Photo by Edward Eyer from Pexels
I heard this quote in a writing class taught by Linda Wood Rondeau many years ago. Story has guided my writing ever since. I hope you’ll remember it too as you work on your stories.
I love the bright, daisy-like flower heads
of Zinnias. They’re easy to grow, bloom profusely, and provide a great splash of color in a pot or flowerbed.
A primarily warm weather flower, I missed seeing them when we lived in the mountains. The blooms are fun to cut and bring inside to my kitchen table vase. The flowers also attract butterflies.
This year I decided to plant seeds in the large clay pot by our backyard pond and discovered lots of stuff I didn’t know about the flowers I enjoy as I read the seed packets.
Zinnias grow in a variety of shapes – beehive, button, and cactus, and have distinct kind of blooms – single, double, and semi-double. I selected two different seed kinds and planted in the big pot.
Within a week, I had little green seedlings poking through the potting soil. All the rain slowed the blooming process, but once we finally had some sunny days, buds formed then my Zinnias bloomed with a burst of color.
Both seed packets went into the same pot so I’m having fun deciding which blooms are what. What do you think-beehive, button, or cactus?
I can’t decide.
The plant is an annual, so the plants will die off in January or February. I’m thinking next year I’ll plant single varieties in multiple pots.
My collection of children’s books includes one with the title “Circle Dogs.”
It begins “In the big, square house live the two circle dogs” then goes on to trace a day in the life of two dachshunds repeating this line at the end.
I could write a similar book.
I would have to change the first line to “In the not-so-big square house live the six circle dogs.”
About the Image: Finnegan MacCool in the wildflowers taken along a Texas hill country road. As Lady Bird Johnson and her husband, Lyndon Johnson, crisscrossed American on the campaign trail, she saw the opportunity for roadside restoration to bring regional identity to areas that otherwise might be lined with billboards and invasive species.Thanks to their Highway Beautification Act of 1965 drives along highways in the springtime do offer opportunities to stop and snap pictures and be touched by regional flowers.
Today we stand in awe of those who knew the risks, who accepted the odds, and who marched onward anyway. Those who made the ultimate sacrifice.
About the Image: Picture taken at Longwood Gardens in Pennsylvania. I love visiting beautiful gardens when we travel. Flowers speak to me and bring a smile. I’m sharing this other language quote in hopes you’ll hear the flowers and smile too.
Long before epic series like Game of Thrones and Outlander kept us breathlessly awaiting the next episode, serial radio shows kept listeners beside their radios.
Busy taking care of housework in 30s and 40s without the benefit of today’s appliances, housewives tuned to tales of Clara, Lu, and Em, three sorority sisters, or Painted Dreams, a story of a mother and her unmarried daughter. Those stories continued from day to day and one story line led to another or multiple story lines.
Listeners, primarily women, lost themselves in the fictional lives. Networks and advertisers saw the great potential of a daytime market and serialized radio stories became daytime television stories.
The televised programs, dubbed daytime soaps because program sponsors were companies like Proctor and Gamble or soap operas because organ music transitioned from one scene to the next, quickly became popular. By 1970, the three major networks aired eighteen different daytime serials.
That’s where I came in.
My Oma’s favorite “stories” transitioned from radio to television. She followed her characters to the small screen and took me with her. We’d have lunch on TV trays and catch up on As the World Turns then return later in the afternoon for Guiding Light. The shows, originally fifteen minutes in length, expanded to an hour presentations.
The stories were fascinating and progressive for their time. Women didn’t dress like Aunt Bea of Mayberry. They had flawed marriages, rotten kids, and successful careers. In fact, the police chief and head cardiologist of General Hospital were both females.
There were cheating spouses, secret babies, evil twins, amnesia victims, ghosts, time travel, and vampires. The shows aired daily allowing little time to fully memorize and polish lines like prime time shows. There were no retakes with live TV.
Nowadays only four daytime soaps remain: The Bold and the Beautiful (CBS), Days of Our Lives (NBC), General Hospital (ABC), and The Young and the Restless (CBS). But, viewer numbers are shrinking so the number may shrink more.
I rarely watch any of them. They aren’t my soap.
Graphic: The Soap Opera Wiki https://soaps.fandom.com/wiki/Guiding_Light
MY soap was Guiding Light. It first aired on radio in 1937, moved to television in 1952, and ended on my birthday in 2009 after a record seventy-two years. I still miss the Spaulding, Cooper, and Lewis families, especially Reva and Josh.
While some consider soap opera watching a waste of time, I credit my hours of watching with sparking my storyteller gene and providing endless ideas for story lines.
Several classes at my new school hatched chicks recently. It has been fun to check on them especially during the stress of the last weeks of school. I think “chick therapy” is a great thing.
This morning the 2nd grade teacher told me she had found homes for all but three of the chicks. Being a Chicken Wrangler, I felt compelled to wrangle them to our house. When I went to pick them up, there were actually four that needed a home.
I figure since these chicks were hatched at a school, they should be smarter than the average chicks. My only question is will the ones hatched in the 6th grade class be smarter?
About the Image: The snapdragons underneath our bay window. Taken years ago with an old Olympia camera and an unsteady hand. With all the rain we’ve been having here in Texas lately I needed this reminder of why we need rain.
A long time ago in a land far away, we wore roses to church on Mother’s Day.
I can remember as a child going to my grandmother’s house before church to pick a flower to pin on my dress.I also cut blooms for my siblings.
I would carefully choose the prettiest red roses I could find for me and my siblings, cut the chosen buds and we’d take them home. There, my brother and sister and I would pin the rose to our Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes and be ready for church on Mother’s Day.
A red rose meant your mother was living and a white one meant she was dead.
When I tell people about the annual chore, I usually get a puzzled look as if they’d never heard of it. Maybe it was only a Texas thing. There are lots of only Texas things that puzzle people.
Still, it was tradition for our family for many years. After I married and left home I continued the tradition. Once my children became teens the whining and complaining won and I kinda let the wearing roses thing fall to the wayside.
Anna Jarvis started the practice when she honored her own deceased mother with a special day of remembrance at a Methodist Church in Grafton, West Virginia in 1908. By 1914, she had campaigned so successfully that President Woodrow Wilson signed into law the proclamation making Mother’s Day a national holiday.
Interesting fact I uncovered as I researched about the tradition, both Jarvis and the President Wilson insisted that the spelling be singular possessive — Mother’s Day — to encourage a personal rather than generic observance.
The wearing a rose tradition makes the day even more personal. Red to honor. White to remember.
I’m thinking it would be nice to revive the tradition. Next year, maybe my rose bushes will be blooming, and I can pick a white one to wear to honor my Mother in Heaven.
