The Writer's Cramp

Well, maybe not that exactly.  I have taken up soap making, or soap pouring I suppose is more accurate.  The variety of soap blocks that you can buy for the purpose of refiguring it into something of your own design is huge.  It's called melt and pour, so here I go with the pouring again ... wink wink.
My initial ventures have been using molds, but now I'm wanting to do just blocks.  Of course that requires buying more supplies... so for now it's molds.  Anyway, Essential Oils are added...
( more soap... )

Big Thunderstorms over the past few days have been washing away dirt on the cars, pummeling plants like my peonies into the ground and striking out in scary ways in people's yards.  One woman said a lightening strike plowed a ditch in her yard.  She had just been outside with her dogs when it started and she got inside just in the nick of time.
I managed to gather a bouquet of my peonies, am hopeful that the two big bushes at the top of my steps will have the energy to perk up and not just hang onto the grass.

We have snow.  I can't see outside because the windows caught the freezing rain and now they're just a blurry white.  My only option for feeling warm and cozy turned out to be a fresh batch of biscuits.  Add some honey and butter... A necessary culinary skill in the South is a good scratch biscuit, and by golly I made some today.  Feeling proud of myself.

Here in this part of Kentucky, perhaps all of the state, Memorial Day is marked by decorations in the numerous cemeteries and community observances in front of the county courthouse.  This morning I will attend one of those ceremonies, one that my aunt has literally been living to attend.  Her son, my cousin Larry, will be honored as a native son whose life was forfeited in Vietnam.
Not only are the military and veterans honored on this day, but the memories of all loved ones who have gone on ahead into whatever eternity is.  I grew up in Southern California, and the culture of funerals and cemeteries swathed in floral displays does not exist there as it does here.  Small communities gather around each member in a way that the larger, disjointed populations of cities and suburbs cannot duplicate.  Large displays of support or condolence may exist, but it is not the same as one experiences in rural America.
Perhaps my favorite memorial to the past is the twin peonies that grace the top of the steps leading up to the yard and house.  My grandmother, Mammaw to me, planted them after moving into this house.  That makes these bushes about 100 years old, as is the house.  Every year they faithfully bloom, and then too soon the flowers are gone and the bushes must be trimmed back to remain simply greenery until the next spring.  It is an enduring, living legacy to the woman who first called this house home.
Happy Memorial Day to everyone.  I hope your day creates memories that will endure.

It snowed all night and every once in a while there was some ice mixed into it.  It's still snowing, the roads aren't clear and all of the schools and some businesses (the ones with sensible people in charge) are closed.  The brick parsonage across the street looks good in white accessories, but most of our little white houses are just fading into the snowscape.


Up the back part of the property is the infamous drive.  The car is not parked there this time.

bluemeanybeany posted that she can't find good Halloween haunts, so I'm going to let her borrow spooky Enchanted Forest character at the top of my drive.  Bwaahahahaha

One of my cousins came through town over the weekend, and lunch with him and his brother was a nice diversion from the everyday.  I am the youngest of all the cousins in what is a very small family by most standards.  We are all, in our own ways, slightly eccentric and vastly opinionated.  These two are eggheads most definitely, and in spite of their different choices in many things, they each have retained ( a birthright I seem to have not inherited) the ability to recite history, dates and names and everything else you need for an impromptu classroom.
Yesterday we covered quite a lot, encountered different opinions on some things and resolution on others.  It was a nice day.

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