to everything there is a season

There's a shift in the air here.  School starting.  Slightly cooler temps.  Football around the corner.  And bow season opening next week.  

The tractor has been brought back to harrow a fall garden.  Spring chicks, now hens, laying in earnest.  Pears ripening.  The first spider lilies opening their swirling coral petals. 

I'm reflecting and resorting.  Still working through the grief of a death & celebrating the birth of a new niece just last night:  Carrie, Greg, & Sam welcomed Willa Rose.  

Willa

Levi is an avid seed saver.  He loves to sort & label.

Her first scriblings.

Levi's eye to detail makes him a great helper with the laundry.  Kitchen linens folded to perfection.

This was the first vehicle we bought - in 2000 right after we got married.  It's a 1991 Toyota pickup.  We sold it a few weeks ago & both hated to see it go.  The fella that bought it rode his Harley over to pick it up.  Here Joe helps him load the bike in back for the ride home.  It was a good ending.

Fresh picked pears.  Some made their way into the batch of raspberry pear jam today.

One Year Ago Today

Every year I will remember this date.  

We were up so early that morning - arriving at 5AM at the hospital.  I remember that near 8AM, in pre-op, she had fallen asleep, and the doctor gently walked away with her still sleeping in his arms.

One year later, the skull is normal, the bone nearly filled back in.

Sweet Memory

 My sister Beth had just returned to China (after her summer here in Georgia) when the news of Grandma's death reached us.  We want to help her have the experience of Grandma's visitation & funeral through photos & video.

So as we prepare to travel north tomorrow to Kennesaw, I found the digital recorder & needed to empty some space on it.  I stumbled upon on this video made just days after Indigo's birth.  In all the sadness and heartbreak of the last 2 days, this forgotten recording let me smile and take a deep breath.

Grandma's 90th party

Levi taking some shots of Grandma in her party hat

Grandma with 7 of the 10 grandchildren

My Dear Sweet Grandma

Very peacefully, with both her daughters by her side, my beautiful sweet Grandma passed away last night.  I feel very much in shock still & just letting all the memories of her flood my thoughts.  I'm wrapped in the purple quilt she made me.

Grandma is Helen Lorene Appenzeller Huckins = Lorene Huckins.  We had all been with her last weekend celebrating her 90th! birthday.  She always said that her Daddy had wanted to live until he was 90 - though he had died just a few months short.

Grandma grew up an only child on a large farm in Iowa.  She was born in 1922 in the kitchen of the farmhouse.  I want to remember all her stories now, all those old photos.  Thinking about how her parents were both one of five children & all the extended family around her while growing up.  The picture of them all picnicking together.

The picture of her and Grandpa when they first married.  Thinking of Grandma having their first child when Grandpa was a POW in Germany.

Thinking of my childhood memories of visiting her house & how it felt to be there.

Thinking of her with my children.  Visiting our home here in Cairo for Indigo's first birthday.  

Thinking of her room and all the little notes she made.  Thinking of how she would say 'goofy kid.'  

All the jigsaw puzzles she loved to piece together.

The good food she made.  How neat her home felt.  Her beautiful needlework.  The beanbags she made long ago of feedsacks.  

The excitement in her voice each time she answered the phone.  

All the cards and little notes she sent.  The little things in my life that were important to her.

The newspaper clippings she sent to me.  One on the safety of homebirth & how that made me feel so good to have her support.  And just a few weeks ago a clipping of a young couple working together on a very successful organic farm.

I will miss you so very much.  You are so very dearly loved.