Fences are everywhere—picket, hurricane, stone, wooden, log, and the sturdy barbed wire that stretches for miles. They are along property lines and divide pastures into orderly grazing areas for livestock. My recently released book, Can’t Build a Fence, was inspired by just such barbed wire and a conversation about a cow. My husband and I were driving around our pasture checking fences one day when he noticed a cow we named Walk-thru. That old critter could go where she wanted […]
May
25
Feb
12
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Life In Black and White
Life in Black and White “Were you alive when everything was black and white?” That’s the question I heard as we stood in the hall looking at framed pictures I had proudly hung. Some photos were in vibrant hues of colors, leaving nothing to the imagination as to the color of the hair, eyes, or to the clothes chosen to mark the occasion. But the old, black and white treasures, from the one of my Grandparents and their children in […]
Aug
26
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Computers and Old People
Computers. Computers are one of the modern day gadgets that either thrill one or lead one to want to throw it out with the trash. We were raised with lead pencils, paper, and inkbottles in the corner of our school desks. That’s right. There was a little round hole in the corner of our desks to hold the bottle of ink for safekeeping. We had to unscrew the lid and fill our fountain pens with…get this…real liquid ink. Now I […]
Jun
23
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Ivy Story
I was one of those June brides. It was 1967 and everything went fine the first three days – then I got sick – really, really sick, and off to the doctor we went. Three weeks later, my health restored, we left the hospital to restart our life with a six-inch pot of pothos ivy in tow. That ivy will be fourty-six years old this month, June, 2013. Several years earlier, my friend’s mother told me their ivy was twenty-five […]
Mar
1
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Women On The Farm
In Texas, we’ve had quite a bit of rain in the last few weeks. I remember the drought we endured in 2011, with a lack of grass, no hay to be found, and dwindling water supplies. It brought back memories of another year when there wasn’t any hay, 1998. We kept our cows that year by feeding range cubes every day. It was my job to sit on the tailgate and sprinkle the cubes in the pasture while the herd […]
Oct
4
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Childhood Memories
We bought one of those stick horses for a friend’s little girl the other day. It had the stuffed horse head covered in soft, furry like material on a fabric covered ‘stick’ of about four feet. There’s a button, when pushed, emits a neighing horse sound accompanied by hoof beats. Her expressive face and smile led us to believe we had won the unusual gift award. Wrong answer. She rode around for a short trot, pushed the button and listened […]
Sep
23
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The Dog Made Me Do It
The dog made me do it — go green that is. I re-cycle and replace with energy saving bulbs and buy energy star appliances — but I’m not going to be nominated for any awards. There are plenty of tips and publicity about conserving, re-using, and being a good Shepard of our earth. Speaking of Shepard, we have a Collie dog that after several years of being penned, was allowed to run free. He dug several holes in the yard, […]
Aug
15
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Norman, The Bull
It was a cold, rainy Wednesday morning when I found the cow dead. My husband had died five months earlier. This cow had been ours. Her calving was to have been a forward step in my life. I went home, trying to get past this loss and continue my healing process. Friday morning, after a restless night, I called my sister, Judy, and told her about a dream that haunted me all night: a dream of a brown, white-faced calf, […]
Aug
8
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The Flying Horse Poop Folly
Imagine a gray haired woman standing in a pasture between horses and a newborn calf, flinging horse poop balls at the lead mare. It would be a funny sight, you might think. Oh, but wait—it wasn’t just something for you to imagine—it happened to me. In early spring, about two years ago, I noticed a cow bringing her new baby out of the woods to introduce it to the rest of the herd. In my lifetime of farm living, there […]
Jun
8
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ETWG
I have clutched the door frame until my fingers turned white—but the East Texas Writers Guild pulled me through into an amazing new world. A broken pencil and a yellow legal pad will no longer work. They have introduced me to social networking and encouraged me at every step. We recently enjoyed our first speaker by skype, and it was great. ETWG is an awesome group of people. Check the website…www.etwritersguild.org
