Minimal Words

I am a member of the Northeast Georgia Writers Group, and we have a very able lady among us, one of our officers, and published author.  She is ever alert to send us interesting information from which she feels we could benefit.

Recently she sent the web site of one of the authors who had visited our group.  She is Loretta Hannon,  author of "Cracker Queen" and she had so many helpful things to say to our group.  On her web site she challenged us to write our memoir in six words, and send it to her.  I did just that.  Since it is appropriate to what I am writing today, I am sharing it with you now:

Perpetual motion, not a good notion

Many years ago I was in a teachers writing group.  It was a fun thing for me as I enjoy writing and was at the time teaching creative writing to my first graders.  Early on in the year I introduced my class to the idea of writing their own newspaper.  They were very enthusiastic about this project and it became a daily activity for them as part of their seat work.  To describe how I did this is not the point of my writing today, suffice it to say that  my students loved doing it and became quite accomplished in working on their own to make their individual daily newspapers.

In the teacher writing group sponsored by the Gwinnett County Board of Education, we met and shared our writing.  We had a very supportive leader;  She read our writings and commented on our papers. One of the things I wrote was "Smell the Roses".

In essence I wrote about being a Type A person and how a quick sniff of the proverbial rose was enough for me, as I had other things to explore.

This idea of a quick sniff came back to haunt me on January 30th.  At my age I have slowed down considerably and my family insists that I put away my pick ax and act my age.  My son-in-law had come up to prune in my vineyard on the Monday in question and he instructed me to sit in the golf cart and keep him company with conversation.  I obeyed him for about thirty minutes and then thought that it would be safe enough for me to gather the vines he had pruned and carry them to the edge of the woods.  All went well for a good while, then on one trek I noticed a Forsythia in bloom.  I was intrigued as it was uncommon to see this in January.  My sons and grandson had helped me plant a row of Forsythia along the woods but I did not think they were this far over.  I took a step into the woods for a better view and immediately slipped on some leaves and began to fall back.  Trying to protect my head I put out my left arm to break the fall.  All would have worked according to my plan except for one thing.  My right foot did not get the message that I was changing directions and it refused to come along. As my body twisted to the left I wondered why my right foot was staying upright when the rest of me was falling.  Then I felt it, excruciating pain in that right foot, then it obliged me and came with me to the ground!

Immediately Jim, my son-in-law took me  to the Urgent Care center for medical attention.  Yes it was a fractured ankle and yes it was painful and yes it will be a lengthy recovery.  So much for my perpetual motion DNA.  My motions have been scaled down to a slow shuffle with a walker and a lovely black boot to hold my foot still. Beating myself over the head was not helping one bit so I settled down to reading some very good books which my son brought to me.  Also I am able to prop up my right foot and use the computer for short periods.

My fast pace has been severely halted.  Now I have plenty of time to smell the roses.  It has not stopped my brain from racing however.  Now, I am counting my blessings and biding my time with plenty of time to look out the windows and wish I could smell the daffodils out front nodding and swaying with the coming of spring.

Luther Clinton Little 1947 -2012

It is a rare thing to lose two family members in such a short time, but it has happened.

My personal knowledge of Luther is small as he lived in another state from me and I saw him rarely.  What I do know is that he was a high school teacher and married one of his students, Marcia Ruth Matthis, the youngest child of Marcella Freudenburg and Chester Blain Matthis.  Lute, as he was called, came to our family reunions at least once when we all met at Pine Mountain State Park near Corbin, Ky.  He and Marcia had two children, Hannah Josephine and Chester Earl.  I remember them as quiet, beautiful children among us.

At the time of his death they lived in Pikeville, Kentucky and he lived to see Hannah become a mother.
Hannah had lost her husband a year ago and several years ago an uncle, Charles Blain Matthis. A lot of losses of the men in her life, in a short time. 

In all of her loss, Hannah has her mother and extended family members to give her support.  She has the support of her church also.   May those blessings sustain her now.  We all wish her well.

Charles Wesley Matthis V 1932-2012

For most of my life I did not know any of my cousins.  But now I do and it all came about because my brother became interested in Genealogy.  He lived in Abingdon, Va., a well known historical town.  He joined the Historical Society and became an active participant in the activities of that group.  He went back to college to learn German so that he could read old documents that could contain information about his ancestors.  His search took him to Germany on more than one trip.  He began to find cousins even in Germany.  He learned about cousins here in the states and thus his adventures enriched the lives of us all in our family.

This brings me to today and news that one of those cousins will no longer be among us.  This man who overcame many adversities in life became educated in space, and worked on the ground to monitor space craft  while it was circling the earth.  He was a quiet, caring man, who married late in life to a lady who had children.  He embraced her family as his own and during his later years lived a quiet life in northern Arkansas.

To list his achievements in life would take a lot of space.  His sister, Barbara Todd wrote  about him in the 1990's and an interesting life it was. My sincere thanks to Barbara for the following facts:
His first obstacle began early on.  He was less than two pounds at birth and given little hope of living.  He was one of the first babies to be put in an incubator.  The year was 1932.  Many of those early babies ended up blind because of receiving too much oxygen while in those first incubators.
His health was delicate and until age five he was kept at home and away from any opportunity to be exposed to early childhood diseases.
When he was twelve he was so responsible that he was the baby sitter for his two younger siblings while their parents worked at Curtis Wright making airplanes.
At age 12 he began printing at their church.  He ran an old fashioned press with tiny individual letter type.  He later bought this machine and started his own printing business at home making cards announcing births, weddings, stationery and advertising flyers.
One of his many interests was with the short wave radio.  He learned Morris Code and also about sending and receiving voice messages.  This interest grew out of his activities in the Boy Scouts.  With his fathers help he built a radio station in their upstairs.   As his parents both worked in the Boy
Scouts he went on a truck trip to the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, and Rapid City to see Mount Rushmore at age twelve.
He made friends all over the world by way of the short wave radio and exchanged call number cards with them.  His call name was W4 NWQ.
He learned to play the piano in with all of his other activities.
At age eighteen he joined the Louisville Cadet Squadron of Civil Air Patrol at Bowman Field in Louisville.
He learned to fly a plane at Kentucky Flying Service at Bowman Field . He soloed and received his private license.  He went on searches with the CAP to look for small and downed aircraft.
When he graduated from high school he attended the University of Louisville, joining the ROTC and majored in Physics, did research on cancer radiation with a doctor at St. Joseph's hospital in Louisville.  He and Dr. Love co-authored the results of their research and it was published in the American Medical Journal.
After graduation from college he did six weeks of basic training for the Air Force.  After fulfilling all the requirements he failed the physical and was not accepted into the Air Force.
He spent a year pursuing a top security job in Washington, D.C. but it was not offered.
One of the doctors he worked with suggested he go to Medical school but after a year of waiting was told he needed  pre med courses.  Undaunted he applied for an engineering position for Boeing Aircraft in Wichita, Kansas.  He was hired and spent thirty six years as a devoted employee to Boeing in Kansas and Huntsville, Alabama..
His earliest responsibility was in antennae and radon research on the B52.
His first big achievement was to develop and install the fleet Location and Information Reporting System for the city of St. Louis.  For a year he worked with the Police Department with this system which tracked police cars around the city so that they could be quickly dispatched where needed.  This was the first time this was done in any Police Department and now it is common place.  He did a lot of traveling around the country and internationally in connection with the sale of this tracking system.
In 1981 he moved to Huntsville and was a configuration management engineer for the Test Equipment Division, ensuring compatible operation between  equipment built for the US Navy and Air Force.
In the late 1980's he was assigned to the simulator programs and was responsible for software configuration control for the B1B simulator and the KC 135 simulators. There were several of them around the world and Chuck kept them all up and running.
His last assignment with Boeing before retirement was with the Space Station program, which developed and launched the Space Station.
Even in retirement he was called in from time to time on every program in Huntsville, as his experience with their systems was invaluable.
In his personal life he met and married Virginia Hedrick in 1974 while in Wichita, Kansas.  He got the ready made family he had always wanted.  In his retirement years he enjoyed his three children and eight grandchildren and seven great grandchildren.  He was known to them as Papa Chuck.
After the death of his soul mate he found great things to do as a volunteer computer worker for Hospice.
He led a full and remarkable life and we are all honored to have him in our family.

Drying Kiwi

With three days left in the year of 2011, I am trying to make use of the kiwi that I harvested in late November.  I purchased a food dehydrator online for the purpose of saving some of the kiwi.  Some experimentation had to take place and sure enough I had to pitch out the first batch.

The instructions did not say to pre treat the kiwi, but I did with "fruit fresh" and that may be why the first batch had such a tart taste.  Some days went by before I tried again.  This time I thought a strawberry flavor might be tasty.  I had some powdered strawberry jello on hand so I sprinkled that on the peeled slices of kiwi.  I put in three trays of the kiwi and one tray of sliced persimmon.  Both the persimmon and the strawberry  kiwi was pleasant to taste.  I did the moisture test on them and they passed.  The moisture test is simply to place the product in a glass jar and put the lid on.  Watch and see if it fogs up, if not then the proper amount of dryness  is correct.

My next part of the experiment was to try different flavors.  My daughter gave me some sugar free jello in lemon and raspberry.  I put in one tray of lemon flavor sliced kiwi, in about 1/8 inch slices.  One tray had the kiwi sprinkled with the raspberry jello powder.  One tray had the kiwi with Splenda sprinkled on them.  Part of this experiment was to add another fruit so I used two small bananas for the fourth tray.  I did not pretreat them with ascorbic powder and I learned that the color would have been lighter if I had, and perhaps the taste better.  But, all in all, I like the flavor of the raspberry and the kiwi with splenda best.  The lemon sugar free jello powder did not enhance the taste of the kiwi on that tray.

My daughter has hinted that she will be looking for boxes of persimmon on sale for me to dry.  I do think that the persimmon had the prettiest appearance and a very pleasant taste.  The nice thing about the dried fruit is that I can put it in the freezer chest and pull out for making trail mix all during the time that the kiwi vines are sleeping the winter away.

Drying Kiwi

Fellowship Around the Ginkgo

The simplist things in nature can be the most beautiful, and capture the attention of everyone who is fortunate enough to be able to view them.  I was priviliged to see the branches of the Ginkgo in their rich, yellow, fall color, in tall thin vases of water, sitting in the middle of the  tables in a long window lined room.

The room was the large fellowship hall at our small church.  I was walking in that direction with a bag containing hot, fragrant grilled chicken from KFC.  I had just met up with the speaker for the morning  service.   He was with his wife of many years, and no doubt memories were crowding through through their minds,  as he once  pastored this church, on many occasions over many years.  We chatted as we walked toward the  building.   He had his grandson on his mind as he would not be there for the service today, but the rest of his family would be.  The fellowship for the morning began with meeting them as we stepped from our cars, and it continued into the  building.

Before I opened the door I could faintly hear the various tones of voices on the other side.  Thus began the warm tone of the day.  As I stepped inside I said to the nearest people standing around a huge table, " I brought Dottie and Cliff with me".  The talking did not stop, but we were greeted warmly by the ones closest to the door.  We went our separate ways  as I found the hostesses for the dinner and handed over the bucket of chicken in the bag.  I made my way around the room greeting some friends who sat having coffee and snacks at the round tables all decorated with the autumn motif.  The vases on the tables dominated the scene with the rich yellow of the Ginkgo leaves still clinging to the dark brown branches, and dominating  the space with their beauty.  As an admirer of  the fan shaped leaf of this particular tree, I could not resist reaching over and gently touching one and examining  up close it's shape, color and unique vein arrangement.  No other leaf in nature has the parallel veins as does this Ginkgo biloba.  It is an Asiatic tree and well suited to withstand the pollution of our cities.

I have been drawn to the Ginkgo since I was a young girl.  I suppose I caught the fever from my mother.  She first pointed out the Ginkgo to me on a  trip to the local post office, in our small town, in eastern Kentucky.  When I first saw this tree it was as big as a full grown white oak, and dwarfed the building in front of it.  My mother once framed a leaf and the seeds from it, in a small green frame, along with information about it.

The presence of the Ginkfo  pops up in unexpected places.  There is one at the back of the school where I taught first graders for fifteen years.  Each fall I looked forward to seeing the rich yellow leaves, as I walked my children to their Gym class.  It was a young tree then but after twenty years it must be more than twice the size it was then.  They are a slow growing tree but well worth the wait.

I spotted a row of them planted on the main east/west  highway in our town.  Some one else appreciated this tree, as the decision was made to plant around six of them in front of a grocery store.  Perhaps this same city planner wanted to see them across town as a row of them is planted near the corner of two busy streets, Washington and Academy Streets near the town square.  Some days when I am caught waiting for a light to change I am parked beside this row of  Ginkgoes and have the pleasure of seeing them all green.  However they achieve their greatest beauty in the fall of the year.

Trees have always held a fascination for me.  In winter when no leaves can conceal the structure of  their many branches, they are best displayed against a cloudless sky.  The different, textured bark of the hardwoods and the peeling bark of  the Crape Myrtles,  are close to me here where I live.  My woods is full of the beauty of the bark of so many of them, not to mention the variety of leaf shapes.  The Mulberry always amuses me with it's three different shape leaves .  The Sassafras also has these particular leaf patterns.  Another aspect of the mighty tree is how it nourishes us in many ways with it's fruit.  Perhaps the greatest gift of all the trees is the oxygen it gives back to us while taking away the air we have already used.  We could not,  literally, exist without them.  Nor could we exist without the fellowship of our fellow human beings.  Both are treasures to hold onto  and be sustained by, in order to live in harmony and enjoy a satisfactory life.  If you are out and about and see a tree with rich, yellow foliage gracing its branches, take a closer look, it just may be this interesting Ginkgo, displaying its fall wardrobe.

Harvesting the Kiwi

Our local weatherman on television advised us that on early Friday morning we would have a freeze in our area of the state.  So on Thursday morning I donned my warmest outdoor work clothes and went outdoors to prepare for the freeze.  Some chores close to my house had priority but then I gathered all of the giant market baskets that I had stored in the Cedar House, got in my golf cart and headed up to the Kiwi vines.  Of my three female vines I only had two to bear fruit this year.  I fully expect that next year the other one will be as productive as the two I picked from on Thursday.

 

It was pleasant enough to be outdoors and working among the vines.  I wore work gloves as reaching through the many vines can cause some scratches on your hands.  After about two hours of picking I had the four market baskets filled to the  top.  Since it was near lunch time, and a good break time, I went up to the house and unloaded the four baskets into the sun room.  Since there is no heat in the sun room it is ideal to store the kiwi there.  After lunch I gathered up all of the containers I could find, to put the rest of the kiwi in, as I picked them.  I filled up another smaller market basket, a five gallon bucket, and several other baskets and bowls.

As I was working, I found two bird nests up at the very top of the vines.  I just left them there as it was too high to get them down.  Many of the larger kiwi were up above the wires.  In the past I have weighed the average size fruit and found them to weigh three ounces.  This is the same size that is sold in the grocery stores.  However the larger ones weigh more, four to four and a half ounces total.  I made a clean sweep and picked all sizes, even the smaller ones which may or may not be worth the effort to peel them.

My daughter and I talked about buying an electric food dehydrator to try drying out some of the kiwi this year.  First, however, they must be ripe enough to eat.  It will not be an easy chore to determine when they are all ripe, simply because there are so many of them this year.  When they do ripen, I expect it will all happen at the same time.  This may be the year that I try some kiwi jelly!

I have many friends who like the kiwi, so thankfully they will use some of them.   With the hot, dry weather we had this past summer any harvest at all is a wonder.  I can understand why so many very small kiwi were on the vine this year.  There simply was not enough moisture in the ground for them to all develop properly.  At any rate they have all been picked for this year.  I cannot say that for the  muscadine grapes.  There were too many for me and for my grape loving friends to pick them all.  Even the deer and birds could not manage to eat all of those grapes.  Gardening is a fun hobby for the summer and fall.  When the cold winter winds begin to blow the outdoor phase of gardening is at an end.  Preserving some of the fruit is the last phase, until the seed catalogs arrive.  Then it all begins over again, otherwise there will be no harvest next fall.  So, as long as I feel game enough to repeat it all, there will always be something to harvest from this land.