March 2008 A Little Time Off

After blogging every day (nearly) for a year, I'm giving myself a little time off. Even while I'm recharging, have no doubt I won't be able to resist lurking around your blogs, saying hello now and then.

Like Spring, I'll be here again soon, fresh and renewed :)

Recalling Growing Up in Fisk, Texas

Recalling Growing up in Fisk, Texas

I spent all yesterday afternoon and into the evening with my dear friend Nelda. I had asked her if she would tell me about her growing up in a small farming community during the 40s and 50s. Her mother and daddy owned the country store in Fisk for more than twenty years. Sadly, family owned country stores that served the needs of rural communities are now mostly a thing of the nostalgic past.

I'll be working on an article about the memories she shared with me, but in the meantime here is a memento of that afternoon -- some treasured contents of an old shoe box.

Old Garden

Old Garden

This is my entry this week's Two Things Challenge for "Old / New." Not a great, or even good, piece of photography. However, I wanted to document how my neglected vegetable garden plot looked in its "old" (aka "before") state and there wasn't much I could do to make it look good.

(Yes, those are weeds, and some are as tall as me.)

This is what I'll be doing each afternoon for the next couple of weeks: Clearing out those weeds, recovering lost gloves, spades, and perhaps even my old wheelbarrow. Building new raised beds. Laying down hay, re-routing soaker hoses, and heaping on mulch. And I'll be dreaming.

I'll be dreaming of the sound of tapping new seed packets. Dreaming of new little lime green sprouts in April. Dreaming of the humid smell after a watering in June's hot summer days. Dreaming of tomatoes outgrowing their cages, zucchini outgrowing its beds, and the risk of losing gloves and spades in August's fecundity.

Hard to imagine that now. But that's the beauty of a garden, even an old neglected garden. The dream is always new.