Think CoVid Can't Happen To You? Think Again by @JoanReeves

Yep. That image describes the way I feel today. Completely crazed.

You see, this summer has been sheer hell. It all started with moving. A thunderstorm accompanied my furniture and other belongings into our "new" home on moving day.

I spent all day wiping down our belongings and mopping up the new hardwood floors installed a few days prior to the moving van arriving.

Fun? Not even a little bit.

The rest of July and into August was spent getting estimates from contractors for underground drain system, gutters, painting, lighting upgrade, and alarm system installation.

The one thing all those contractors and companies had in common was that no one could get to the work we wanted done until September. It seemed as if the entire world was in the process of home remodeling.

Then a couple of weeks ago, none of that mattered. Our older daughter developed CoVid pneumonia (caught the Delta variant from someone not immunized. She also was not immunized because she'd listened to her many anti-vax friends.) She was hospitalized a few days later. Coded while in the hospital but was revived.

It's been a scary two weeks. She's in a rehab facility now while she tries to walk again and care for herself and get well enough to go home to her three children.

Please Get Immunized

I know many are anti-vax. Educate yourself rather than take heresay for a decision that may mean the difference between life and death.

Here is just one article about the background of mRNA vaccines that was shared by author Sherri Easley. Do a Google search, and you'll find many more. Don't listen to your friends and family who are anti-vaccination unless they are medical doctors, researchers, microbiologists, etc. Be informed. It could save your life.

That's all I have to say on the subject. Next month I'll talk about a fun romance, but this month, my heart and my thoughts are on my daughter who is struggling to return to normal life.

Who was Duncan Hines? By Sherri Easley

I am always fascinated with the random information I come across while researching a book.

So, my character, Emma, is going on a road trip from Nashville to New York in 1942. I was looking for restaurants for that time period in the vicinity of Bowling Green, Kentucky. It is hard to visualize that area with no interstate highways and only a few chain restaurants. Travelers would have had to eat at local restaurants and diners. What did my research come up with?

Duncan Hines.

We all have the cookbook and buy the cake mixes- but who was Duncan Hines and why is he known for food?

The following is what Wiki has to say:

Duncan Hines worked as a traveling salesman for a Chicago printer and in his travels, ate many meals on the road across the United States. Hines and his wife Florence began assembling a list of several hundred good restaurants around the country to give to their friends. This was around 1935 when he was 55 years old. That year, they slipped this list inside the Christmas cards they sent to friends.

The list was a hit. The next year his list had grown to 475 suggestions, so he put it in book form, calling it Adventures in Good Eating. By 1946, the book had gone through 30 printings and had become the restaurant bible of the American traveling public.

The book proved so successful that Hines wrote another book on recommended lodging. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Hines wrote a food column Adventures in Good Eating at Home, which appeared in newspapers across the US every Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday. The column featured restaurant recipes he had collected during his travels, now adapted for home cooking.

In 1952, Duncan Hines bread was introduced through the Durkee's Bakery Company of Homer, New York. This was Duncan Hines' first foray into baked goods.

By 1953, Hines sold the right to use his name and the title of his book to Roy H. Park to form Hines-Park Foods, which licensed the name to several food-related businesses. The cake mix license was sold to Nebraska Consolidated Mills in Omaha, Nebraska, which developed and sold the first Duncan Hines cake mixes.

In 1957, Nebraska Consolidated Mills sold the cake mix business to Procter & Gamble. The company expanded the business to the national market and added a series of related products.

Hines died of lung cancer in 1959, 11 days short of his 79th birthday.

The Duncan Hines brand is now owned by Conagra Brands, which was formerly Consolidated Mills where it originated. 

Conagra reacquired the brand through its acquisition of Pinnacle Foods in 2018, which had bought it from Procter & Gamble in 1997.

99¢ SALE--AND AN ANECDOTE!

 By Caroline Clemmons

When we purchased our first home, we threw ourselves into landscaping. Hero planted a large garden that included a row of Thompson seedless grape vines. The trees we planted were silver maple and sycamore. We’d been there about two years when Hero received a lucrative job offer from a firm in California. A coworker in Hero’s office bought the house. We moved to Cupertino, near San Francisco and San Jose. We only stayed in CA a year, but that’s another story.

Several months went by and Hero called the man who’d bought the house. “Hey, Lynn, how are you liking the house?”

“We love the house really well, but not the yard. Those trees you sold us died.”

Hero was incredulous. “How could they have died? They were in really good condition when we left.”

“Well, you might have thought so, but all the leaves fell off and the branches are bare as skeletons. I’ll have to dig them up and replant.”

Hero said, “Lynn, it’s winter. That’s why the leaves fell off. They’ll leaf back out this spring.”

Lynn sounded petulant. “That’s what your neighbor said when I roto-tilled the grapevines. She came over and took some of the roots home with her.”

One of the most common trees in the Dallas-Fort Worth area is the live oak. If you’re familiar with this tree, you know that, although it is deciduous, it grows new leaves all year so the branches are never bare. I think Lynn must have lived around live oaks all his life—or maybe he never paid attention to the trees until he had a mortgage.

If you’re in the mood for a bargain read, MURDOCH’S BRIDE, book 3 of my Loving a Rancher Series, is on sale for 99¢ through Thursday. Most of the book takes place in a couple of snowstorms and freezing cold. Isn’t that what you need to cool off during this hot weather? Here’s the url in case you haven’t read this book yet https://www.amazon.com/Murdochs-Bride-Loving-Rancher-Book-ebook/dp/B07G2JY77F/

 

The Time of Lilies

(Star Gazer Oriental Lily) 

Liles reign in July. Their stately spires and glorious blooms take centerstage when the Japanese beetles are at their worse and my poor roses are frazzled and frayed. Two years ago, without realizing how big they'd get, I planted bulbs of a large white lily. The image accompanying the advertisement pictured the stalks towering over a small child, so I figured maybe about waist/chest height on me. I had not yet heard of tree lilies and missed the image of these flowers rising above a women. The first season they were big but not like this second year. They're taller than me. Lilies rise from the Memorial Garden like Jack's beanstalk, with an incredibly sweet fragrance. Their pure white flowers scent the air, especially in the evening, but it's always heavenly near them. 

 One of our Old Order Mennonite neighbors called me about these giants. She frequently passes our farm in her horse and buggy and has ample opportunity to admire the flowers. These lilies are like nothing she's ever seen. If I get around to it this fall, I'll divide this clump and give her several bulbs. I also grow the Star Gazer Oriental lilies and a variety of others. Lilies are magical additions to the garden. Last fall I fell all over Breck's lily grab bag sale and wound up with quite a few new varieties. Exciting! But I was busy getting these bulbs in until Christmas. Fortunately, the ground wasn't frozen hard. Last winter was mild. 

Who knows about 2021-2022? 

 My main challenge with lilies isn't winter but spring. I mulch the bulbs well to discourage early growth. Even so, they are almost always lured out by an unseasonable warm spell in April and then zapped by frost. Every spring I'm out covering clumps of lilies to try and protect the sensitive stalks from the icy blast. If a stalk is hit, it's gone. Tiger lilies are more resistant to the cold. I also grow daylilies and they can handle lower temps than the Oriental and Asiatic varieties. These beauties are worth the battle, I remind myself on those chilly spring evenings. They are royalty. (White tree lilies below)

"Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they toil not, neither do they spin; yet I say unto you, Even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these." ~Matthew 6: 28.

Lilies and I have a long history. I memorized this verse (part of a longer passage) as a child and proudly recited it for the entire school. Those were different days. It was a public school in Bristol, Tennessee. I've always liked this passage as it assures us of God's care, but also because of the lilies. I loved flowers even then. I checked to see what variety of lily is referred to in this verse and it seems they are a native red anemone. Very pretty, but not what I'd envisioned. I guess something got lost in translation. Just as well, the word anemone would have gone over my head as a child.

(Above: Red carpet of flowers in Shokeda Forest, Israel. Image by Zachi Evenor.)

If you haven't ever planted lilies, give them a go. Watch for sales. I have several dozen bulbs to get in the ground from a summer sale. I plant them in among the roses and other flowers. A perfect cottage garden plant, the look I aim for, and if you're seeking inspiration, lilies have that in abundance

(Tiger Lilies)

(The white lilies again)

SUMMER IS SLIPPING BY

 by Judy Ann Davis

QUESTION: What do you call a snowman in July?

ANSWER:     A puddle.

As I sit here, I realize our hot summer days are gliding by, or in some instances melting away, as we inch toward autumn. If you’re a list maker like I am—if only in your mind counts, too—you realize completing your summer chores and your big hope for writing that blockbuster novel are fading away in your rear view mirror. I’m kidding when I say, blockbuster novel. Insert: Even finishing five chapters of a work in progress.                                                                                    

This year, I took the rights back to one of my western romances, Under Starry Skies. I had no clue how much time and energy is involved trying to get it formatted and republished in digital and print form. Add trying to secure a more colorful and relevant cover and the days seemed to spin out of control. I lived, ate, and slept with “Under Starry Skies,” instead of enjoying being under them, lazing about on my patio during the balmy evenings.

As I reflect on the all the work, I wonder whether readers truly understand all the effort involved with writing and publishing a novel. It’s so much more than creating and writing the story. It’s the behind the scenes tasks: editing, formatting, and collecting inside materials that preface or conclude your work. It’s pounding the keys on social media. It’s advertising. It’s pricing to entice readers.

So as I slog through my many tasks, I do have a bright ray of sunshine. My historical novel,  Willie,My Love, placed as a finalist in the 2021 NEST awards (National Excellence in Story Telling Contest). It had earlier won a Book Excellence Award.

I’ll close with the blurb of my latest republished western romance in digital version—with the hopes that I just might view the real stars in Central Pennsylvania sometime after I finish the print version.

 BLURB for Under Starry Skies:

Hired as the town’s school teacher, Maria O’Donnell and her sister Abigail arrive in the Colorado Territory in 1875, only to find the uncle they were to stay with has been murdered.

Rancher Tye Ashmore is content with life until he meets quiet and beautiful Maria. He falls in love at first sight, but her reluctance to jeopardize her teaching position by accepting his marriage proposal only makes him more determined to make her part of his life.

When their lives are threatened by gunshots and a gunnysack of dangerous wildlife, Tye believes he in the crosshairs of an unknown enemy. Not until Maria receives written threats urging her to leave does she realize she is the target instead of the handsome rancher.

With the help of Tye, Abigail, and a wily Indian called Two Bears, Maria works to uncover her uncle’s killer and put aside her fears. But will she discover happiness and true love under Colorado’s starry skies?

LINK: Under Starry Skies

JUDY ANN DAVIS AUTHOR PAGE

Down on the Boardwalk by Bea Tifton

People who know me also know that I am not an outdoorsy person. I like nature, but I can’t take the blistering summer heat and I overtire easily. So, it was a nice surprise when a friend and I had lunch in a neighboring small town on an overcast, cooler than average day last week. We stuffed ourselves with chips, queso, and enchiladas, then decided to explore the new boardwalk in town.

It wasn’t exactly what I expected. I thought it would be a wide boardwalk with a restaurant and a few stores. But it’s actually for people who like to stroll or fish along the lake. There were benches scattered along in case we got tired. We decided to try it out. The boardwalk itself was made of spongy material that felt like those old moon walk shoes I remember from when I was a small girl. It rolled and splashed a bit with the water, but we couldn't feel it.

 As we began our walk, the water made the area a bit cooler and there was a slight breeze. We passed under big trees that kept me from overheating. It felt like we were miles from town. There weren’t any other people in sight, or any birds. I guess they were hiding from the sun, too. The buzz of the cicadas were almost mesmerizing as we walked along. We kept looking over the rails to see if we could spot turtles, but we never saw any. They  were probably with the birds. I did see one baby water moccasin darting away under the water, but he was too quick for me to get a picture. I doubt it would have come out, anyway, as I’m smart enough to keep on the right side of the safety rail. And we saw a couple of minnows, probably glad I scared away the snake. There were colorful dragonflies darting about on the water lilies.

Did I mention the lilies? The lily pads were the size of charger plates, and the lilies themselves were the biggest I’ve ever seen. Their perfume was sweet but not cloying, sort of like magnolia blossoms, which I love. I didn’t even know waterlilies had a scent. What looked like miles of them stretched out to the lake beyond. 

 

 

 

 

 We finally spotted one lone fisherman, just packing up. As we passed his spot, we saw his line in the tree with his bobber, happy to be free, rolling on the water. No wonder the fisherman was in such a hurry when he saw us.

We turned around to trek back and were just getting overtired when we reached my friend’s truck, a little sweaty by that time, but very happy. It was the perfect day to explore. And maybe we even managed to walk off our enchiladas from lunch.

Rain Trueax is still in a no-Internet zone, but she'll be back in her regular blog spot soon.