Almost Summer Report

The snake (Northern water snake) in the greenhouse has found love. (Note the sweetly entwined tails.)

The goslings by the river are flourishing -- pre-teens by now and probably driving their watchful parents crazy.

And swimming dogs have drawn pretty spirals though the water meal - the tiny weed blanketing our pond.

The corn and beans in the garden are up; rhododendron and irises fading, roses coming on strong. The days are long -- but not long enough. I'm off.

A Peaceful State of Mind

There could be no more perfect place to hold a writers' retreat than Lake Logan.

As in the Navaho prayer -"Beauty before me; Beauty behind me; Beauty above me; Beauty below me; Beauty all around me," the surroundings wrapped us in Nature's peaceful splendor.

Mountains, woods, sky, and water calmed crowded minds, emptying them of distraction, freeing us to create.

By the end of the weekend, I felt that my eyes, like the boathouse windows, were full of the serenity of the place.


Here are some more pictures

Lake Logan

Words fail me. Pictures will have to do till tomorrow.

Bathing Dogs

The first one is relatively easy -- I get Molly on a leash and into the bathtub before she quite knows what's happening. Note the look of reproach and betrayed trust. But after I scissor off a huge amount of thick undercoat -- (almost like shearing a sheep, Tammy) and shampoo her with an anti-itch soap, she has to admit she feels better.

William's easy -- light, portable - he gets his bath in the kitchen sink, a nice relief from bending over the bathtub. He is always resigned to his fate (No Free Will-yum , we call him on these occasions) and he feels sorry for himself for quite a while after the ordeal is over.

Then Bear. She's a big, heavy girl and she Does Not Want to be bathed. In fact, she wants to go out --Right Now. Ignoring her protests, I leash her, drag her to the bathroom, and wrestle her considerable bulk into the tub. She tries to climb out but I am firm. The entire bath is conducted with one hand pushing her back into the tub while the other soaps and rinses.

When at last she's done, so am I. Soaked from head to toe, I go to my closet for dry clothes.

Jack and Maggie and Dan will have to wait for another day.

(No post tomorrow -- I'm off to teach at a Women's Writing Retreat -- back Sunday.)

Summer of '74

Our summer of '74 is the inspiration for Elizabeth's summer of '84 in Old Wounds. We lived in the barn while John, with the help of various friends and relatives, built our house on a bull-dozed site in what had been part pasture, part tobacco field We had just three months in which to get the house dried in before returning to Tampa for one last year of teaching.

John built a shed on to the barn and a picnic table for our meals. This is Ethan, our older boy at not quite three. Like Laurie in Old Wounds, he had a fenced off corner of the barn with a rug and a bed and lots of books and toys.

My 'kitchen' in the barn was a table with a Coleman stove, a cooler, and lots of cardboard boxes of provisions. Dishes were done outside with water from the branch that had been heated on the stove. Baths were in the branch (very cold) for the brave or in a zinc wash tub in the barn with heated water for the less brave. There was an outhouse a little way up the hill and a second barn where our friends and relatives camped out. Once a week we went to town for groceries and to the laundromat. Maybe once a month we would go into Asheville and marvel at the big city.

It was an amazingly pleasant way to live -- getting up and going to bed with the sun, preparing every meal (and they were really quite good) a little victory, learning that one can get quite clean with only a little heated water, enjoying the nightly show of the lightning bugs rising out of the grass.

Thirty four years ago -- ay, law!

A Scene from SIGNS IN THE BLOOD

"They were standing by a waist-high wall bordering the driveway. Soft gray thymes and golden yellow sedums cascaded over its flat top, while above it spiky clumps of purple irises and cushions of deep pink dianthus bloomed. Elizabeth absently pulled out a few encroaching weeds while Hawkins moved forward." (Signs in the Blood p. 52)

This is the place I was writing about. You can't see the dianthus or the thyme in this picture but the weeds are there. In the book, Ben and Cletus built the wall but in Real Life it was my son and our friend (and my son's rock wall mentor) Doc Adams. (Who is, of course , also a character in the Little Sylvie story and in Old Wounds. Oh, dear, how complicated.)

"Behind the blue bench her most recently acquired rhododendron -- a 'Gomer Waterer' -- was thick with blooms. The creamy blossoms were tinged with gold and pink -- just like a sunrise -- and just like the catalogue promised." (Signs in the Blood. p.53)

The bench is a Lutyens-style bench made by my husband and the rhododendron is, indeed, a 'Gomer Waterer.' Readers have asked about the blue bench -- we actually have several scattered around the farm, but this is the only fancy one and this is the one I had in mind for Elizabeth and Phillip to sit on.

Write what you know, they say. It seemed obvious to use our farm as the model for Elizabeth's (with some strategic changes.) Makes it a lot easier too. When I invent a place -- like Mullmore or Phillip's house in Weaverville, I usually go on line and find a picture that fits my idea -- even a floor plan, in the case of Phillip's house. I really need to be able to visualize the setting my characters are moving around in.

I wonder . . . could I claim those plants I bought yesterday as a deduction? Hmmm . . . Maybe if Elizabeth does some landscaping. . .

The Big Day

For those who asked about my big day and my plans to celebrate, let me say it's not been so much big as full. After sunrise and feeding the calfie, I loaded up the trash and recycling and set out. First to the library to find out if I could do a slide show to accompany my talk on the 31st. (The answer is yes, if the equipment and I are compatible.)

Then in to Penland's in nearby Marshall (aha! that's where the name Marshall County comes from) where I signed a stack of copies of The Book. Barbara Penland has a wonderful collection of books about the region; well worth perusing if you're in the area.

Next a visit to my friend Eileen, who is in a nursing home, to give her a copy of the new book. Eileen, an army nurse during WWII, is as sharp mentally as ever, but her body is giving out, making the nursing home a necessity. (It's been my visits to Eileen that have provided some of the details for the nursing home scenes in the new book.)

And then a visit to Paul, in another nursing home. Since Grace's death, he's not done well, sliding into senile dementia. He seems to be well-cared for but it's sad to see him struggling to make sense of who I am and why I'm there.

On in to North Asheville to Accent on Books -- a friendly neighborhood bookstore and more stacks of books to sign. (It is still a thrill to see all those books with my name on them!)

And across the street there was a parking lot plant sale that had me filling the back of the jeep with nandina and golden arborvitae and yew and Dwarf Alberta spruce and impatiens -- there's always room for more impatiens. Finally, a stop at the grocery store and back home again -- just in time to to feed the dogs and the calfie.

And that's my Big Day!

A while back, Bantam Dell had me record a pod cast and told me not to post the link till today. So
here it is. It's a story I've told before, for which I apologize, but it was suggested that I do it one more time.

Is the Medium the Message?

Doesn't that sky look like God is about to speak?

While we're waiting, let's go look at some flowers. Maybe they are the message.

(Many, many thanks to all of you who've pre-ordered or made plans to pick up a copy of In a Dark Season. It's out tomorrow!

The Hoe-er's Lessons

When we moved to the mountains and grew our first garden, it was large enough that we couldn't afford the straw mulch we had used in our smaller Florida garden. So we were faced with hoeing to keep the weeds down. One day I was visiting with Louise (about whom I wrote in "Mountain Mentors") and saw that she was scraping her hoe through what appeared to be a weedless garden. She stopped work to grin at me.

"I like to keep after them weeds, don't you?" It was a rhetorical question as I would eventually learn. But I was young and foolish.

"Oh, I like to wait till the weeds are bigger -- makes it seem like I'm accomplishing something." As I said, I was young and foolish. And the error of my ways was made manifest the first time I spent hours chopping down and pulling up the fast-growing weed called devil-in-the-garden. Now I run a hoe through the garden at the first sign of little green specks. It takes almost no time and is a lot easier on the back than battling the full-grown weeds. Thus endeth the first lesson.

Now, since hoeing was obviously going to be a way of life -- there was not only the garden but a couple of acres of tobacco that would require attention -- we went and bought some nice new hoes. They were big stout hoes, with big wide blades (intended, we know now, for mixing concrete.) When we took our new purchases down the hill to help Clifford and Louise with their 'baccer, Clifford looked long and hard at them then took hold of one and hefted it appraisingly.

"Well," he said at last, his bright blue eyes twinkling and the corners of his mouth firmly under control, "yeah, boy, you 'uns has got you some hoes."

And he and Louise, with their light little hoes, the blades worn by years of use to ovals about the size of goose eggs, proceeded to work our Florida butts into the ground. Up one row and down another, those two arthritic old folks covered at least twice the ground that we did with our heavy , cumbersome tools.

The picture below is the hoe I use now. Those other ones we save for concrete. Here endeth the second lesson.

And so, sistern and brethern, we learn two important things from hoeing.

Firstly - attack evil when it arises, for the longer you allow it to exist, the deeper its roots will grow and the harder your battle will be.

Secondly- the biggest tool doesn't always do the best job. But you probably knew that.

The Calfie

The calf I wrote about back on April 30 is doing great! Healthy and strong, he's a very eager eater.We feed him the recommended amount of milk replacer -- too much could scour him (give him diarrhea, also known as 'the scours'). But when he's sucked the bucket dry, he looks to us for more, trying to nurse a finger, a shirt tail, whatever.

He's very single-minded and, as I said, strong. The butting is instinctive behavior -- calves always butt their mama's udders. It seems like a signal to the cow to let her milk down.

John and I (and particularly John) have learned to keep our legs together when the calfie is looking for more.

Morning's Jewels

Diamond drops dangle --

Morning's fleeting jewelry,

Trembling on each leaf.

Cabachon diamonds

Atop deep purple velvet --

Garden royalty.

Dew-sequinned petals--

Crimson flutter of flowers -

Debutantes a-dance.

Lydy Goforth and The Drovers Road

While still a young lad I grew restless at home,
Weary of farming and eager to roam.
I followed my fancy, I followed my dream,
All down the high mountain and along the bright stream.

I crossed the broad river, its waters so cold.
The stand house was waiting with lamps shining gold.
The stand keeper’s daughter, so kind and so free,
Said, Lydy stay with me, my husband to be.

No, I must be roving, my fortune to find.
O, Lydy, stay with me, you know I've been kind.
The road lies before me, I must travel on

But I’ll be returning ere winter is gone.

These are a few verses from "The Ballad of Lydy Goforth," composed by yours truly as a part of the historical subplot to In a Dark Season (coming in just five days! Have I mentioned that already?) Set in 1859, Lydy's story deals with the Drovers' Road, which ran through our county and which I talked about over on my monthly Amazon blog.

(If someone can tell me, in simple language suited to the meanest intelligence, how to make this a hot link, I'd really appreciate it. What I've done in the past doesn't appear to be working.)

Oh my goodness, I think I've done it! Thanks to Roses and Lilacs!

The drawing of the hog drovers is probably pretty accurate -- but Lydy is much better looking, trust me.