If you were a flower, which flower would you want to be?
Somewhere on the Internet, there is probably one of those fun psychological tests about just this question.
So if I were a flower, I think I would like to be a Coreopsis!

It is a wildflower that is indigenous to something like 90 percent of the United States. It is SUCH a happy yellow color. It is strong in the face of drought, heat and other unpredictable weather.

Coreopsis are carefree and low maintenance! (Gordon might agree that I am happy and resiliently, but somehow, I don't think Hubby sees me as low maintenance ! HA!

)
This version with the single row of petals is the State Wildflower of Mississippi. This particular little plant escaped the flower beds and is growing between bricks on the front walk!

The third picture is of the meadow that is now the peach orchard north of the old farmhouse.

In the early 90's, we planted it with and ox-eyed daisies.

For several years, we enjoyed a feast of summer color on that meadow until the vetch overtook the meadow and smothered out the wildflowers. (This is an early scan of a 35mm print, so it does not compare to Gordon's contemporary photos.

)
One of my favorite varieties of Coreopsis we have grown here on the farm is the deep, rich mahogany red .
The bi-colored is another favorite here on the farm.
We buy all of our wildflower seed from in Texas.

I first wrote about them .
It has been a week since I have felt like posting anything. The dreadful news from Virginia has prompted us to look inward and look to our family.

We have been working hard in the studio. We've completed a few projects, and we have made tremendous progress on other projects.
Gordon and I traveled Friday to a neighboring county to give a multi-media program.

We have been photographing the progress of Spring on the Farm. We have walked in the beautiful Spring weather, and we have spent time with the .
There have been so many little things that I have made a mental note to share with you.

I just have not had the desire or energy to write...

until tonight.
This particular peony is a plant that has lived and bloomed on this farm for over 100 years..

.literally. It is a charming story that I will share with you later.

We think we have identified the particular variety that was first documented and described in the West in 1808.
The second photo is of a crab apple tree on the west meadow overlooking the old farmhouse, circa 1870.
I've been sewing as much as possible.

That has been comforting and restorative.

Tonight I finished the second block of that stunning . Tomorrow, I will remove all the precious Westie hair from the piece, press it and photograph it to share with you.

The two Westie Rescues and my patient husband are all clean and waiting for a group snuggle and Gordon's customized channel-surfing programming. The snuggle will be relaxing and restorative (not the channel-surfing! *grin*)
These days, I need to stay in a peaceful place in my mind and heart .

..like that resilient peony that has survived 100 plus years on this farm.

That very peony root has survived drought, multiple transplants, mowers, neglect, and yet it emerges each spring with fresh beauty and new growth.
With God's help, I want to be renewed and re-energized like that peony.
I just have to share these beautiful flowers with you!

This stunning Japanese Magnolia was in a friend's yard in Starkville, MS, a couple of weeks ago. The ethereal dogwood blooms stretching toward the heavens are some of many on the farm.
I missed many of the phases of Spring this year because of that dastardly flu.

Thanks to my husband's photos and the pretty bouquets my Uncle picked and brought to my sick room , I did get to enjoy the beauty of Spring on the farm.
The Heirloom Daffodils are so intensely fragrant. Such tiny little things, no larger than a penny, but they work their little hearts out to fragrance everything around them!

I completely missed the pink daffodil mini season this year.
We have bought various pink-centered daffodil varieties over the years. At the moment, I am totally blank on the names of the varieties we have.

*humph* I'll have to come back and add those names after consulting my mother. She will remember!
The first pictured is an apricot-centered variety.

The salmon-colored center is another variety. Each variety matures into a different shade of peachy-pink. They charm and fascinate me!

Here is one of the get-well bouquets my uncle Charles Hamer picked for me while I was house-bound with epizoodics . He is always bringing in something in bloom which is a pure delight for my mother and me. (Gordon, Honey, are you taking notes?

*grin*)
How many of the flowers in the vase can you identify?
It has been a stunningly beautiful day. Perfect temperature, balmy spring breezes, blossoms bursting forth, fragrances wafting, dogs frolicking, and I've been hacking, cackling like a breeding farm for ducks!

Cough, cough, cough, moan. Wheeze, wheeze, gurgle when I breathe! That's ok.

This flu is going to be dead and gone soon. I WILL survive, and all these enforced hours of silence the last two-plus weeks have allowed me to think up a trunk-full of new ideas and projects! Now, all I need to do is whip up the energy of a couple of teenagers to follow through with those many ideas and projects!

HA!

These four leaf clover are pressed flat in one of the many dictionaries in the old farmhouse. For years.

..well, for as long as I can remember.

..we could no walk past a patch of clover without scanning it for any four-leaf clover configurations.

If one was found, that was supposedly good luck , and the prize was plucked and pressed into a dictionary.
All of our family dictionaries and some of the other large books have four-leaf-clover treasure tucked between the pages. The dictionary pictured above has quite a crop of them!

farm, pursuing a career in broadcast news, almost every letter from my mother would contain one of these four-leaf clovers! For years, I have wanted to collect all of the pressed four-leaf clovers that had been collected by my grandmother and my mother and even those I have pressed, and make a very sentimental collage of them. There are even a few five-leaf clovers among them!

Maybe this is the year I will be able to collect these small pieces of the farm's bounty and arrange them in a work of art in honor of all the women in the six generations of my family who have lived and worked on this farm. These strong women scanned everyday life on this family farm, watchful for the hidden treasure in each day..

.focused on the positives..

..looking beyond tough times to anticipate the better days that always followed.

I am thankful to have reached a point in my life where I, too, can spot some of this hidden treasure every day...

.the emotional oneness with this enigmatic Mississippi soil..

..the security of the values and standards passed to me from a salt-of-the-earth lineage.

...

my husband's warm cloak of protection as he faces life's new challenges with me, shoulder-to-shoulder...

.the daily demonstrations of pure, unconditional love from the dogs and Rosalie (the rescue Siamese-mix)..

..even the sparkling diamonds that appear each morning when the sun illuminates the dew, or the pieces of gold that appear on the ground and in the shrubbery when the evening sun dresses in shades of coral, peach, rose, pink and sometimes violet.

Our family traditions of sewing and needlework, voracious reading, creative cooking, friendship gardening and making gifts instead of buying them...

.so many habits and actions rooted in our farm-based heritage. I consider these handed-down traditions to be more valuable than gold.

Our resident Leprechaun, my 81-year-old Uncle Charles Hamer, brought in a treasure he had found this afternoon among his huge collection of books. (Wikipedia says a leprechaun usually take the form of old men who enjoy partaking in mischief. Yep, that's Unc to a T !

)
Dressed in an appropriate green shirt today, he pulled out a 1935 little book titled Gems of American Architecture, published in 1935 by The L.A. Vitorie Company.

(L.A. Vitorie, i.

e., lavatory..

..get it?

)
William Royal Greer holds the copyright on the little book that features photos of old out-houses. Some examples were absurd, some were ingenious, and all examples of architecture were presented with some great tongue-in-cheek text!

The back of the little book indicates it was a little advertising freebie given away by the Houston Evans Mortgage and Realty Company.

, Inc. of Jackson, Mississippi. The old phone numbers are a hoot too: EM 2-5808.

That must have been in the day of the human switchboard operator.
This is such a charming little piece of ephemera, and I will share it with you, page by page..

..but later.

I've used up my little bit of energy now, and I need to let my body fight off the dregs of this icky flu.
Today is spectacular! Today is for recharginng the senses.

Today I only crop the photos. There is no need to Photoshop the colors. How can a sky even be this blue in real life?

At dusk last night, the sky was a study of corals, pinks and violets. Again, the photo only required a crop. How can an evening sky even be this brilliant in real life?

I read somewhere that our planet Earth is like a giant Hallmark card from G_d. The beauty around us was designed as a reminder of how much He loves us.
Today, the beauty and the saturated fragrances and the hum of spring here on the farm is like a magnificent multi-media museum filled with priceless art.

This symphony of beauty shames me.
As a mere mortal, I am pursuing art that, at best, can only be a pale shadow of the original.
I am in awe.

I am humbled.
Goodie, Goodie! Some fresh, farm-raised venison from our farm!

Beautiful lean meat. No preservatives. Fed on our cotton crop, garden, fruit and flowers.

Not run by hunting dogs, so the meat is mild and more tender.
We've ground venison into hamburger meat, spicy cajun-style sausage and mild Italian-style sausage. There are packages of venison roast, venison tenderloin, venison steaks (like minute steaks), venison stew meat, and venison ribs.

It is quite a production of Cloroxing all the surfaces in the kitchen and all the pans we will be using. The table gets covered with white butcher paper . Freezer bags are labeled with our custom freezer labels.

These freezer labels were the result of a burst of Martha-Stewart-itis one day after we had cleaned out freezers, finding so many packages of unidentifiable food that had to be thrown out because of freezer burn. (Grrrr, It hurts my feelings to throw out those packages of freezer-burned food.)
I've taken off the farm reference and Gordon has turned these pages into a .

pdf file for you to download if you wish. (Next I have to figure out how to upload a .pdf for you to download.

If I can't figure it out tonight, please check back the next few days.)
enamelware baking pans. These are a sunny yellow and an avacado green, but I'm collecting this shape pan in any color.

We made a big batch of little venison patties for the dogs. They are about the size of a squished golf ball, and we let the dogs eat them raw.
If you have not heard about enhancing a dog's diet with the same type of raw foods that canines in the wild would eat, then Google the BARF diet sometime.

No kidding, that is the name. I forget what the letters stand for, though.
We are not on a full BARF diet around here, but I do like to supplement the dry kibble with vegetables, fruit, yogurt, buttermilk and raw meat, all of which the dogs LOVE!

This Dog Treat label also works for the little liver cookies we make for the fur-babies. I ran into a recipe recently for yogurt and bananas made into frozen treats.

If you like, I will share the recipes as well as the labels.

You should taste our Venison BBQ and Venison Crockpot Lassagne! They are fabulous!
The labels are printed on one large sheet of sticky (adhesive-backed) label paper, 8.

5 x11 that you can find at office supply stores. You could also make a freezer label into any pre-cut label size.
Does one sleep better when the freezers are organized, food is being eaten before it gets too old, and space is being made in the freezers for the summer veggies and fruit?

Yep...

I sleep decidedly better. *laugh*
Time for some of that contented sleep-of-the-organized-freezer-people. *wry grin*
Sleet is falling at this hour on the farm.

The temperature is below freezing, so it will accumulate. We may have a fairy wonderland of ice by morning, or we may just have slippery steps and roads. I vote for that fairy wonderland of ice!

Before the sleet started to fall, my uncle Charles Hamer (Unc) picked yellow daffodils that have been bursting from the earth several months early, and he cut some branches of white and red japonica that were beginning to bloom (also very early).
We always have some japonica and even yellow bell (forsythia) inside in January or early February to force . That means if you catch the branches in various stages of budding, you can bring them indoors where it is much warmer and force the buds into bloom.

As a child, I remember putting food coloring in the vases to watch the dye appear in streaks in the petals of the emerging flowers. That was magical to watch as a child.
Now my equivalent magic entertainment comes from Photoshop CS2.

The Sopranos is on A E tonight. We never saw the series in the first few years when it was all the rage. Now that A E is carrying the series, I can see why there was a big fuss over it!

What is it about Mafia movies that is so addictive?
We're ready to be ice-bound for a number of days. The vehicles are gassed up; antifreeze checked; extra gas and diesel in cans; propane tanks have been topped off; groceries and essentials stocked; generator ready; a big pot of soup is ready; and we cooked a turkey today.

We know the drill here on the farm. As the last telephone and electrical customer on this line, we have to be able to last for days without the essentials. When you are ready for it, it can be kinda fun.

Oooh, I just remembered...

We need to charge the camera and videocamera batteries and reformat the memory cards...

to be ready to photograph that winter wonderland I hope will be draped over the farm when we awake.
By the way, if you have a favorite quilt or fabric shop in Mississippi, please so that I can add it to my !




We don't make New Year Resolutions here on the farm.

We make a Fresh Start. My goal the first day of each year is to do a little of those activities I want to do all year long. That comes from the old wives' tale that what one does on New Year's Day, one will find themselves doing all year long.

Before midnight last night, the Christmas trees were down, and the other decorations were down. We still have to finish packing up the decorations, and I want to finish photographing the little log and twig buildings to share with you.
Our family operates under the fear of grave misfortune if the New Year arrives to find our Christmas decorations still on display.

Is that just a Southern superstition? Gordon (from New Mexico and Texas) had never heard of that motivational superstition.
(While I prattle on about the New Year, here are two new in the process of revealing their full beauty.

I'm excited that one will probably be a yellow or cream color! This is a lovely way to welome in the New Year!)
Yes, today we ate our Black-eyed peas and greens (either spinach or tunipgreens) with little pieces of ham-hock cooked in it.

The Black-eyed peas are for luck, and the greens are for money in the new year. One MUST eat a little piece of the ham hock as well. Don't ask me why.

...

I'm a Southern woman, and that is just what we do! *grin*
I'm certainly not going to risk misfortune all year long by refusing these healthy veggies on this one day! I even fed a small portion of the peas and greens to the dogs today so that they will have a safer year.

*grin*
Gordon, on the other hand, is resistant to vegetables. He just refuses to eat vegetables all year long, and he refused to even eat a tiny spoon-full of these traditional veggies today, even for the sake of superstition. If he has a year full of misfortune and bills, then it is all his fault!

LOL
My Fresh Start each New Year is to start something new...

something that stretches me artistically. Today I have started a new sculpture of a Westie, and I finished another new sculpted design of a woman sewing (for a brooch).
We took a nice early this morning.

That is a great way to start off the business side of 2007! I visited with Mama and Unc in the farmhouse while creating a new, original applique pattern. (This represented making time for family all year long.

)
Before the end of 1/1/07, I will have washed and folded some clothes, washed dishes, taken time for a little skin pampering with some delicious scented lotion (in addition to my new focus on age spot fading! *grin*)
We will make time to snuggle with dogs and snuggle with each other while Gordon watches a football game. In other words, we are trying to do today what we want to be doing all year long.

The biggest stretch for me today was to just jump in and make a pattern for an applique design. I've never made a pattern to share with quilters before. There is a sneak peek for you in the next post, hopefully later tonight.

In this new year, I plan to make it a practice to notice beauty on a tiny scale in nature.
This third picture is from some wood-boring worms that chomped this pattern in a cedar log that borders one of the flower beds. Does it not look like some kind of prehistoric cave art?

I can see the figure of a man running, and what looks like a cave drawing of a dog above the man. What do you see?
your traditions on New Year's Day.

Aren't these Cattleyas breath-taking? This is a photo from . They are the oldest (and largest?

) orchid grower in the country, and they moved to Natchez, MS, over ten years ago. Reportedly, the land they leased in California became too expensive, and Natchez, with its humidity, was a perfect fit.
I've been very excited this month about my discovery of this famed orchid grower in Mississippi, but this morning I read on an orchid forum that the company had reportedly sold off its vast collection of superior cattleyas back in June.

Their is still up and running, so maybe, hopefully they are still in business. For anyone who has experienced the Natural Outdoor Sauna of Natchez, it makes perfect sense that it is a superior place for growing orchids!
ANYWAY, the reason I am blogging about orchids is that one of our presents to Mama this year was a nice group of cattleya orchid plants for her to watch bud out and open!

Back in 1989, I started sending an orchid plant (mostly cattleyas) to my father from a mom-and-pop grower near Calloway Gardens in Georgia. They would carefully ship an orchid that was almost ready to bloom, and for about three weeks, my father could watch the bloom open. His health confined him to his recliner or his bed, so this was something colorful and interesting to bring a spark of activity to his shut-in life.

We who still have our eyesight, nimble fingers and freedom of mobility find it hard to imagine how still and listless life can become to someone who can no longer use their senses to feed their mind or who can no longer get around to absorb that fresh new stimuli.
This Christmas, I remembered the lessons I learned from seeing Daddy's enjoyment of those orchids, and I began a search for another orchid grower who could supply us with some beauties that my mother, age 84, could watch from her recliner.
Enter Glorious, Beloved, Alluring eBay!

I discovered Bromlady, a in Bogue Chitta, MS. Is that not a name to tickle the imagination?!

carefully...

and I mean CAREFULLY...

packaged three cattleya plants that had buds emerging from the sheath (hope my nomenclature is correct). Folks, not even one piece of the bark potting soil had fallen out of any of the pots!
One of these beauties has already bloomed (photo above) and is sending forth two more buds!

The others have multiple buds on them as well. (I never knew our muggy Mississippi weather was so perfect for orchids!) Her prices were stunningly less than I had to pay from the Georgia grower 17 years ago.

Since I am determined to learn how to nurture these orchid plants into subsequent blooming (that means that I am determined to NOT kill them!), has been very helpful with advice about how I should tend to these eningmatic denizens of the Rain Forest.
We have a long-distance friend who traveled and collected orchid species from the wild years ago.

I think that is not done now. Her stories of Orchid Adventures are spellbinding!
As the blooms emerge, I'll be posting photos of the other orchid blooms that bring their fragile beauty and color into our usually drab, anti-climatic January!

I've loved orchids for a long time, although I was more familiar with the corsage type! A while back I even sculpted an orchid ornament and brooch/necklace. The brooch has a little doo-dad on the back that slides over a chain to make the piece into a necklace.

They are . The ornament is a Limited Edition. Both are finished by hand, the fired porcelain is polished, PSP Gift Box, etc.

Christmas Gif' to you!
One of the Christmas traditions here on the farm is to try to be the first one to say Christmas Gif' to everyone else. Sounds silly, I know, but my 84-year-old mother and 80-year-old uncle (who live here on the farm in the old farmhouse) are maniacal about plotting to be the first one to say Christmas Gif' to me.

When Gordon joined the family three years ago, he was introduced to this family tradition with a pre-dawn phone call from Unc, shouting, Christmas Gif' ! I had failed to warn poor Gordon of our little tradition.

Each year, it is a mental game to see how one can out-stealth the other to be the first one to say those infamous words.

I must confess that my uncle is the winner most of the time.
I'll have to ask Mama and Unc today if they know the origin of this impish little tradition.
Mama's family opened presents Christmas morning; Daddy's family opened presents Christmas Eve.

Because of this blending of traditions, I grew up opening presents from the family on Christmas Eve and presents from Santa on Christmas Morn. (Oh, no, I was not a spoiled only child!)
Now off to our Christmas morning traditon of biscuits and cheese.

I'd love to hear some of your family traditions, especially the ones that make no sense (like our Christmas Gif')! Do you have this Christmas Gif' tradition your family?
Merry Christmas, and.

...

...

..CHRISTMAS GIF'!

It's an Apple Tree...

.Pineapple Tree..

...

Fruit Tree...

...

We topped ours today with a Bois d'arc Ball (also known as Osage Orange, Horse Apple and Hedge Apple, and the greenery is a hardy evergreen vine here in the South, Smilax laurifolia.

The Apple Tree at (below) in Natchez, Mississippi, is made from all red apples and cedar tips for greenery.
This traditional form of decoration is often marketed with references to Williamsburg or Charleston.

A pineapple is often seen as the crowning ornament (below).
Sometimes we use oranges or lemons on our Apple Tree , making it an interesting decoration year round. Our few resident boxwoods have been scalped too often during the year for us to use boxwood this Christmas.

The possibilities are only limited by your imagination!

how you decorate your apple tree or similar traditional fruit display!
Years ago, there was a Christmas commercial with the punch line, OH, It is JUST what I always wanted.

...

...

but, WHAT is it?
My Uncle Charles, Unc , made things this year as the family Christmas presents. We had GREAT fun sending them to Gordon's family in Texas, without revealing what they were!

Can you guess?
These hand-made gifts started life as part of a hardwood tree on Hamer Hills Farm near Kilmichael, Mississippi.
That's Unc standing by a cherry log to give a sense of proportion to the width of the log.

Two of our English Sheperds, Belle (in background) and Sunny (in foreground) follow Unc everywhere.
These are just some of the trees felled by Hurricane Katrina when she roared through Mississippi, August 29, 2005. Even though our farm is a good 5.

5 hour drive from the Gulf Coast, we had quite a storm, and we lost a good many huge hardwood trees. I think Katrina was still a Category 1 when she blustered through here, rocking the giant trees back and forth like wiggling a loose tooth. Finally, the trees could take no more, the ground was saturated with the heavy rains, and the trees just popped up out of the earth with a huge root ball.

Photos of that another day.
Throughout this year, Unc has been pulling logs up from the surrounding acres of woodland on our farm, collecting them on this hilltop in view of the old farmhouse, with plans to have the logs milled into lumber. He has dragged up walnut, native cherry, oak, hickory, elm, cedar, honey locust, and even dogwood and magnolia!

Some of the larger branches, like the magnolia in the lathe in this photo, Unc has been making into mystery Christmas gifts!

Is it modern art? Maybe a radio antenna?

Perhaps it is destined to display jewelry on one's dresser? We did not tell the recipients! Mean, huh?

We sent a letter the next day with photos demonstrating how this thing could be used throughout the year!

I think I will wait until later today or tomorrow to post about just what this thing really is! your best guess!

Happy Christmas Eve Day, everyone!