Words and Pictures that take me home

Photo: https://grannymarigold.blogspot.com/

Words and pictures can set our memories loose. This one makes me think of home and Christmas holidays. The word home is a prompt that provokes pages and pages of writing for me.

This picture takes me back to Santa's Forest, our Christmas Tree farm. Barry and I joined Gay and Stu in planting and growing trees on the family farm in southwest Georgia. It was Gay's idea and she convinced us to go into the business although Barry had misgivings from the start.

None of us knew how much hard work went into growing the trees from little plantings we purchased in February, heeled in, until we could plant them in the rows we had plowed with our little Kabota tractor. We began with a five-acre farm and planted one acre, a new crop, each year because it took five years for the trees to be large enough and shaped properly to sell. Gay was amazing. She learned how to prune those trees and each summer, she hired a crew of teenage boys and taught them how to properly trim the limbs to make the pines look like Christmas trees. 

Gay and I heeling in the young plants that would become Christmas Trees in five years.

We soon found that I was not much help with all that outdoor work. 

My allergies were triggered by the spray used to kill weeds and keep insects from harming the trees. But my little sister was determined to make a go of that farm and she did. She might go home looking like she had been dipped in a vat of green dye, but that was because she had been on the tractor all day greening the trees so they would look pretty to the Christmas shoppers.

The fun part of tree farming for me was selling the trees to the people who came to cut their own.

Families chose the one tree that would best fit into their home. We played Christmas music that helped keep us all in the holiday spirit. It could be heard all over the farm. We rented a small trailer for the season. It was used as our sales office and the place where we could retreat when the weather was cold and nasty. 

Many friends and their families made tree shopping at Santa's Forest a family tradition. Although we had fun and enjoyed working together, it became a full-time job for Gay. I am happy we gave this enterprise a go. I learned so much and I think we all learned many things that have served us well over the years.

The tree farm became too much for Gay to handle alone.

It was sold to a family member who soon learned that tree farming was not as easy as it seemed. He let the trees grow large and thick and turned the farm into a once-a-year event that has been fruitful for him. Santa's Forest is now The Haunted Forest and people from all around the area make an annual October trip to the haunted forest where they get their Halloween excitement.  Family members and their friends work together to create scary thrills for those who are brave enough to enter. 

Christmas holds so many memories for me and they are all centered on family and home. 

Do you have happy Christmas memories? Where do they take you?

Books make great Christmas gifts

Paws, Claws, Hooves, Feathers, and Fins

Now Might as Well be Then

Feannag by Carroll S. Taylor

Blanche by Brenda Kay Ledford

Liri: Poems of a Woodland Woman by Mary Ricketson 

Making My Way in Ethics, Worship, and Wood: An Expository Memoir by William Everett

What does October Mean to You?

October is here! That means fall, pumpkins, cornstalks, and Halloween. Down on the farm, my nephew and his buddies will open the Haunted Forest, which he does each year. Hundreds of people come out to ride through the pine forest which was once a Christmas Tree farm my sister Gay and I sweated over each summer. When my nephew bought it, he let the trees grow up, and now he works one month a year and makes more than we did, I think. I've never been through the Haunted Forest which was Santa's Forest years ago, but I hear that the creative ways used to scare the pants off all who enter is beyond imagination. My friend, Sue, said she took her young grandson and he was terrified and she was just as scared.

I was never much for Halloween. When we were kids, we did not trick or treat. When you live on a farm, the neighbors are few and far between. At school we drew pumpkins and colored them orange. We cut out black cats and gave them green scary eyes. But that was it. Sometimes the  teachers gave us Halloween candy which I never liked.

But all that changed after Barry and I met the Clarkes, Linda and Dick. This couple held the best Halloween parties ever. They transformed their house, their property and themselves into a fantasy of what you imagine Halloween to be. They became characters so real I didn't recognize my friends. Linda became the ugliest witch, long nose, pointed hat and fingernails that frightened me.

Her green face completely hid the pretty woman I knew. Dick, a tall serious man for the most part, opened the door to greet us. Who was this ugly hunchback with wild  hair and distorted features?

Igor and the Witch with her Cabbage Patch doll

Here they are again, another party, another year

Not to be outdone, Barry found a mask that became the basis for the character he created. He dressed in overalls, packed on a paunch, and developed a voice for the old man he became when he put on this mask. We  went to  the party together, but once there we separated. He came in after I  had been there a while. No one knew who he was. He stayed in character all evening  and those of us who knew him had the most fun watching him fool his  friends as he introduced himself as Lonzo Carp.

Carrie Council, my niece, and Lonzo Carp aka Barry Beall

The best outfit I  ever wore was cut-off jeans and a tee shirt with the words Barry's Old Lady on the back. The cut-offs emphasized my best feature, my long legs. Barry and I went to that party as a motorcycle couple, Hell's Angels type, wearing chains and leather, and boots. Dick said a few years ago that he still remembers me in that Motorcycle Mama costume. That makes me smile. (I asked them to dig out these old photos for me to post.)

Glenda And Barry dressed as members of a motorcycle gang

Now my favorite things about October do not include my birthday on the 22nd, not Halloween or parties or trick or treat. My favorite thing about October here in the mountains is the crisp dry air, and the leaves--the oranges, reds, yellows, golds, and all shades of each that brighten every day;The colors that decorate all the store entrances.

It is a time when I enjoy driving around the countryside, seeing doorways garnished with pumpkins, scarecrows, and corn shocks. Festivals with country music and clogging, vendors selling canned jellies and jams, wood carvings, and home made aprons, occur every weekend. Apple butter and gallon jugs of cider gleam in the sunshine on make shift stands along mountain roads.

What does October mean to  you? Got any good October memories? Share them with us in Comments.