Faith, Folklore, and Friends

This downy woodpecker became rather riled when the brown thrasher tried to run him away from the suet.  The brown thrasher, much bigger, seemed annoyed that the woodpecker tried to defend his territory.  The thrasher won, eventually driving the woodpecker away, but not before a glorious show of feathers. Both are regular visitors to the bird feeders, but this is the first time I have seen a confrontation. Sorry about the poor quality of the image, but it was taken through a window, and the birds were moving fast!

More than six years ago, before my baby boy married his bride, Rachel, she gifted me with a pot of amaryllis  at Christmas.  Amaryllis bulbs are easily forced to bloom during the holidays.  Because I am prone to kill plants in pots, after we had enjoyed the amaryllis blossoms, I put it in a flower bed outside, and forgot about it.  Apparently, it thrives on neglect. I planted some comfrey for its medicinal qualities, and it has spread over the area where the amaryllis is planted.  This spring, the narrow strap-like leaves pushed through the comfrey, and then produced these blooms. It brightens up the back yard like fairies in red dresses, and the bees love it.  Can you see the pollen? From that single bulb, I counted seventeen blooms this years. (Yes, I count flowers.  Yes, I do have a life.)  The bulbs probably need to be separated, but I hesitate to touch them while they are doing so well.  I'll think about it next ye...

Our small city of Florence has some amazing restaurants downtown.  My two cohorts  and I have eaten at them all, checking most of them out as soon as they open for business.  We have had a few less- than- perfect experiences, but most have been very satisfying.  We tried City Hardware out soon after it opened in a lovely old building on Court Street, and it quickly became a favorite.  Hub and I had lunch there yesterday. We started off with some bread and garlic butter.  I love it when bread is served while you are waiting for your food, especially when the bread is this good and your stomach is growling like a bear. I had chicken with andouille sauce, mashed potatoes with caramelized onions, roasted Brussels sprouts, with some Parmesan grits on the side. Yummy. I have never had Brussels sprouts this good.  Hub, who has long proclaimed he hates them, ate at least half of mine. For both of us, the bill was $17.38 ...

I took a day to search for God, and found Him not;   but as I trod, by rocky ledge, through woods untamed, Just where one scarlet lily flamed, I saw His footprint in the sod. ~William Bliss Carman

Y'all know it doesn't take much to get me excited, and I was just tickled pink when I saw this. These vines are loaded with teensy weensy little orbs that will grow into plump, juicy muscadines. Last year, we spent quality time with our neighbors eating muscadines right off the vine.  Hopefully, we can do the same this year in October.  Of course, we will have to watch for little foxes and other creatures that like them as well as we do. The tomatoes are still small, but they are looking good! Hub waters them faithfully when it doesn't rain. That little squash is about an inch long, but squash grows quickly and we will be eating them in a few days.  There is about a hundred others about an inch long.  It always happens like that; there is just a few days between the time we are yearning for squash and the time we are tired of squash. I am loving this beautiful spring we have been gifted with! The world's favorite season is the spring....

Blessed are you when people insult you,   persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad,  because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.                               ~Matthew 5:11-12

What if.... Elvis didn't really die that sad August day so long ago? Would he still look handsome? Would he still be selling out giant arenas? Would he dye his hair and struggle with his weight? Would he have shown up Wednesday for music in Wilson Park? We have to stop and be humble enough to understand that there is something called mystery. ~Paulo Coelho

The middle of May come never come soon enough for us.  First, and most important, it marked the end of the school year, and the beginning of freedom.  It also meant the strawberries were ripe. There was  a strawberry farm just a few miles from where we lived, with acres and acres of strawberries.  The owners, having about a two-week window to harvest all the beautiful strawberries, hired everyone who was willing to help pick them, including ratty-haired little younguns. We were paid five cents a quart, and on a good day, we could make two dollars. We were free and needed cash, so we were excited to go and start picking. The excitement lasted until after lunch time.  Having coins in our pocket, we went to a nearby country store for lunch.  We would get RC Colas, not because they were better but because they were bigger. We could buy a bologna sandwich (bologna was sold by the slice; you could get a thick one if you were willing to pay) and som...

Thankfully, we live in a world where fresh produce can be obtained all winter, but it wasn't always so.  My mom talked about how tired her family grew of canned vegetables with nothing fresh to eat.  Her family loved the first green vegetables of spring. She always planted early lettuce and onions for spring salads that we called wilted   lettuce .  It wasn't really spring until we had one.   We had wilted lettuce Tuesday for lunch.  Just in case you have forgotten how, this is the way I make mine. Bacon.  This just won't work without bacon.  The amount I use varies with how much I have in the refrigerator.  I usually use more than this, but I was in no mood to go to the grocery store Tuesday morning. Chop it up fine, then put in a skillet and cook it slow and low until it is crisp and there is a good amount of bacon fat. This is deer tongue lettuce from our garden.  We usually plant black-seeded Simpson lettuce, b...

Storytelling is the oldest form of record keeping.  Most of what we know of ancient history is from oral telling of facts and events, with each generation passing them on to the next. Stories are the most important inheritance we have to pass on.  ~ Donald Davis I cannot remember a time when my Daddy wasn't telling stories. He told them while we worked, at the supper table, before bedtime.  In the summer, when the heat from the tin roof and wood cook stove drove us out of the house, we sat on the porch with a gnat-smoke in a metal half-bushel tub and Daddy told stories: Stories about hard times, violent deaths of people we didn't know but had allegedly shared DNA, war stories, and mule stories. They included tales about his siblings, which amazed me because his subjects were now elderly people with children of their own, and it was so hard to imagine my sweet aunts jumping fences while running from snakes. Daddy told stories of favorite milk cows, of coon dogs,...

Beginning in the  early seventies, country comedian Jerry Clower made us all laugh with his tales from his hometown in rural Mississippi. I was honored to meet him in the eighties when he came to UNA to perform to a packed house.  While working as a fertilizer salesman, Mr. Clower became known for his funny stories with which he entertained potential buyers.  The right person heard him and offered him a record contract, and Mr. Clower stopped selling literal fertilizer for a living. Jimmy Neil Smith, a journalism teacher in the tiny town of Jonesborough, Tennessee, was listening to his car radio one day and heard Mr. Clower tell about hunting in Mississippi (knock 'em out, John).  Mr. Smith loved storytelling, and wondered if the city of Jonesborough might start a storytelling festival.  In 1973, on a sparkling October day, the first National Storytelling Festival was held. That October weekend birthed the renaissance of storytelling, and more than forty...

Last week was one of those when there is so much to do, one can't possibly do it all. Seems like everyone wanted to play in May. Some of the activities going on were Arts Alive, a rodeo, an author fair at the library, a flea market, Relay for Life, and several other things, including storytelling. The University of North Alabama Front Porch Storytelling Festival was what I had been waiting on, what I had been looking forward to the most.  There were workshops all day Wednesday, tellers at different libraries and churches on Thursday, and then the festival was Friday and Saturday. I loved every minute of it. Dr. Bill Foster was instrumental in starting this festival four years ago.  Friday morning, his daughter, Melissa, paid tribute to him as she opened the festival,  serving as Master of Ceremonies.  I think Dr. Foster was smiling down on all of us. All the storytellers are unique and good at what they do.  UNA's own, songwriter Walt Aldridge, shared...