Bart: Well stop in and say hi to me because I’ll still be there chilling in my basement bachelor pad.
Homer: Make sure to water my backyard grave.
Bart: As long as I can dig you up and stick you on the front porch every Halloween.
Homer: Just don’t dress me up as a woman.
Bart: We’ll see.
(The Simpson’s)

Field of Dreams

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At home in Arkansas, I walked around the rice field each morning. Now that the field has been leveled and irrigated, we have our own private walking trail all the way to the drainage ditch at the South end. There were so many things to see in the early morning. Every day something new revealed itself.

Life is abundant. In addition to the rice and corn and wildflowers and vine covered trees, there were FrogsBeaversDucksDragonfliesButterfliesSnakes….
frog
Each morning I walked and sweated and explored, digging up rocks and shotgun shells and pieces of old rusty farm equipment. Daddy’s equipment?
Something shiny caught my eye. A small silver tip nearly hidden in the dirt. It was an aluminum baseball bat buried at the far back corner of the field near the beaver dam. An odd place to find a baseball bat. Field of Dreams?
My corner:)
My favorite part of the walk was the far Southeast corner which is shady and breezy in the morning. Almost cool. I spent extra time there studying the water and the ditch bank which concealed the occasional pearly white shell formed thousands of years ago when the Mississippi River covered the entire delta region.

Over the past week I slowly gathered all these little found objects and piled them in an old rusty hubcap I uncovered in the field. I placed the hubcap filled with treasures near the edge of the bank as an offering to the rain gods. I hope it works…

talya
Musical Pairings:
“With us, when you speak of “the river,” though there be many, you mean always the same one, the great river, the shifting, unappeasable god of the country, feared and loved, the Mississippi.“

~ William Alexander Percy 

Driving Home

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I enjoyed the drive from the lake to my mother’s house, a drive I had not made in years. Since college, I leave the lake driving in the opposite direction to Texas.
Lake City
The trip is much, much faster now, the roads better and wider with turn lanes. Before, you could get stuck behind a rock hauler and spend half the drive going 30 mph, adding hours to the trip. Although portions of the drive were the same, some sections were unrecognizable. New highways dotted with Sonics and Exxons completely bypassed the Kreme Kastles of all the charming small towns. The cool bridge in Lake City has been totally rebuilt, with only a small section of the original structure remaining for historical purposes. My sister and I always held our breath driving over that bridge. Every bridge for that matter.

The memories flooded me. Things I haven’t seen or thought of in years.
I studied the trees, wondering which of the tallest ones watched us drive this route years ago. Years ago in Momma’s pale yellow Cadillac convertible loaded with kids and Samsonite suitcases and groceries and bright orange life jackets. One year the convertible top broke and we were forced to drive all the way home with the top down. Sunburned and windy it was miserable. And took forever.
Abruptly on the other side of Hardy, the hills disappear and miles and miles of farm land stretch from the road to the horizon on both sides. Rows and rows of cotton and soybeans. As a kid this was always a jolt to the heart, knowing the lake was far behind us.
This time the drive was different. I was happy to see farmland. The corn was tall and I was excited to see white and pink cotton blooms signaling cotton bolls tomorrow.
Another season. Another time. New memories.

talya
Musical Pairings:
Who Says You Can’t Go Home, Bon Jovi & Jennifer Nettles

Food. Farm. Garden. Life.

THANKS FOR READING!