"Gather," a poem by Rose McLarney

Some springs, apples bloom too soon.The trees have grown here for a hundred years, and are still quickto trust that the frost has finished.  Some springs,pink petals turn black.  Those summers, the orchards are emptyand quiet.  No reason for the bees to come.Other summers, red apples beat hearty in the trees, golden applesglow in sheer skin.  Their weight breaks branches,the ground rolls with apples, and you fall in fruit.You...

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MORE OREGON TRAIL STUFF

On Friday, Mom went back out on the Independence Route of the Oregon Trail and finished practicing to be a tour guide.  She took her camera along again, and now I have some more pictures to show you.  The first place Mom stopped was the Mahaffie Stagecoach Stop and Farm Historic Site.  Mom did not tour the house or the museum because (1) she didn't want to take the time, and (2) she will get to do that when she is there on the bus...

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A TALE OF TWO BASSETS

Five years ago, all the way back in 2007, there were these two basset hounds named Allie and Bama, and they had a happy home in Murfreesboro, TN.  Then suddenly one day, the two dogs vanished from their yard.  Their mom and dad, Brenda Travis and Tom Shields, looked everywhere for them, for a whole year.   But they never found a single trace of their beloved basset hounds.  Finally they decided that the dogs had been stolen, and...

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A TREE FROM MADAGASCAR

O. decaryi in habitatToday I'm going to tell you about the Jabily tree, which is also called Operculicarya decaryi.  In my opinion, this scientific name is way too long and hard to spell and also hard to pronounce.  Not that anybody asked me, but I'm just saying.  Sometimes the Jabily tree is called "elephant tree" because it has a fat trunk like an elephant's leg, but there are other trees that are also called "elephant tree"...

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MOM DOES THE OREGON TRAIL

Yesterday Mom was gone for hours and hours, but finally she came home.  And what she was doing was she was practicing to be a tour guide for the Oregon-California Trails Association convention that will be in August.  This is the same convention that Mom has been doing all the spreadsheets for.  When this convention is over with, we will have survived the worst part of The Year From Hell, and we hope we can have a normal life again!Mom...

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"The Meet at Blagdon"

It's time for me to write about another one of those placemats that Mom bought at an estate sale.  You know the ones I mean:  the placemats with fox hunt prints on them.  Anyway, today's print is called The Meet at Blagdon, and it was painted by a man named John W. Snow.  The engraver's name was Thomas Lupton, and he dedicated his work:To Sir Matthew White Ridley Baronet This Engraving from the Original Picture In his...

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