Tag Archives: read

Jul26

How My Garden Grows These Days

Posted on by
Standard

For this growing season all my gardening is container gardening, and this has been Dean and I’s exclusive type of gardening for the past three growing seasons. July’s squelching heat has me watering my porch herbs every other day. Despite (or because of) the hot summer, the pineapple sage is humongous. I will repot this plant after the weather cools a bit. The plants suffer enough without going through transplant shock during this hot season. Snippets of herbs are added to my summer dishes and iced teas which bring refreshment to the taste buds.

From time to time, I get a request for more information about gardening. I had a marketing person from Refin real estate company ask for my input on patio gardens. Here is the Rent.com article written, some of the content are some tips I shared. Take a few minutes to read this article: https://www.rent.com/blog/balcony-herb-garden/. Personally, I would like to try again some lettuce greens and microgreens in some pots. It is too hot to sow seeds now, maybe early September. Definitely, I can try in next year’s growing season.

Jan19

The Mid-January Landscape

Posted on by
Standard
The Mid-January Landscape

“In winter … temporarily abandoned by my suddenly frigid lover, the garden.” ~ Margaret Roach 

I love my perennials, herbs, and flowers during the warm growing season. The dread of the winter months in Missouri has lessened as I have learned to love staying indoors, too. Time slows down, and I slow down to read and write. This week included a few afternoons to do just that. Besides, some of my green friends come indoors with me for four or five months. My poem “The Neighbor’s Tree” is started on Thursday afternoon while sipping on a cup of Earl Grey tea, watching the birds at the feeders, and gazing at the colorful sunset. I finished the poem when we gathered in Kansas City with family for another indoor weekend. Our granddaughters made valentines for Papa and me. The children did carpet sledding in the living room rather than snow sledding as single-digit temps started our days this weekend and will continue this coming week. A message from the 8-year-old was left in the bedroom we stayed in, “remember do good things”. Out of the mouths of babes. The mid-January landscape dressed in glistening snow was a beautiful sight during our travel eastward to home this afternoon.

The Neighbor’s Tree
The neighbor’s tree this wintry late afternoon
reaches upward to the gray-blue sky, the sun
spotlights its rough-barked limbs outlined in white.
The squirrels scurry back and forth
on a quest for more seeds and nuts
as the light creeps into the evening.
Pinks and purples fill the once blue sky
as shadows dissipate, dimness surrounds,
dusk gently blankets the snowy hillside.
The obscurity, ambiguity, then a glowing light,
the sun’s rays concentrate as a flashlight, 
a January twilight is on the horizon.
Then night takes over minute after minute
with subdued moments leading to a hush,
the songbirds utter quiet rest in their nests.
The neighbor’s tree this late evening
is a perch for this night’s chatty barred owl,
“Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you all?”
Anna Marie Gall - January 18, 2025

“Remember do good things.” ~ Elise Gall

“One kind word can warm three winter months.” ~ Japanese Proverb

Feb17

A Reading, Writing, And Tea Affair

Posted on by
Standard
A Reading, Writing, And Tea Affair

Reading, writing, and tea. This love triangle only intensifies with the snowstorms. This latest winter storm included thundersnow, so the St. Louis area had 3 – 6 inches of the frozen precipitation depending on how much thunder a person heard. St. Charles had about 5 inches. Very cold air came with this snow, so indoor activities only for me this weekend. Housecleaning is not on the agenda. Reading, writing, tea, and then daydreaming about the upcoming gardening season is. The seeds catalogs and DIY articles are perused. My mind imagines and creates.

“Life is unpredictable, it changes with the seasons, even your coldest winter happens for the best of reasons, and though it feels eternal, like all you’ll ever do is freeze, I promise spring is coming, and with it, brand new leaves.” ~ Erin Hanson

Deanna Greens and Garden Art’s story is still unfolding. Our lives are busy with jobs and our growing family with nine grandkids. Dean and I no longer grow under the 1200-square foot greenhouse and screenhouse. Although, we very much enjoy growing herbs, perennials, and blooms. We have our perennials at our cottage home in town. Our cinder-block basement houses the green life during the winter. We have an oil heater and a grow light that keeps the plants content for the five- or six-months cold season. Outdoors, our jonquils sprouted through the mulch and brown leaves this past week. Their yellow heads are wanting to burst open. As the yellow blooms unfold, we know Spring is around the corner. With Spring comes the yard projects. A backyard shed is one of those projects this year. This gardener’s daydreams are a tiny stained-glass greenhouse as well as a potting table. See where those dreams go.

“It’s nice to dream even when you’ve had pains and disappointments.” ~ Antonia Bread 

Feb10

A Different January, And Now February

Posted on by
Standard
A Different January, And Now February

What happened to January? The bustling holiday season went into a busy January, and finally a weekend in mid-February set aside to slow down, stay home, read, and write. My blogging and writing curtailed with a new weekday office job, weekends in Farmington, cottage interior projects, and reorganizing. Dean and I last-minute traveled to Eureka Springs, AR to join in my first evening of readings with The Writers’ Colony at Dairy Hollow. I shared a couple of classics from Emily Dickinson and Christina Rossetti, and then a few of my own poems. I experienced the beatnik snapping fingers. Fun! One poetry submission went out in January. I may be able to get one or two submissions this weekend. My life changed its course starting in December. After working for 18 months with part-time jobs after my retirement from my HR position with the local government, I decided to seek a full-time job where I have dependable hours. I started this HR position just before Christmas. Much more to learn with this generalist role in a smaller organization. Thankful it has been a friendlier culture. I continue to teach a culinary class one or two evenings a month. Diligence and time management are all the more necessary to keep to my writing projects.

One day out of each weekend since Christmas have been helping my daughter, son-in-law, and grandkids who live in Farmington, MO. Their house burned down Christmas night. They escaped with no injuries, thank God! They have a long road to full recovery from this tremendous loss. Miracles after miracles have been witnessed. The other day of each weekend are filled with home projects. The cottage guest bedroom had a face lift on one wall. Dean put up bead board, carefully cutting to fit around the window frame. We will paint the bead board an off-white when the weather warms up this impending spring and the windows can stay open for a day. It really lightens up the room, mellowing the cranberry red wallpaper and keeps to the Edwardian country decor. While Dean worked on that, I have been paring down and reorganizing drawers, closets, and rooms. We did a couple of furniture swaps between bedrooms to simplify access. Now Valentine hearts along with seasonal snowmen and snowbirds dot the rooms with a festive fever. I put together various candy jars for the kids and my fellow HR co-workers. I thoroughly believe gifts of love expressed from the kitchen can be given to everyone you meet.

“There is nothing better than a friend, unless it is a friend with chocolate.”

~ Linda Grayson

“At the end of the day, I believe you lead with your heart. This is all part of who I am, no matter where I am. My heart is my heart.”

~ Cindy Marten.
Jul28

Summer Connects

Posted on by
Standard

In a world with ever changing values and technology, some things remain the same. Kinship, old mountain towns, and summer lakes. Most of the time you can depend on all three.  Family is family. Most of us are connected if not by blood, in some other fashion to each other no more than 3 times removed. We connected to Joe, owner of this small town bar & grill and a new eatery called the Galloping Goose Cafe while in Rico, Colorado.  He is a visionary for this town.  Not sure if I could go back 4 decades, but the brief week we had in the old mountain town cabin took Dean and I to the simplicity of our childhood years.  And we loved it.  In search for WiFi a couple of times to get connected to our urban civilization to post photos and reserve a hotel room for our travels back home, other than that we lived without any electronics and screens.  Dean and I resorted to reading, writing, napping, cooking, bird watching, photography, and walks.  We return to our full-time employment with government entities that overwhelm with procedures, projects, policies, and politics.  Cannot escape it in the evening with the political conventions being aired. So here is to wonderful July 2016 memories with family in the old mountain town and near the summer lake.  I will keep reading, writing, … making more memories and connections.