October is my month!

 My birthday is in October and I have been celebrating it for weeks now.

I was taken on a trip to Charleston for my birthday. I celebrated with old friends at lunch on Friday. Today I celebrated  more with family.

It has rained and I celebrate that!
Today I will share some photos with you.

My sister, Gay, dressed for dancing. She has always been a dancer but put that part of her life on hold for forty years. Now she dances  for an hour or two three times each week. 

She says her strength and endurance has improved tremendously and her enthusiasm for life beams from her face. 

This lovely lady is Estelle Rice, my friend and co-author of Paws, Claws, Hooves, Feathers and Fins. She has a birthday this month also. In the picture above we were celebrating her 90th. I look forward to our lunch together in the coming week.

 

This beautiful horse,a Percheron, huge, pulls carriages and works at the Middleton Place Plantation where I visited on my vacation in Charleston, SC. His color and his build reminded me of Daisy, the farm horse I rode when I was a child. Beautiful coat, and his feet are as big as my cast iron frying pan.

Gay and Stu at the only waterfront restaurant in Charleston, SC. We had delicious fried oysters and enjoyed seeing the cruise ships and boats.

Yes, this is a good October so far. I hope it is good for you, too.

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.

Celebrating Libras

I know some pretty great folks who were born in October, my birth month. My friend and fellow writer, Estelle Rice has a birthday on the 25th. She and I will have lunch together on my birthday, the 22 , with  Mary Michelle, our mutual long time friend.  Estelle is not a Libra. She misses by two days. But Joan Gage, another writer friend, was born October 22, same as I. She fits the Libra profile pretty well, I think. My niece's husband, Dave, was born October 16, and will celebrate his birthday watching the Cubs play ball.

I don't  put much store in horoscopes but find it interesting to read them. This is what is said about people born under the Libra sign.

"The people born under the Sign Libra (Sept. 23 - Oct. 23) are kind, gentle and lovers of beauty, harmony and peace. However, in their effort to keep everyone happy, they find it difficult to say ‘NO’ to anyone, and as a result, they end up getting stressed. They have a lot of positive traits, but some negative ones, too. The Libra women are flexible and accommodating and will carefully listen to different opinions. If they are logically convinced that they should change their minds, they will do it, without being stubborn. Though they are balanced people, they can sometimes lose their temper. However, they are quick to restore the balance and harmony, and will get back to their usual charming and mature selves soon." Gay  and Glenda at the Riverside Restaurant Oct. 16 Glenda beside the river at Toccoa Riverside Restaurant

Friday I met Gay and Stu, and friends, Dick and Linda, to celebrate Dick's birthday and mine. We also threw in Stu's since we didn't get together in September. Dick has been a friend for thirty-plus years. He was born on the 16th of October and was at the Toccoa Riverside Restaurant on his birthday where he received a free meal. I was too early for my free dish. 

I very much enjoyed having lunch with my nieces, Lyn and Lee Hunter and my sister, Gay at Olive Garden Sunday. I love the sweet cards from the girls, not to mention birthday gifts. I am having a great time celebrating my birthday and it is not even my birth day yet. 

My Libra father was born on October 12. 

This is what is said of Libra Men:

"The Libra men hate to get into arguments, and hence will rarely ever complain about anything. That’s why they are fairly easy to please. However, on the negative side, they may not always express their views genuinely as they prefer to say things that people want to hear."

Wrong! Not my father. He had no trouble expressing his views to us, his family, and didn't give a fig what others wanted to hear. He was polite to visitors and held his tongue when he might want to express his political views  or what  he thought about a self-righteous neighbor, but it was not because he said what someone else wanted to hear.

The father I knew was not the man he was before I was  born. 

Perhaps he once possessed the positive Libra traits. "Since the Libra men are friendly and charming, they can lighten the atmosphere and help people overcome their depression. This is the reason why people seek out their company in social gatherings and parties."

I learned from others, my father was friendly and charming when he was younger. He certainly charmed my lovely mother into marrying him. People loved to be with him. When he was a young father, his children and their cousins gathered around him while he read to them. My cousin Ethel said he acted out the parts, changed his voice, to become the characters.

His family and friends regularly attended  the local baseball games to watch him play. He teased the kids, and they adored him. When I was born, he had five kids already and was in his forties. He was more serious, and he worried too much. His health had begun to fail, and I never knew that fun-loving, teasing father my brothers enjoyed. 

I  don't believe in Horoscope readings. What fits one person today might not fit him at all forty years from now. In many ways, I am not the same person I was twenty-five years ago. I still enjoy reading my horoscope to see if anything I read fits me. I like to believe that I am balanced, loving, kind and gentle and have all those good traits of the Libra. I ignore the negative ones.

I was born on Sunday so, of course, I also believe the words of the nursery rhyme that the child that's born on the Sabbath day, is fair and wise and good and gay. I would not believe what is said about Wednesday's child if I had been born on that unfortunate day. 

What month were you born and what day of the week? Do you believe these dates reflect your personality?

Monday's Child (Nursery Rhyme)

Signs of the  Zodiac