I am she...or her...or that girl over there...

If you're my age, you remember Sybil. She was the fictionalized version of Shirley Ardell Mason who had what psychiatrists then called multiple personality disorder. These days, the trend is to make all "bad" things seem better and/or politically correct by renaming them, so today it's called "dissociative identity disorder". Not that I believe for one minute I am channeling Sybil, but those who know me well discovered long ago I am multi-faceted, to put it nicely.

I grew up in the country and my imagination was my salvation.  I could make a game out of the simplest of objects...I was Laura Ingalls as I pulled my red wagon full of dollies across the hayfields...I was Annie Oakley with my tree branch fashioned into a pistol...I was poor pitiful Cinderella as I hung my fourth load of laundry on the clothesline. There were no limits to my imaginings as a child and those same schizoid tendencies still shape who I am today. Okay, I am not Sybil or anything close to being "clinical".  But I do lean towards an eclectic mix of things that make my bell ring, that make me smile, that bring me joy. You could say that I am my own little world of diversity, to be politically correct.

For instance, I grew up with guns and hunter/men on the ranch...they were a means to an end - FOOD on the table.  I don't really like guns today..they creep me out.  However, I do a own a Daisy.  Dave gave it to me on our anniversary one year, as I was so frustrated with a squirrel that kept snatching my figs.  I am actually a good shot, but I can't bring myself to actually shoot the little fur ball!

How can a girl be so into reading all about fashion...

Design, make and wear this...

And then wear this???

Or this, for that matter?? I have to remake this tee so I can wear it to church...just the fact that I love this horrendously violent biker show AND Jesus at the same time, is an oxymoron....

My guilty pleasure....

I love reading about the rural life with my blogging friends Gail (At the Farm) and Nancy (A Rural Journal). I often long to wander in the dry grass and scrub oak back "home".

A good hike on the Sutter Buttes is exhilarating...

but a day at the art gallery would be just as nice...

I moved from the quiet serenity of the country to the urban jungles of Oakland at 19.  It was a very difficult transition...all that cement. And even though we now live in a peaceful suburban neighborhood, I love my bi-weekly excursions back to Berkeley to visit the FabricLady, aka Suzan at Stonemountain.

A Peet's cappuccino on Fourth Street just tastes better than any coffee shop in my neighborhood.

Last evening, we met some friends at a dive bar, and I had a couple of Corona's, some bacon cheesy fries and a couple of sliders.  It was a fun time with friends. Today, Dave and I are headed for the wine country for a release party at our favorite winery, and I will satisfy my urge to be Laura Ingalls in the country and Merry Edwards in the vineyard, while hobnobbing with all those wanna-be sophisticated winos...

I think I'll wear pearls...and my Duck Dynasty tee-shirt.

Laurel. Dave says "there's no one like you"...I love him for that!

The Farmer

Magpie Tales

Mag 177

photo by Agustin Berrocal

The Farmer

Hour upon hour stringing snap beans
Canning tomatoes and corn
 Peeling lugs of peaches in the shade,
Picking blackberries with the rattlesnakes
Fifty cents a gallon
Bright coins burning holes in pockets at Woolworth's.
Children sitting amid the tall grass

Shucking piles of corn lit by the morning sun
Weeding young melon sprouts
Row upon row in the afternoon sun 

Digging in the soft red dirt

Starchy treasure unearthed in the evening sun

Yukon Gold for the dinner table

Bragging that everything he cooked 

came from the land

Taking for granted earth's bounty, we ate then

Remembering now, at my urban table, how he smiled

Corn stuck between his teeth.

Magpie Tales

Laurel. Farm to table...oh yeah.

Is it "FGF" or just Fall?

Though my Mom lives in the city limits of a small town, her heart remains in the country where I grew up.  Some 87 years young, she still "farms" her small backyard.  A haven for birds, butterflies and all manner of plants and flowers, her garden reflects an amazing green thumb that unfortunately must have skipped a generation.

Either it's just the nature of the Fall season, or I am having FGF...Farm Girl Failure. Granted, I'm not much into gardening, but I want all the trappings of the country at my city hacienda. It's starts off so lush and green in the early summer, with tomato blossoms promising luscious fruit and strawberry vines flourishing in the morning sun.  But by this time of year, the heat seems to have gotten the best of things and I am thinking I'm a pretty crappy gardener.

 A case in point...Why are my figs splitting???????????  I've been waiting to make a fig and goat cheese tart for months and now all I have is fig grenades that have already exploded.

 

If I pick them before they explode, I guess they are edible...but they aren't as sweet and juicy.

 



And what the heck is this? Looks like something from The Little Shop of Horrors".  I have already chopped it down once and it keeps coming back. It's HUGE. "Feed me, Seymour..."

I guess I shouldn't be too hard on myself.  The tomatoes have been wonderful and I have enough basil to have Caprese salad every night.  You can not beat a fresh garden tomato.

 

And who doesn't love a late summer rose, picked early in the morning?

 

FGF not withstanding, I guess it only matters that you try...

 

Even though it's Friday, I'm sharing today on Rural Thursdays and Floral Fridays.

 

 

Laurel. Coveting a nice garden. Or a gardener...

A Horse's Tale

Magpie Tales

Mag 125

Chilmark Hay, 1951 by Thomas Hart Benton

Keep telling yourself

the load is light

With each new day

another plight

My back is sagging

my hooves are sore

This yoke is rubbing

against the chore

Day in, day out

it's always the same

rusty wagon

almost lame

Perhaps my keeper 

could see his way clear

Throw in the towel

and get a John Deere



Every Sunday morning a new prompt of original artwork is posted on Magpie Tales for me to write about...a poem, a vignette...sometimes true, sometimes autobiographical..usually a figment of my imagination:) Thanks Tess...always a challenge.

Laurel. Ride a tractor, hayseed.