Looking ahead then looking back

 

Beautyberries close up

 Now that the election is over—if it IS over and decided—we can get on with our political angst (on both sides) and set about to straighten out our part of the country—if it needs it. We can concentrate on how to navigate the upcoming holidays.

Our family Thanksgiving plans, like many others I presume, are cancelled. 

But, to sort of make up for that, I am involved in two other fun activities. One is our monthly writing group meeting next Wednesday, meaning that BFF Dot is overnighting at Couchwood so we can both attend. 

               

The other is a new event: hosting the local poets meeting. Our regular gathering place, the main fire station, is closed for the year. For the past two months, the group has met at a pavilion at Tyndall Park. But plans are that mid-November temps will preclude meeting there again. So I volunteered. That gives me the opportunity to decorate the front part of the house with all the fall-motif collections I’ve amassed over the years.

Let me finish out goings-on at Dairy Hollow in Eureka Springs that I began last week. On another day, either Saturday or Sunday, we stopped at La Familia for lunch. Again, we were masked and seated ourselves at a booth near a wall.

Lunch boxes—many, many lunch boxes--decorated an upper shelf as far as we could see. Patrons sometimes stopped by close to us to gape at them. I don’t remember ever carrying a lunch box to school, but I remember Dad’s black one, about as large as our mailbox, with a tall thermos inside. I’m drawing a blank about what Lydia ordered but I had a taco salad.

The weather during the week until late Thursday was raw—cold, windy, raining, or rainy. We stayed in and wrote. Monday night was communal dinner in the Main House. Though there were two other writers around, they’d chosen to eat in their rooms. Greens/veggie salads, pureed  soups—one night, carrot and tomato, another night, served in what I call a cereal bowl, squash, and coconut. Those two items were enough for entire meal, but, no, we had a plate of chicken, roasted broccoli and carrots, and mashed potatoes. We ate most of that meal at the table.

Another noon, we drove out of town toward Rogers to Rowdy Beavers. It was raining, but I didn’t hear any rowdiness and saw no beavers scurrying around. LOL

  

Wednesday night, we ate salmon, roasted veggies, and rice. (Jana alternated between potatoes and rice.) Another night was a pork chop, potatoes, and roasted cauliflower. On our last night, Thursday, for dessert, Lydia had store-bought wafers and I had two severed fingers, complete with slivered-almond fingernails and red food coloring blood. They were made from a sugar cookie recipe—in honor of Halloween.

 Lydia finished her long-in-progress novel and I worked steadily toward the Creative-Non-Fiction assignments looming before the term ends in December.

The drive home on Friday merited a gas-stop again at Marshall, then a side trip to Leslie where my youngest brother—he of the Arkansas River flood a couple of Mays ago—lives after leaving Mayflower. He is in possession of an orchard, raised vegetable beds, and a two-story house with a basement.

                

He also has animal neighbors: 30 feral pigs, bobcats and even a bear or two have been spotted by neighbors. Ooh!

c 2020, by PL, dba lovepat press, Benton AR USA

 

For the umpteenth time, a week in the Ozarks

Lydia, several years ago @ The Wharf, Hot Springs

 

                With COVID-19 cancelling most group activities, writer-friend Lydia and I made plans to drive to Eureka Springs and spend a week as residents at the Writers Colony at Dairy Hollow, a first for her, but a return for me. She has one novel to wrap up and another to continue. I have this column to compose and a slew of MFA assignments/ requirements to work on.

                October is always a good time to travel north and this year was no exception. Yellows, reds, and oranges interspersed with pines and cedars provided many “oohs and aahs” especially as we drove through Clinton, then into Marshall where we gassed up, stood in line, social distanced for the restroom, then bought a sweet snack to take us the rest of the way. It was early afternoon. I was impressed enough to pen a poem: “The men/ at Marshall’s gas/station all wore their masks/ which surprised me in this mountain/ county.” The forests became more colorful the farther we traveled.

                I was the passenger this trip. Lydia was a careful driver. A little after three p. m. we pulled in to the Colony and were greeted by the new-to-me director, Michelle. We were all masked as was Jana in the kitchen. Packets and keys in hand, we headed to the door of 505 Spring Street to unload. Afterward, Lydia moved the car across the street to the lay-by. Her suite is downstairs; mine is right inside the front door next to the communal kitchen/ dining area. I’ve stayed in this suite since this building opened. Originally, it was Muse 1; now, with all five of the suites having been remodeled, mine is the Zeek Taylor Suite.

                By the time we’d each unpacked and put things away and marveled at our newly-decorated suites, it was dinner time. Of the four residents, we were the only ones to choose to eat down in the Main House. We sat at the ends of the long dining table. Jana (Yahna, of Czech extraction)  served a crunchy veggie salad, then brought on a plate filled with beef chunks covered with (shudder) mushroom gravy and a mound of rice. (On my pre-sent foods-I-don’t-like list were cooked turnips, liver ’n onions and tofu. I’d forgotten gravy and mushrooms.) I picked at the rice and beef, forced to consume gravy with the bites, then dug into the baked apple dessert, a small fruit topped with a fig, wrapped in a pastry igloo. A few bites of that, and I decided I’d had enough. Lydia felt the same, although her gluten-free dessert was a pudding of some kind. We each asked for a to-go box, and took our uneaten dinners back to our rooms. We ate them the next day at the 505 dining table.

                We both accomplished some needed work from then until bedtime. I turned out the light right before ten (I hadn’t had my daily nap), but she stayed up till midnight, her usual bedtime hour.

                That was Friday. Saturday, we masked up and headed to Sparky’s for a late lunch. After waiting for twenty minutes, we were seated at a two-fer table by one wall. We de-masked. She had a burger and I had a Rueben, half of which resided in the fridge beside the gravy dish. But we are happy we came even though it was in the low forties, temp-wise. More later.

 

c 2020, PL dba lovepat press, Benton AR USA