Premio Dardos

Thanks to Bo Parker over at Cobbledstones who passed on this award for “recognition of cultural, ethical, literary, and personal values transmitted in the form of creative and original writing. These stamps were created with the intention of promoting fraternization between bloggers, a way of showing affection and gratitude for work that adds value to the Web."

Oh my goodness. And here I just thought I was writing about chickens and old pictures and books and dogs and stuff -- and taking pictures kind of as if you were walking alongside me and I was saying, 'Oh! Look at that!"

But I'm glad Bo enjoys my blog and my pictures and I'll pass this along to five more bloggers I enjoy.



Laurey Bikes The adventures of Laurey, a popular Asheville chef and caterer, riding her bike cross-country in company with other intrepid women to raise money to aid in the fight against ovarian cancer. I don't know Laurey, though I've enjoyed her food on several occasions and read and enjoyed her culinary memoir Elsie's Biscuits, but I'm vicariously following her adventure.

My Carolina Kitchen -- despite the name, it's quite a lot about food in France -- yum.

Reader Wil -- lovely pictures from Amsterdam and beyond. And Reader Wil's personal story is fascinating.

Urban Amish -- more quilt talk from a quilter and fabric designer

Willow Manor -- an immensely popular and beautiful blog. Everyone would like to go have tea with Willow!



These bloggers are invited to copy the image to their own blogs and pass it on to others. Or not -- as they choose. They may be like me, running out of blogs they follow and running out of time to follow new ones.

Signing off from Bowling Green . . .

Sunrise and Morning Light

A hurried post of some pictures from yesterday -- I'm off to Bowling Green to participate in a colloquium at Western Kentucky U. This will be a new experience for me.

I have finished expunging Myrna Louise and her subplot from the Miss Birdie book and, fond though I was of Myrna Lou, dang it, my editor was completely right -- the book is much stronger now. I wrote in more Birdie-specific material and am doing my final re-read -- 174 pages to go before sending the book off to Herself on or before the first.

Herself, of course, may want more changes. But, at this moment, battered and bruised and creeping near the finish line of this particular lap, I'm happy with the book.

Myrna Louise isn't gone forever --I hope she'll be back in a short story or a book of her own.

Assuming my hotel in Bowling Green has WiFi, I'll let you all know how things are going.

What About the Cats?

In my post for the 27th, I revealed that I had promised a reader never to kill a dog in my books. In the comments, Victoria in California was quick to ask that I extend the same courtesy to cats.

It's a kind of unspoken rule among writers of cozies that you mustn't kill a cat -- or a dog or a child or anything cute and fluffy or any likable person.

But I don't write cozies -- I write psychological suspense. Sometimes bad things happen to nice people. . . or their animals. I'm not just trying to set up an interesting puzzle to be solved with some snappy repartee and zany hi jinks along the way --all done with a minimum of emotional involvement. No, I'm trying to make my characters real to my readers -- real people in real (well, except for the occasional touch of paranormal) situations where there is always some risk.
I'm trying to engage my readers' emotions . . . to move them to laughter . . . and sometimes to tears.

By making dogs, especially Elizabeth's dogs, immune to danger, I've lost a potential plot twist. I don't want to tie my hands any tighter by making more promises (next, the squirrel lobby will be pleading for an amnesty. And I like squirrels too; heck, I even like possums.)

I'm also very fond of cats. Ask Eddie and Miss Susie Hutchins. Even so, I've resisted, so far, giving Elizabeth one (in spite of Tammy of Fairlight Farm's encouragement that I do so.) Cats tend to take over mysteries, if given a chance.

In one of my books, there is a reference to a cat (or maybe two, I don't remember) that was killed in the past by one of the characters. Not, notice, a cat that we ever got to know. But I needed that reference to show the nature of a particular character. Remember, adult psychotic types often began by abusing animals when they were children.

I still can't see myself writing scenes of animal abuse. Indirect reference, though -- that could happen. Very indirect.

And, as always, I wonder why I (along with many readers) am more squeamish about the death of fictional animals (fluffy animals, it goes without saying) than the death of fictional people.

Farm Notes

Marigold, the Jersey heifer, is an aunt! Karen emailed from Yellow Branch to say that Silverbell, Marigold's half-sister (same mother, different AI sires) gave birth to Forsythia (seen above at about four hours old) back on Wednesday.

Another sign of Spring --unknown bugs appear --this one on my kitchen window sill. Time to think about putting the window screens back in. (Does anyone know what this creature is? I think he's rather elegant.)

Kate the donkey with her herd. Justin told me that the other day there were six wild turkeys in the field with the cows -- three toms strutting and showing off for three hens -- and Kate took exception to their carrying on and ran them off. ("Get out of here, you turkeys;" one imagines her braying, "this here's cow country!")

And yet another sign of warmer weather! The first snake is out relaxing by the fishpool! (I feel like someone in a Charles Addams cartoon saying that.)

Happy Saturday!

A Happy Woman

Today I received a list of questions from a person doing an article/promotion piece on some of the authors presenting at the upcoming Blue Ridge Book and Author Showcase. A couple of the questions really set me thinking.

1. What is one interesting tidbit about you that few people know?

2. If you weren't a writer, and could be anything you wanted to be, what would it be?


3. If you could have lived in a different time period, what would it be? Why?


4. What is the one subject that you would never write about? Why?


5. What is the most imaginative scene you have ever written?

I've been given that first question before and the way I answered it previously was to tell how I once broke up a dogfight using an unorthodox technique learned from reading Robertson Davies' The Rebel Angels. This time my answer was that in 1969 my husband and I spent three glorious months riding a motorcycle around Europe.



It was the second question that stopped me cold. I thought about it a bit and decided to go on and answer the rest then return to formulate an answer.



Question three, what other time period would I like to live in, is one I've thought about a lot. There are lots of times and places that I would love to visit but ONLY if I were at the top of the food chain, so to speak. Elizabethan England, for example, might not be so bad if you were wealthy -- unless, of course you were a Roman Catholic . . . or a woman . . .or a Jew.


And even if you were wealthy, the hygiene, the medicine (or lack of it),the callous disregard for animal and human suffering (for example, bear-baiting, hanging, drawing and quartering for execution). . . no, I think I'll stay put in our times, flawed though they may be.


Number four, the subject I would never write about is cruelty to animals or the death ( other than old age) of a dog. Okay, I have killed a cat and a squirrel or two in my books -- but always quickly and without suffering.

Number five I had to think about. I'm not sure about the most imaginative scene I've ever written -- in a way, that's more for a reader to say than me. But off the top of my head, and since I was eager to get back to question two, I chose the scene with Elizabeth in the Melungeon cabin toward the end of In a Dark Season.

And then I went back to the second question, trying on, in my mind, other enticing directions my life might take if I could be anything I wanted to be . . . and I realized that there is nothing I'd prefer to the life I already have -- with or without the writing.

So I answered that I'd like to be a very wealthy gardener. I don't want to live anywhere else but money for more plants and more help in the garden would be nice.

Even without it, I'm a happy woman.

But you probably knew that.

If I Were Going and Singing Wheels

There is a striking omission in my recent post listing 25 books that influenced my life and my writing. How could I have forgotten If I Were Going and Singing Wheels?

If I Were Going was my third grade 'reader' -- a wonderful horizon expander telling of life in Norway, Lapland, Brittany, Spain, North Africa . . . heady stuff for an eight-year old who could only remember traveling to Troy, Alabama.

I had never imagined that there was such variety in the world, in scenery and in people and their various ways of life. And this continues to fascinate me, even though my travel is mainly on the Internet.

The book's visit to England and its descriptions of English villages, thatched roofs, and country lanes is probably the catalyst for my life-long Anglophilia.

Along with the multiplication table, Singing Wheels was the focus of the fourth grade course of study. This textbook told of the pioneer experience in America, with stagecoaches and oxen and bee trees and spinning and all the daily minutiae of frontier life in the early 1800s.

The book is a real treasure trove of how things were made back then (I'm pretty sure I could follow the instructions for candle-making and end up with candles), of wild animals and their tracks, everyday items in common use, types of trees, Indian arrowheads . . . all illustrated in nice little line drawings.

I think I can trace my first interest in the back-to-the-land life style to this book. ( I certainly didn't grow up on a farm or have relatives with farms to spark my interest. My grandfathers had left their farming/dairying days far behind and my parents were happy that it should stay that way.)

And I can thank the chapter about the spelling bee for helping me always to remember that there's a rat in separate.

(I hadn't realized till just now, but a substantial portion of Singing Wheels was taken from Laura Ingalls Wilder's Farmer Boy and Little House in the Big Woods -- books that I never read till I was an adult.)

I have no idea how long these books remained in the curriculum. Do any of you remember them?

A Morning Stroll

Spring is hurtling along -- every day brings something new and wonderful.

My stroll to the chicken house yesterday morning yielded a nice haul of eggs and a little web album of the latest Spring arrivals -- Mother Nature's fashion show.

Note: Please ignore that empty Spinning Wheels post some of you received. I hit the wrong button. The post that goes before this one is Marigold the Jersey Heifer. Spinning Wheels will happen tomorrow, if I don't foul things up again. ~ V

Marigold the Jersey Heifer

We took a long drive yesterday to visit a hemi-demi-semi cousin of mine (her mother was the sister of my father's sister's husband) in Graham County at the far western end of the state.














Karen and her husband Bruce are some of 'them that's doing,' as The Mother Earth News used to refer to involved back-to-the-landers. They have a small herd of lovely doe-eyed Jersey cows and Bruce turns out some of the best cheese I ever tasted.










Karen makes beautiful pottery and together they are Yellow Branch Pottery and Cheese -- their website tells the story more fully.














I'd been wanting to go over to Yellow Branch for years and years -- but it's about a three hour drive and somehow, it just never happened. Karen and I would exchange Christmas cards and lament that we were both too busy in our respective worlds. I would see Yellow Branch cheese for sale in fancy stores or on the menu at fancy restaurants and feel a little surge of pride -- 'That's from my hemi-demi-semi-cousin's farm!' I would say to anyone around.


But what finally got us to make that long-postponed visit was a Jersey heifer named Marigold.

We're buying her from Bruce and Karen with the intention of making her into a milk cow so that, as in past years, we'll have our own milk, butter, yoghurt, cream, (clotted cream, too, Karen B.!), soft cheese and maybe, maybe someday, hard cheese too.

Justin and Claui are the reason -- they say they'll take on the milking. I'll pull my electric churn out of storage and try to remember what I once knew about dealing with great quantities of milk. Probably there will be a pig or two to raise on the excess. In short, back to the small farm economy we practiced for years.

This is all a year or so in the future. Marigold is too young to breed yet. But as we sat down last night to a meal of Justin's turkey vegetable soup, John's bread, and cheese (including one with flecks of basil) from Yellow Branch, we all felt that the future couldn't come soon enough.

Scene Around

Miss Susie Hutchins greets the dawn.

John gives the roof of the chicken tractor a coat of shiny green to match
the Spring. The dogs are not impressed

Blossoming trees (Bradford pears?) at the school where I teach on Wednesday evenings.

The weeping cherry down at the pond is blooming, enticing me to come sit beneath it . . .

But I am in the final throes of rewriting Miss Birdie and am stuck indoors for most of the time.
If nothing don't happen . . . well, I do hope to be done by the end of this month
. . . if nothing don't happen.

Sisterhood

Carol, over at The Writers Porch has tapped my blog with the Sisterhood Award which I'm passing on to five blogging sistahs who expand and enrich my world:





Marta, the gardener at Marta McDowell, teaches, writes, gardens, and takes great pictures too. This is one of her own garden.












Byron, The Village Witch, gives a lively insight into traditional Appalachian witchery as well as the pagan/earth religion/Wiccan community. Alas, no pictures on her blog which is put up through The Asheville Citizen-Times.














Pepper at the Quilt Studio reminds me that I have a mass of fabric, waiting to be made into all sorts of wonderful quilts . . . someday.

















Susan at Rambling Thoughts and Thoughtful Ramblings is a writer, would-be gardener, and blossoming entrepreneur with her pet-sitting business.












Victoria at Brushstrokes shares paintings, photos, and thoughts from her world somewhere on a mountain in California.









An interesting and varied posse . . . I invite them each to pass the award (a right-click will do it) on to 5 more Blogging Sisters with links to their blogs, notifying them by e-mail or by leaving a comment on their blogs...

Chanson Innocent

Sunrise, and Spring is here!

Yesterday was the Vernal Equinox . . . daffodils grew yellower still . . .

A few things were planted . . .

And John installed the new tuteurs (made for my birthday) in the box garden.

Spring is always a time of such infinite promise and ambition and joy . . . a time to celebrate with e.e. cummmings' s goat-footed balloon man . . .

in Just-

spring when the world is mud-
luscious the little
lame balloonman

whistles far and wee
and eddieandbill come

running from marbles and
piracies and it's
spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful

the queer
old balloonman whistles
far and wee

and bettyandisbel come dancing
from hop-scotch and jump-rope and

it's
spring

and
the
goat-footed

balloonman whistles
far
and
wee