County and State Fairs

Cotton Candy

This morning I woke up with the Fuzzy One curled around my head.  It felt like my face was smooshed in a pillow of cotton candy.  That got me thinking about county fairs, midways with scary rides, church food stands, nightly performances, demolition derbies, and barns filled with 4-H projects.  In a couple of weeks the gates will open, and kids from 9 to 90 will stand in line at the concession stands waiting for something fun to eat.

When my buddy and I were dating, my absolute favorite county fair food was the foot-long hot dog with ketchup and onions. Funny thing, tho, back in those days the hot dog was truly a foot long.  Somewhere over the years the vendor's ruler shortened to about 8", and the intrigue just isn't there anymore.

What Are the Top 10 State Fair Foods?

1. Deep-Fried Everything, from pickles to butter.  The unofficial motto among fair vendors is "If you can fry it, you can eat it."
2. Funnel cakes, those insanely delicious fried cakes sprinkled with powdered sugar.  They're usually served on a paper plate....the same size as the plate.
3. Pies....pie-eating contests and pie-baking contests.  Who can eat the most?  Whose pie tastes the best? 
4. Sticky Caramel Apples.  
5. Cotton Candy, spun sugar first known as "Fairy Floss" when served at the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis.
6. The Bizarre, crazy concoctions.  For instance:  Kool-Aid Pickles, Krispie Kreme Burgers, or Hot Beef Sundaes (beef smothered with gravy, topped with a scoop of mashed potatoes, melted cheese, and a cherry tomato on top).
7. Corn on the Cob.  An ear of grilled corn in the husk, peeled down, slathered with butter, and sprinkles of salt.
8. Elephant Ears.  Flattened fried dough, butter, sugar, and cinnamon, big as an elephant's ear.  In some parts of the country, this is known as "Beaver's Tail."
9. Corn dogs.  A wiener encased in a thick layer of deep-fried cornmeal batter.
10. Food on a Stick.  Everything from a pork chop to a peanut-butter-jelly sandwich.

Remember the Tom Thumb Donuts? Lordie Gordie, we would watch the mini hot fresh cinnamon-sugar donuts being cranked out on a machine and served in small paper sacks.  Nothing was more fun than walking the midway eating warm donuts.

Hubby and I have a county fair memory that goes back to the first one we attended together.  I was 17, he was 18.  Of all frickin' things, he successfully got me through the gate on a "children's ticket."  He thought it was funny.  I didn't.  Little did I know that his silly prank was the beginning of a carnival ride that would twirl us through a lifetime together. 

"Value your time before you become busy.

Value your health before you become ill.

Value your youth before you become old.

Value your wealth before you become poor.

Value your life before you die."

Raking Hay

This is a hay field, raked into rows to dry.  There's nothing like inhaling the sweet smell of freshly-mowed hay.  It's the farmer's rose garden.

Corn is growing like magic.  Can't see the rows anymore, like we did when it first sprouted out of the ground.  Watching crops grow and the farmers tending to the crops will always be my fascination.  The farming practices I knew as a little girl are obsolete.  Today I'd be hard-pressed to identify the machinery that backs up traffic, as the owners lumber them from one of their farms to the other.

My mind still sees daddy patiently hitching up Barney and Daisy before heading up to his fields.  Oh, eventually a John Deere put-putt tractor replaced his beloved horses.  If I close my eyes and concentrate, I can still hear that putt-putt-putt.

In haying season, the four of us carefully watched the clouds and worked like crazy to get the hay raked, dried, and hoisted up into the hay mow before late afternoon rain storms.  Mother Nature slyly held the trump card in Her hand, and She was known to play for keeps if She was in a bad mood.  Many were our family prayer that She not flood or hail out our crops.

Like all kids who grew up on a farm in the 1950s, I have selective memory.  Time has a paint brush that glosses over reality and shines it up to be prettier than it actually was.  That's okay.  It's sorta like we harvest our memories like the farmer harvests hay...stockpiling the best crop we can.

"Climb Every Mountain"...Our Beloved Song

Forty-five years ago, right about this time, my best buddy and I sat across the desk from our parish Catholic priest.  He was explaining marriage to us, preparing us for the big "I Do Day."

Back then, the priest had to put his seal of approval on every part of the wedding ceremony, including the songs.  Wouldn't you know it....the one song I wanted at my wedding was the one he would not allow to be sung.  He said it was, "too worldly."

What song, you wonder?

"Climb Every Mountain" from the Sound of Music.  Interestingly enough, in the movie a nun sings the song urging Maria to "climb every mountain" in search of God's will for her life.

My best buddy and I, back in those days, were meek as mice in the presence of the white collar.   The sheet music shook as I handed it to Father so he could read the words to the song.  His verdict was quickly rendered.  I begged him to allow it, like a puppy pleading for a treat.  His answer was a firm and final no.

These are the words he forbid to be sung at our wedding Mass.....

Climb every mountain,

Search high and low,

Follow every highway,

Every path you know.

Climb every mountain,

Ford every stream,

Follow every rainbow,

'Till you find your dream.

A dream that will need

All the love you can give,

Every day of your life

For as long as you live.

To this day, I'm puzzled over Father's reasoning.  Here's why.....

Rainbow is mentioned 6 times in the bible, mountain 304 times, stream 73 times, dream 98 times, love 686 times, life 565 times, climb 28 times, path 108 times.

Maybe I wouldn't be hanging onto my hurt, but some years later a Polka Mass was held in this same church.  The closing hymn was, "In Heaven There Is No Beer."    

Guest Blogger

I'M   thE    FiZZy  1

Ya  WaNna  no  sumThin?

I  herd  myne  Daddi  tell  myne MommIe  that  fRogs  have  the mostesT  fun.

WannA  no  whY?

Cuz  thay  eetz  wHateVr  bugs  em!


BYe.

Three Words

How do the roses know June is their month?  Just look at these gems strut their stuff...like rubies and garnets, smiling in the sun.

Another tranquil day in the village. I'm weaving an ankle bracelet for my niece's mid-June birthday.  A few years back I gave her a store-bought one, and she still wears it.  That tells me she should have another, but one made especially for her.  I'm a stickler for handmade gifts.  It's a fine day to play.

If you've wondered why I chose Retired Nature Weaver for my blog name, here's why.

Retired identifies where I stand on the Ruler of Life.

Nature sustains my every breath.  No text book can teach a romance with nature like mine.  A child's ears and eyes are powerful learning tools.

Weaver, for me, is as faceted as the prism, reflecting itself in different directions. Childhood hours were spent watching my twin great-aunts and my mom work their big floor looms weaving strips of rags into beautiful rugs.  Their finished products were the desire of housewives in the 3-county area, and they paid to have them on their linoleum floors.  They would bring the rags, rolled into balls, to the ladies for weaving.  With the years, my passion for weaving grew, and I opted to navigate the calmer waters with the simpler, portable looms.  Half the fun was finding ways to adapt my interest to my lifestyle.

Life's loom soundlessly and senselessly weaves the good, the bad and the ugly things that happen to us.  It's like sliding into home plate when we finally realize that the bad and the ugly were the threads that created the most colorful parts of life's overall design.  It's that business of growing wiser, learning that our sorrows are as necessary as our joys.  Easy to say, agonizing to endure.

The art of weaving runs through my veins.  How well I remember the sunny day in Maine when three of us oared our way across a lake to a small island. Seaweed floated in the water.  I reached down and pulled out a string of weeds, and then two more.  Dripping with lake water in our boat, I wove them into one, let dry, and that, my friends, is my cherished souvenir from that visit to Maine.

It's interesting to pick three words to describe oneself.  I'm pretty sure if you'd ask hubby what three words best describe me, you'd get a different list.  The fun is looking inside to find what truly honors our existence.

Ta-ta for now.  I hear the call of the loom.

June is National Rose Month

Whether it's their fragrance, or their exquisite velvety feel, we remember roses.  Aren't they the Rolls Royce of American flowers?

Mom had the Seven Sisters Roses, clumps of pink blossoms, that grew in my childhood front yard.  Back in those days, it was a big deal when the rose bush blossomed.  I'd go pick small bouquets, bring them in the house, and put them in our saved jelly jars.

We're not a family that buys store-bought flowers very often.  We tend to prefer those that grow in the wild, and if we're walking along a stream or other secluded spot, a few stems might come home with us and stay until they wilt away.

My thumbs are not green.  I love flowers to death, but I have not the patience to produce eye stoppers.  The only plant in my house is a dear soul that thrives on my negligence.

The best way for me to celebrate Rose Month is to share the rose garden that is a 'must see' for us every year.  Obviously, it is a Master Green Thumb who nurtures this bed of beauties.

Splendor in the Garden

Roses Bring Smiles in Spring

The rose, with its thorns, teaches a life lesson.....

a thing of beauty may have some hurt attached to it.

Garden Art

Rabbits Not Allowed

This is our garden.  Framed with asphalt house shingles for ease of mowing, and a fence to keep the bunnies from munching.  Pretty as a picture!

The sprawling squash are planted by the back ledge, and the tomatoes and climbing green beans are back by the patio.  Hubby is the gardener, and he likes things neat and tidy.  He weeds, and he waters.  He unwinds the garden hose and winds it back up.

BLTs are a summer treat at our house.  Sometimes we buy the maple-flavored bacon, and that makes 'em even better. Whole wheat toast,  thick juicy slices of tomato, layers of lettuce leaves, and a few slaps of mayo.  I make mine into BLTOs by adding a slice of onion.  Like Andy Griffin used to say, "Them's good eats."

So many varieties of tomatoes these days.  I don't think there were so many to choose from when we were kids, cuz I remember only one kind of tomato.  They were big, round, and real red.  They tasted like a tomato....I mean, real juicy drippy meaty tomato.  With salt and pepper shakers handy, we ate 'em like apples.

Come harvest season, our small town busts at the seams with fresh garden produce.  Zucchini squash grow to the size of submarines, and the non-gardener is sure to inherit more than they want.  Last week a neighbor brought us samples of their early onions and radishes.  Yowza, yummy yum yum.  The red radishes snapped when we bit into them, and I even chowed down the green stems of the onions.  Where I live, it's common for one neighbor to tell another, "just help yourself to my garden if I'm not home."  It's that business of love thy neighbor.

"Gardening is the art
that uses
flowers and plants as paint,
and the soil...as canvas."
~Elizabeth Murray

Bird Feeder Vandalism

Boy, is there trouble at our house.....

"What the hell did this?" he exclaimed.

....a night prowler has been in our yard now for the third time.....

Last summer we cut this tree down, but left the trunk and one branch to feed the birds.  It's ain't the prettiest looking thing, but birds aren't as hoity-toity as we humans.  Heck, they fly in and out, happy as you please.  To them, it's the Waldorf Astoria.  Some come in fancy attire, others in casual.  We love them all.  Like the saying goes, "the moment a little boy is concerned with which is a jay and which is a sparrow, he can no longer see the birds or hear them sing."  ~Eric Berne  

Bird feeding is hubby's domain.  He rigs up ways to keep the squirrels away, he cares for and fills the feeders, buys the bird seed, mixes the nectar, readies the wren houses each spring, the whole shmear.  I'm around just for the fun of it.

So, who is the culprit that can straighten an S-hook, flip the feeder up on top of the roof of the one feeder, and empty the hummingbird feeder of its red nectar?  A squirrel surely wouldn't be interested in sweet water, would it?  Our main suspect is a raccoon, yet there is not one trace of evidence on the white wrapping that keeps the squirrels away.

For me, who doesn't have to put all this commotion back in order, it's funnier than funny.  But, my best buddy is not quite so amused.  I'm keeping all weaponry away from him until the case is solved.  He was one heck of an aim in his younger years, and I'm sure he could shoot a gnat off a bird's butt if so inclined.

So, there is our day thus far.  Filled with intrigue, angst, laughter, and mystery.  Maybe we'll have to set up a night watch, where one of us sleeps and the other waits and watches.  Right now, we're placing our bets that it's the masked bandit who's our night stalker.  When, and if, we find out for sure, I'll let you know.

Ta-ta.

Miracles In the Meadow

Yesterday's trolley took us on gravel roads, but there wasn't a whole lot of dust because of the recent rains.  Driving on our gravels quickly dirties a clean car.  One State bordering ours doesn't have gravels, and we envy those dust-free rural residents.

Wild Roses in Roadside Ditch

We made two camera stops.  My heart skipped beats when I spotted these wild roses in the roadside ditch.  Their sweet simplicity and unassuming presence shroud them with a majestic aura like a bride's veil.  The fragile pink rose, yet resilient and strong, 'to every breeze is flung.'

As we stopped our car for me to get out and take this picture, a utility truck stopped at the intersection and a young man stepped down out of it, and kindly asked if we needed help.  I thanked him, but said I wanted to take a picture of the wild roses.  He smiled a smile that said he thought that was kinda neat.  I, in return, gave him a smile that said I thought he was a real gentleman.  It's that business of mutual respect.

Mama and Her Colt at Lunch Time

One of the most captivating parts of springtime is the birthing of baby animals and birds.  Mama deer are bringing their speckled fawns out of the wooded areas, introducing them to the world, and birds are protecting their nests.  We put the brakes on when we saw this meadow mama providing noon-time sustenance for her colt.  I get such a kick out of the white spot on the black colt's forehead.  Mama eats.  Colt eats.  Mother Nature, their gracious hostess.

Oh, before I sign off, if you have a wish that you want to come true, now that it's springtime, all you have to do is whisper your wish to a butterfly.  It will silently carry your wish on its wings up to Heaven.  It's Mother Nature's Priority Mail system and works like a charm.