Faith, Folklore, and Friends

I don't know where the word loafin' comes from, but it is used a lot around my house.  My parents labeled someone who wouldn't work a loafer , so it was a negative word then. They would admonish us to quit our loafin' and get the work done.  But now, I love loafin'. Loafin' is spending the day doing whatever you want to, with no promises to keep and no clear direction of where the day will end. For many years, I had to spend my Saturdays doing laundry and cooking and shopping, 'cause it is just not right to go loafin' and have to think about all the things waiting for you to do at home. One of the gifts of getting older is that your children have to do their own cooking and laundry, freeing up time for loafin'.   Last Saturday, my lil' ole sister and I went loafin'. We started knowing we would probably end up in Tupelo, but we didn't care when. I was driving, so anytime I saw something I wanted to get a closer look at, I ...

It is time for fall break at the beautiful University of North Alabama. Lazy, autumn days are perfect for napping.  At least, Leo seems to think so. We are getting to the time in the fall when we know these gorgeous days are numbered.  Be sure, kind friends, to make this one special.

The sweet potatoes are being harvested, and there is a good crop this year due to the good rains we had in August and September.  Due to lack of space, we didn't plant any this year, but there is plenty to buy at the Farmer's Market or at the Amish community. Sweet potatoes produce large, trailing vines that store their energy as golden tubers.  The luscious mats of green over clay are so beautiful, they would be worth growing even if they produced nothing. I can't remember my parents planting sweet potatoes, but we lived next to an aunt that grew a huge patch of them every year, and I suppose that is where ours came from.  She was known for her ability to grow "slips" or sweet potato plants from a tuber saved from the last year's crop.  One year we were helping her harvest her half-acre patch, and there were bushels and bushels of them.  My cousin had just gotten her senior high school ring, and she lost it that afternoon among al...

The Natchez Trace Parkway is a 444-mile scenic route from Natchez, Mississippi to Nashville, Tennessee. Fortunately for me, a tiny bit of it runs across Northwest Alabama.  I have traveled the entire 444 miles, although not on the same day.  You don't have to go but a few miles from where I live to get on the Trace.  Sometimes, it hard to decide whether to go North or South; it is beautiful both ways. On Saturday, my car turned north and went all the way to the Meriwether Lewis Park to the annual arts and crafts show. It took a while to get there with all the stops I made along the way. It was a good show, but all I bought was a huge bag of kettle corn that I am still munching on.  The best thing about it was that I ran into my lil' ole sister.  I guess it is a small world after all. Think I'll turn south next weekend.

The fields are white, literally white, in our area of the country now. The farmers here plant cotton every year.  Some years, they earn enough to make them want to plant more.  Other years, they curse the day they put the seed in the ground.  My parents raised cotton until I was a teenager.  I remember going to the field to help pick cotton, although I'm sure my contribution would not have been missed.  I did learn a lot, however, about dirt and desire and delusions and disappointments and dreams. Modern stories tend to romanticize cotton picking.  Obviously, the tellers of these stories never knew how one's back would threaten to come apart from the strain of bending over and pulling a heavy pick sack all day long.  Or, how the day would start out cool, with dew wet leaves that made the  cotton fiber stick to your hands, especially in the raw areas where the sharp cotton boles had taken the skin. Or,...

Our life is shorter than flowers                                                    Then shall we mourn ? NO, we shall dance   Plant gardens                                                             dress in colors And teach our children to make the world more beautiful because our life is shorter than flowers .   ~Toltec Fragment