At Last

Perfect joy!  That is what I felt when Andy brought me this, my first bouquet of spring, a few weeks ago.  Yes, I have a confession.  I am not a gardener.  Any plant I touch, even for a few seconds, turns black and withers in my hand.  Always has been, always will be this way.  Thankfully, I have a husband who is a plant savant.  He just has that special touch.

But, enough of that.  What gives me true happiness at this time of year is to see the returning of green and every other color that gives my whole outlook on life a boost.  I tire of grey and brown and dull, dreary skies as the days of February and March drag on.  I search for signs of spring on my daily walks.  First the small, tentative sprigs of early flowers....fighting to survive late frosts and beating winds  Daffodils struggling to raise their green shoots amid last autumn's leaves.  I bend down over them and, like a mother with a tottering toddler taking his first small steps, I whisper, "Come on sweetheart.  You can do this."  And the ground warms under my hands and I feel the response...."Yes, yes we can."

Spring makes me feel as if I can do almost anything..  I have to be careful not to overdo....too many climbs up my hill or along the road lead to backsets.  Aching legs and sore knees...well, I don't need to dwell on that.  As I rest after my daily walk, I sit on my porch with a wonderful view of Caney Mountain and all that heavenly land that lies, spread out before me, and breathe fresh, springtime air, saying to myself...At last, at long last, spring has arrived.

 

 

Wild Garlic

I am enjoying the past few cool mornings.  I lace up my boots and head down the road, relishing the cool breeze on my face as the sun rises over the hills in the east.  It gives me a chance to take an inventory of the new flowers and plants up here on the hill.   Nothing out of the ordinary.  But each year I am happy to see the progression of spring to summer.

Wild garlic is a new favorite of mine.  It is not a showy plant.  It doesn't have the pizzazz of the colorful flowers that herald the arrival of spring with vibrant yellow and blue and deep pink,  In fact, it is downright ugly if you want to be truthful about it. It is tall and gangly...kind of like a teenager's legs before their body grows to match them.  The brown nuggets that form the base are a deep purplish brown color.  The pink flowers that grow from the center are a dainty, shy kind of pink.  Not robust at all.

According to my Ozark wildflowers book the wild garlic "has strong antiseptic properties."  It goes on to say early settlers and Native Americans used the juice to treat wounds, burns, bee stings, and snakebites.  The list also includes using it for" fever, blood disorders, lung troubles, internal parasites. skin problems, hemorrhoids, earaches, rheumatism, and arthritis"  It was also a help for early explorers of the area.  When Marquette made his way from Green Bay to the present site of Chicago one of the food staples was wild garlic. 

Everyday I check to see how it is fairing.  Will it wilt in the hot, dry

 summer days to come?  Will it shrivel up and fade into the weeds sure to encroach upon it?   Or will it stand tall, there on the rocky roadside and eventually drop its brown seeds into soil.....resting until another spring brings it back to life. I like to think it will.  

Sort of a metaphor for life as we know it.  We may not be the most beautiful or showy....but even in our plainness we are strong....sure to endure no matter what. 

 

Waiting.....

The last several days have been teasers....cool for a few days, cloudy, windy....and then clear, sunny, almost too hot.  I go for my walk everyday.  I look for signs of spring.  Nothing much for a while...and then the daffodils, springing up in yards and fields.  Swaying in the breeze...lifting their heads to the blue sky.  Picking some from the hill in front of my house, I put them in my favorite vase on the windowsill.  The above picture is crocus that bloom down by the creek where Andy has planted them.  They are doing well, but only last a day.  

Spring here on the hill comes in spurts.  The sunshine in my eastern window at sunrise seems more intense.  The yellow beams move from day to day...marking the sun's movement from south to north. Hope for warmer weather and clearing skies always encourages me to look ahead....waiting, always waiting.

I hear turkey gobbling in the south field.  Birds are flitting from tree to tree....jumping down to peck for food among the greening grass.  Hope...always hope.  Hoping for warmer weather....milder winds...the smell of earth ready to be plowed and sown with this year's seed.

My heart says yes, but my mind says no.  And, yes, I know it tells the truth.  For it is too early to plant....too early to gather my thoughts and eager wishes for what is to come.  The weeks ahead will tell the story.  Snow in March?  Yes.  Buds on flowers and trees nipped by April frost...it happens too.

But these few first precious days of awakening life....I watch them hourly as if I were their mother.  Pleased with each movement...each tiny step of progress.  Feeling that all is not in vain.  

Spring will come.  Maybe not today...or tomorrow.  But it is on its way.

And this brings joy to my heart and a smile to my lips.  Even if I am still waiting.... 

 

At Last!

I don't know about you, but I have been in the dumps about the dry, colorless season we have been enduring for the last eternal weeks......no rain, very little color, high winds, hot, then cold, then hot again.

But then the rain came.  Gently, gently falling on the stiff, dead grass outside my window.  No rushing of water from the sky....just a steady, constant sheet of welcome rain.  We all had been looking forward to it....we knew it would happen soon.  But still, what a relief.

As I traveled today I was amazed at the bright shiny beauty I saw at every turn in the road.  Vistas of the hills clothed in orange and red, and yes....the perennial brown....dotted here and there with yellow and gold.  The color had been there before, but somehow the rain made each leaf and branch glow in the sunlight.

It makes such a difference in my attitude when I am surrounded with glowing autumn colors.  Fall will lead to winter.  The bare, dark limbs of oak and walnut and maple will move with the chilly wind.  Gray clouds will drift on the horizon...blocking out the light of the sun at dawn, noon and dusk.  

But somehow, the redemption of fall color and light makes that future seem at least bearable.  It's not that our winter here in the Ozarks is all dull and drab.  The sun will shine with a different light.  The air will be clear and fresh.  We do enjoy having a chance to walk in the brisk beauty of  a winter afternoon.

But just for today I gloried in the colors of this season.  A memory that will take me through the next months and encourage us all to look forward...to what our ever-changing world will bring us next.

 

No Smile Until December

When I was in my first year at Gainesville Elementary, sixth-grade teacher Susan Ault gave me some advice.  " Don't let them see you smile until December." she said with a straight face.  Of course, she was talking about how one might teach kids who sometimes take advantage of a teacher's lax discipline.  "Wow", I thought.  "That's really a good way to get your bluff in on the first day!"  I tried it, but actually wasn't too successful.  I mainly used my loudest "teacher voice" to quell any disturbance in my class.

Susan, who passed away a few days ago, was a wonderful friend and mentor.  But more than that, she was talented, resourceful, and endlessly creative.  She could look at a mess on the library table at the Historium, which yours truly had created, and smile.  Giving me a gentle pat on the shoulder, she'd say, "That's okay Jane.  You'll figure it out."  And usually I did...with the help of some of the other workers that day.

When we were moving all the books into the Historium before it opened, Susan and her husband John were endlessly optimistic.  The boxes were piled around the tables.  Jean Allen and I were busy, trying to make order out of mayhem.  Keeping track of so many family histories and trying to decide where to file and arrange information so it would be usable seemed a daunting task.  Susan was right there with us through it all.  John gave his advice and then went off to load more stuff off the truck and in the back door.  What a job!  It took awhile, but finally we were able to have some semblance of a library when we opened.

In the short while since I learned of her passing, I've been trying to sum up Susan's secret charm and can-do attitude.  She was not a quitter.  If the mud got deeper, if the papers got higher, if the kids got louder...she would wade in and get it done.  No smiles until December.  No resting until you had a solution.  No short cuts.  No whining.

But we also know the gentle, wonderful friend she was to all of us.  So many remember her smile, her kind words, her unceasing efforts to make Ozark County a place where people felt at home.  It was her place.  She was born and raised here.  And there was no more fitting person to lead us to do our best...whether we were child or adult.  Always that quiet assurance that all would be well.

Thank you Susan.  God give you rest now.  You will always be remembered as one of the best...in anything you chose to do.   

 

Homesick

I am a come-here from Illinois. Hogs and corn and other crops are part of my DNA.  No. I was not raised on a farm. But most of my kin were....and I am proud to claim them.

So then why do I yearn to travel those narrow country blacktop roads that are straight as a string...where corn and soybeans extend in every direction, where you can feel the setting sun beating down on you as you travel west, trying to catch that last glimmer of daylight before you get home?

I look at this picture and I can smell Illinois summer. That hard to identify sweet growing smell of rich soil and dark earth, so fertile that it begs to be turned and plowed and planted. 

Don't get me wrong. I love the Ozarks. I have lived here longer than I ever lived in Illinois. It would take a lot of persuading to make me move from my hilltop home.

Maybe it is a kind of primal genetic urge you feel as you grow old. Maybe it's that homing instinct that brings salmon leaping upstream to lay their eggs in the spring. Maybe it's that call to butterflies and swallow and geese as they make their way north when Nature bids them.

Whatever it is, I feel it especially during this time of year.  I can close my eyes and feel the air as it surrounds me...right then, I'm home. Comfort in memories. Ready to move on.

Remembering My Friend

I should have written this tribute a few weeks ago.  But, somehow, whenever I began, my tears started to flow.  I could not see the screen.  I would give up, but knew I needed to write something.

Jean Allen was one of my first friends in Gainesville.  I knew about her a while before I moved to Gainesville.  I had been teaching at Winona in Shannon County.  We made the decision to move when Nina was about two.  We found a place to buy in Ozark County and prepared to relocate.  Before I left, I had an appointment with my hairdresser in Winona.  I told her of our plans.  She stepped back and said, in a half-joking voice..."Well, those people stole our Jeannie away from us!  Never will forgive that Allen guy who took her with him.!"  She mentioned that I might find the much loved girl working at the local lumberyard, right downtown in that distant place called Gainesville.  

Jeannie was a quiet person.  She spoke softly.  She did not want to call attention to herself.  I am sure  she is probably looking over my shoulder this minute as I write, narrowing those eyes and making a playful grimace as she watches me type.

Jean was my go-to confident.  We shared so many wonderful times, there in the back of the flower shop.  She would stop working on the arrangement she was making, pull up a stool, and I would unburden myself to her.  She would agree, or disagree with me.  We would share various solutions, or lament the fact that there was no solution.  I don't know whether I ever really thanked her for listening to me....but she didn't fail to welcome me back to visit again.

A worker in the background.  Hardly ever noticed she was there.  But, oh boy, we missed her when she went on vacation.  Fishing in Canada, fishing up at the lake.  Things tended to go undone...waiting for her to return.

We were in Sunday School together for years.  First in the all women's class, then in the older adult class, Bible Study, evening Bible Study.  I still remember Jean and I agreeing that the unit about the Book of  Revelation made us more confused than we were to begin with.  But we smiled and agreed that whatever the Lord had in mind....we wouldn't argue with His plan for us.  

Strong in her faith.  That was Jean. We shared so much that helped each of us along our path.

The other day I watched a church member carrying the candles from our church altar to the kitchen.  They had run out of oil.  When Jean was in charge...they never failed to be filled.  

Flowers that she always took care of, taking on committee  duties both in the community and elsewhere, volunteering at The Center, the Historium, .... the list goes on and on. 

 The last time I talked to her...about two weeks before she passed away, I told her about visiting the graveyard at Falling Spring in Shannon County.  I remarked that I had seen the stone with Cap Brawley's name on it.  She shared with me several years ago that she had helped with research for the cemetery where some of her kin are buried.  Brawley was her maiden name.  

I am certain that when she entered Heaven, everyone shouted...."Thank you Lord.  At last Jeannie is here.  She'll fit right in"....An angel.  A helper.  My friend.  Rest in Peace sweet Jeannie.  Until we meet again.