Leaves

Fall Leaves

The leaves of the tree outside my window, back lit by sunshine, are brilliant jewels. Yellow leaves hang like golden ornaments among the ruby reds and lemon-greens. The denseness of the leaves has diminished which, in summer, forms a shade sanctuary from the oppressive heat of the paved parking lot.

One of the joys of autumn is watching the green of summer blossom into gems of color before winds force their drifting into oblivion. As a child I gathered them on the way to and from school, always looking for a more spectacular one to add to the collection. Mom often used them to decorate the dinner table.

Until recently, as seasons changed, television stations gave daily reports on where the viewing of fall colors was most spectacular, but for the last two years, extreme weather conditions have been so violent, the viewing of colored forests has not been on anyone's agenda.

Fall Leaves in Houston

Privately though, I take great delight in noticing the changing of the colors and appearance of trees as they become bare and dormant for the winter. Some of the city streets have become open to the skies showing bare limbs, while some districts have oak trees on each side of the street, their branches tangling and twisting together above the street creating tunnels.

The only people I see these days who pay attention to leaves are gardeners who have blowers to whisk the leaves into yard bags ready for land fills, aka 'the dump'.

The jeweled toned leaves of the tree outside my window are visible for only a few short minutes every day before the sun rises higher in the sky and the back lighting fades away. In another day or so the leaves will have fallen and I'll have to wait until spring to see budding leaves starting a new life cycle.

Fall Leaves in Texas

Halloween Time by Esther

[Editor's note: This story was written by Esther]

Vernon and I finally moved to Baton Rouge and stayed at his parents home in the country. It was a lovely place and his Father raised cattle. The house was set a ways back from the road. It had a long driveway to the house and on both sides were Pecan trees, which were so lovely to drive under with their long limbs reaching over the drive way.

The house area was fenced off to keep the cattle off the lawn, till they needed the space to work on the cattle. The lawn was kept neat and trimmed with a bush hog. The Saint Augustine grass was so thick and the only time it was different, was during the winter, when they planted rye grass to help feed the cattle.

I would watch Vernon with his brothers and Father working the cattle in a coral with a long chute to separate the calves. Vernon would throw a rope and put the calf down, so it could be branded. It was for sure a rodeo and Vernon was a cowboy. The brothers knew their way raising cattle. It was a family working together.

There was BC, the oldest, then came Buddy, Bruce and Vernon. They had three sisters.

One was dating and the man came to the house to meet her parents. As they were in the house, the boys were out side and they picked up the little car the man drove and set over into the flower bed. They'd laugh when that story was told but while their Father was not pleased, he did smile.

Another time the boy’s remembered when their Grandfather had just bought a new Deluxe Buggy to get around to Church and town, and this was close to Halloween time. There must have been a good moon to have enough light to dismantle the four wheel enclosed buggy and to put it on top the two story barn. Vernon did say, it took them two days to dismantle it and get it down and back together again.

Once, not to long ago, while Vernon and I were living at the lake, we were driving down high way 87 to Orange, Texas. It was after Halloween time and someone had spent a lot of time throwing rolls of bathroom tissue over a pine tree. They (or he or she) must have been a good pitcher as they covered that tree every which way. I have no idea how many rolls it had on it and can only imagine the time it took to get the tree covered but it was there most of two years.

The good news: it was a sight to see on the long miles in between towns and Forestry did not make a complaint.

Phaeton: 4 wheeled buggy

Dad by Loretta

[Editor's Note: This story was written by Loretta]

When I was a kid, I always enjoyed going with dad and visiting the family members and listening to them reminisce about their experiences in life.

Dad always kept in contact with people like great uncle Charlie Dixon who was grandma Willison’s full brother. When we visited him, he was living upstairs over a store in Oskaloosa. Great uncle Hutch, who was grandpa Willison’s deaf brother, lived in a retirement facility and used sign language to communicate. Dad bought a book on it and learned to sign from it. He wasn’t half bad either. Then there was Rose and Susie who were half sisters to grandma Willison. It always sounded so exciting to listen to their stories of how they grew up and lived in “olden times”.

That’s us now, talking to the kids of today, who look at us strange. What no computers or iPods or cell phones? In fact, there was no electricity! They just can’t comprehend.

I think dad had a well rounded life of experience, he used to say he was a man of all trades master of none.

Grandma had 16 children and when times got bad, she farmed the boys out. Dad went to a farmer who believed in education. He made sure that dad went to school everyday and worked on the farm before and after school and on weekends. I think that’s why dad started college, but he had no money to finish.

When he was looking for work dad, uncle Chester and uncle Ray used to ride the box cars and call themselves hobo’s. He always talked about it as “good times”. He could converse with anyone on any subject and make it sound interesting.

He used to visit Cora and Bob Rogers in Oskaloosa. Cora was dad's cousin. She had an old two story house in a neighborhood called “flies corners”. I never did find out why they called it that. She had Chinese fortune telling cards and when anyone came for a visit, they could have their fortune told for fun. Cora had a piano and Dad would play the piano by ear while people sang hymns. He was always the life of the party.

He made the most of his vacations by visiting as many people as he could on his treks across the country. I never knew we had so many relatives! Dad thought nothing about driving to Delta, Iowa and visiting the family down there. They tried talking him into going hunting with them but guns weren’t his thing.

Drinking wasn’t either. I don’t think he took more than a sip from any alcoholic beverage ever.

I remember when he traveled, he’d picked up strangers on the highway. One particular person was a girl, who was hitchhiking on her way back home from attending college in Phoenix, Az. He ended up taking her home and dropping her off. After his death, we found letters she had written him. Apparently, they had kept in contact well after that trip. There was a lot more to him than we knew.

One thing about dad, he was more open about his life when he was younger than mom was.

American Sign Language

Coal Gardens

My growing up years was so different from children today. We could never have imagined many of the learning tools children have today. We lived simple lives that repeated themselves day after day during school months, and we amused ourselves with simple pleasures during summer vacations.

My brothers, sisters and I usually did things as a group. I was the oldest and as the younger ones of us 8 children reached the age of 4 or 5, they joined in with us older ones and participated.

In the summer we swam, hiked, rode bicycles, skated, and had cookouts. After dark we played hide and seek, or sat on the front door steps with chums or caught fireflies in jars.

In winter we skied or went ice skating on the frozen river after school and in the winter evenings we did our school homework after supper and listened to the Fibber McGee and Molly on the radio while we popped corn, or made fudge, or sat on the kitchen floor and cracked black walnuts.

Sometime during the winter, when things got tiresome with so much cold and snow and the same old routines became dull, Mom and Dad would liven things up with showing us how to grow coal gardens. Before going to bed, we would arrange our individual dishes of coal with the solutions so that in the morning when we woke, we would see crystals that had formed in the night.

No two were ever alike and we were eager to experiment with food coloring and tried to keep the tiny fairy gardens growing for as long as possible When they failed we started new ones. I remember making the gardens with pieces of coal and vinegar but there is another recipe using ammonia to create the crystal gardens.


Recipe 1.

Place a chunk of coal, or broken pieces of charcoal briquette, or porous stone, or pieces of cork, or a clinker, or a broken brick in a non-metallic dish.

Mix the following in a jar:

6Tbsp unionized salt
6Tbsp bluing
6Tbsp water, distilled preferred
1Tbsp ammonia

Pour over the coal or brick. Dab spots of food coloring on the coal and place in a draft free location. Crystals start to form and when the solution runs out mix more and gently pour into the bottom of the dish to keep the garden growing.

Bluing can be purchased in most stores and has the coal garden recipe on the label. You can buy it on the web at this address: http://www.mrsstewart.com/


Recipe 2.

Use pieces of coal, charcoal, or brick.
Stir salt into warm water until no more salt will dissolve.
Add a spoonful of vinegar to salt solution
Pour over the coal. Add a drop or two of food coloring.
Keep adding solution so capillary action continues.



Ingredients for a Coal Garden

A Coal Garden



An Unexpected Surpise

[Editor's Posting]

Welcome All to the New Year at MrsBizzyB's blog!

As Editor, I thought I would share some information about what goes on behind the scenes with the blog and pass on some unexpected surprises. For those who send postings, my efforts are well known but to the readers and potential posters it might be surprising about what happens to get a story on the blog.

We have grown the number of family members who submit postings each year and last year we had more family members posting than ever! Each poster writes their own story and selects their own topics and writes their stories in their own way. Then, they send it to me for "editing and publishing".

I check the story for basic stuff, like spelling and for consistency. If I have questions about something, an email exchange with the author takes place until I am sure I understand what the story is about. I then pull out my "blue pencil" and decide where and how the story will be published on the blog. Some stories are long and get broken into multiple segments for multiple postings and sometimes I make a few changes to either enhance or clarify something being written. I try not to make many changes to the stories and to leave them in the "voice of the author".

Leaving as much of the author's voice as possible allows us to "hear" the stories as if we are sitting in the same room with our southern relatives or those from the north or west. I love to "sit on the divan" and listen to how family members "struck out on their own" and "war with gophers in the garden".

Once I am satisfied the story is ready, it gets scheduled for posting. All the stories get published but not all at the same time. I try to give each story its own time and space on the blog. Each story is a memory that has been selected by the author to share and I try to give it ample opportunity for everyone to read it.

So... who's reading it? You'd be surprised. Recently Blogger started providing some statistics about the blog and here's some of the information for 2010.

Countries where the blog is viewed.

• United States
• Canada
• Mexico
• United Kingdom
• Netherlands
• Germany
• France
• Brazil
• Russia
• Finland
• Slovenia
• Poland

There are approximately 400 page views per month.

People are viewing from Windows, Macs, iPhones, iPads, Blackberry and more.

Top 10 Most Popular Posts:

1. Homemade Pies
   [Sept 10, 2008]
2. The Park on the Corner by KimB
   [Sept 10, 2010]
3. Green Tea
   [July 11, 2007]
4. A Trip to Scotland part 4 of 6 by KimB
   [July 24, 2010]
5. Theater Backwards in High Heels by Richard
   [Dec 7, 2010]
6. Things Forgotten and Visit Remembered by Loretta
   [Jun 22, 2010]
7. Memories of Jerry by Esther
   [Aug 17, 2010]
8. Thanksgiving
   [Nov 20, 2010]
9. Keyboards
   [Oct 27, 2010]
10. Substitutes
    [Jan 27, 2007]

So there's more to the blog than meets the eye and more eyes reading it than you'd think!

So here's to a New Year and to more posters and to more postings.  And especially to MrsB who wanted to start the blog in the first place!

KimB Editor