I only had two (com’n guys, what’s up?) “official” responses.  Greg guessed that it is a locust in the “vertical” (inside joke, there – you’ll have read his blog post of last week “The Fence” – it’s hilarious) position, while Cecil guessed it is a scorpion.  They were both terrific guesses.  (Anyone want to chime in now with a guess in comment below before reading any further? Com’n!  Be brave!)

My sweet friend Michelle clicked on the image to enlarge it to see it better and saw my description of it, so emailed me to decline guessing, since she read what it was.  I commend her for doing so.  She thought that some of you (are you reading, Greg?) might also enlarge it to see it better and then send in the “correct” guess without telling me you already knew what it was.    Nah, I thought to myself.  None of MY friends would do such a thing.

Anyway . . . here is the rest of the story.  Kay’s story.  She lives in Houston, a sultry – okay, extremely hot and humid – place with lots of water around.  She was trying to work with her clay, but pesky mosquitoes kept buzzing around pestering her.

If any of you are from the south, have ever lived in the south, or have ever even visited the south – in the summer – after it’s rained – and every container around, including old tires strewn about the more lovely southern home yards filled with brackish water – you will experience the “joy” of swarms of mosquitoes buzzing and biting you.  Sometimes, even in the mountains (further north than here in south Mississippi, for sure) and woods (we have lots of those) they are killers.

Out of aggravation, and inspiration, Kay decided to make a “Mosquito Vase” with lid.  Whether out of revenge or respect, I do not know.  I do know that ours sits on top of our fridge in our air conditioned home, where it’s cool in the summer and warm in the winter.  And dry.  With screens on all of the windows, and screens all around our large back porch.

We learned from our house before over in Louisiana that you cannot go out to sit or enjoy in any way an open back porch/patio when it is not screened in to keep the myriad of mosquitoes at bay.  When we had the chance, we screened ours in.  We loved it.  We had music out there.  We had a double  hammock out there where we would fall asleep many evenings on a quilt, with the porch open to our den.

Thus, when we were able to build a small home here two years ago, having a big screened in back porch was a top priority.  Tom wired in music in it and we have old white wicker furniture out there where we will sit until deep dusk some evenings, as we did one night last week.

We watch the beautiful cardinals and tufted titmice eat at the bird feeder hanging on the edge of our deck and watch for hummingbirds at their own feeder.  Mosquitoes aren’t too bad here, really, because we are high on the hill above the creek.  Except on occasion.  But even one biting us is too much, we think.

They carry deadly diseases that have killed dozens of people in our state, and many more across the south.

We think of those millions of poor people in other countries who have no such protection and pray for them (and help where we can) because so many of them die every day from mosquito borne disease.

So, our mosquito vase has a couple of stories.  Ours and Kay’s.

May we each think of others today and deeply appreciate the blessings God has blessed us with in this country.  May we do all we can for those who are so much less fortunate, by chance and circumstance.

God speed, my dear friends.  God speed today.  Dee

It is kiln fired and glazed.  It has an interesting motif carved in the clay which is carried out around the orb.  That motif has a story of it’s own within this story.

Our part of the story is Kay gave us a beautiful earlier piece of her pottery in aqua blue-green that we loved dearly.  It was up on top of our TV cabinet, out of harm’s way, we thought, until we were gone for three days and our two cats jumped up there to peer out the front window, knocked it over and broke it in smithereens.

We were so saddened at the loss, that she gave us this one instead.  Our cats are now gone and this piece sits atop our side-by-side refrigerator where we both see it all the time, as does anyone else who comes to visit with us.  For, you know, our living, dining kitchen area are all open to one another.

Kay came to visit with us in our new home several months ago and said she would design a special piece for us for this place we’ve made our home.  I hope one day she will do so.  Being a visual, hands on artist, she was very appreciative of all the “little touches” we had put into making our home such a special place.

As for Kay’s special story about what she carved into the jar’s circumference and why, I will leave you for today with a puzzle (and tell you the “rest of the story” next time).

What is the insect you see carved on the side of the jar and why do you think Kay chose that for her lidded jar’s theme?  Comment with your guesses and we’ll see who comes closest or “gets it.”  (But, no, Greg or Judy, no one will win the jar as their prize for the best guess!)

Please continue in your prayers for me and my family.   May God richly bless each and every one of us today and through this beautiful fall weekend.  Much love to you all, Dee

Today I want to share our latest acquisition with you.  It’s our first one in a long while, actually, but when I found it, I felt peaceful and blessed and had to have it.

So, I brought it home and Tom and I searched out the best place to hang it in our home.  We decided over the doorway between our dining room and kitchen.  Unlike most people we know, we use our dining room often. And like just about everyone we know, we are always in the kitchen.

Whether by ourselves or with guests and family over, everyone hangs out there.  You know.  Close to the food.  The cooking, the camaraderie, the laughter spill over into the breakfast area and living room.  The open doorway between the kitchen and dining room is a busy traffic way.

Another major consideration for where it hangs is that you can see it from the front door as you enter our home.  Just outside our front door to the right hangs a fall welcome sign, “Autumn Blessings.”  So it seems fitting that upon entering, you will see “With Grace Surround Us.”  A prayer for special graces.  Always.

I reflect often on those words and ponder them.  I have asked for and received from God before what I consider to be special graces so I could serve Him by serving others in times of need.  The two most important that come to mind are when I spent time with my dad and mom before, and as, he died and after.  The other was when Tom’s daughter Kim died and through Tom’s endless months of deep grief following.  It is an ongoing ministry.

Today, I ask each of you to pray with me  and for me for special graces once again.   My family is deeply troubled.

I know you will do so.  You always do and are always of great encouragement to me.  I pray that God’s grace surround each of you today and that you will be well until I can meet here with you again.  I will not have my email addresses with me for the next few days, so if you wish to contact me and have me write back, please leave a comment here or email me, so that I can respond.

Dee

I don’t know about y’all, but I spend a lot of time at my kitchen sink.  A lot.   At least, it seems that way sometimes.

Of course, I used to spend a whole lot more time there years ago when my children were small and growing up.  But even now, it seems I’m often there while cooking, rinsing dishes, or washing up a few dishes, pots & pans that won’t go in the dishwasher.

Do you have a kitchen window?  If so, where is it in your kitchen and what do you see when you look through it?

Me?  For years and years I had a window over my kitchen sink in four different homes and loved looking out my kitchen window to see what was going on.  In the first home – for 14 years here in Picayune while the kids were growing up – I saw woods out my window, past our oyster shell, circular front drive and small front yard (huge back yard with pond beyond).  Our house faced east, so I saw the morning sun shining through.

Then for two years, my son Mark and I lived in a “tree house” (the first floor up 16′ on pilings) off the beach in Long Beach, Mississippi, and I saw the tops of majestic old oak trees out my kitchen sink window, which faced west.

Tom and I got together and moved to Slidell for me to go to law school in New Orleans.  The view from our little duplex was of the kitchen window of the neighboring duplex far too close for comfort.  The kitchen window over the sink faced east, but I wasn’t there much to look through it for three years.  My nose was stuck in law books the entire time.

Law school graduation brought the means (although we were very frugal – and very blessed by God) to be able to move into a house in Slidell, in which we lived happily for another 14 years.  There my kitchen window – and breakfast area window – faced north on the side of our house, toward our favorite neighbors (two in a row, the first our minister at Bayou Oaks Church of Christ!  Talk about pressure to be a good neighbor!  ha!).

I won’t count our apartment while building this house.  (Although, it had a kitchen window facing west.)  Instead, I move on to our beloved home of two years now.  Here, my kitchen sink is on a bar between our kitchen and breakfast area at an angle.  At the sink, if I look straight ahead, it is toward the southwest.

But, as most of you know, I have three windows to look through surrounding our breakfast area, facing southwest to west.  The view is wonderful, full of hummingbirds, the plants on our back porch, including my bright red geraniums, and the back deck beyond, with southern cardinals and many other birds at our bird feeder.

What, you say, do all the different views from my kitchen sink over the years have to do with “story tellers?”

Here is the connection:

These two images are of the same view from my kitchen window here in Picayune in a different house many years ago, the lower one drawn by my older son, David, when he was 11, in 1975, and the upper one photographed by me as a silhouette for my college photography class the summer of 1984.

Here is 11-year-old David’s up close:

And, here is mine, some nine years later:

As you can see, the plant is different, and David’s representation is much more minimalist, but they are obviously depictions of the same kitchen window.

Today, they both hang in our breakfast area, where I can view them when I stand here at my kitchen sink.

Thus, the past and present merge to give me one coherent view.

This is one of the stories of my life.  My view from my kitchen sink.  From this I learn that the best of the past should be kept, remembered and treasured, while the residue thrown away as dross.   God stays with me always and is captured in my view of service from my kitchen sink.

What is your view?

Many blessings to each of you today!  Dee

We were showing her something and telling the story behind it.  She turned to us and said, rather in awe, “It’s neat.  Everything in your house has a story.”

It’s true.

Some people decorate their homes in the very latest styles, always perfect to the last little accoutrement, but also all purchased from stores and always changed about by the next latest and greatest fads.

Some people don’t really decorate at all.

We “decorate” around things we love and cherish, each in it’s own way.  I have several “collections” of things I’ve found and that have been given to me as gifts by friends and family who know me – know us – and know what we like.  I can tell you where nearly each piece came from, when and how I came to have it as mine.  How Tom came to have his.  How we came to have our things together.

The individual pieces and collections have changed some over the years as we have changed.  We are now here in our “Home Complete,” as the tab at the top of this page states (although it is still a work in progress, with me not having put all the pictures in of our “finished” home).  We have less room than we did before, so we had to carefully choose where each of our favorite story things would go to show them at best advantage.  Some are stored away, but beloved still.

Today’s story I call “Texas Angel” and you shall see why – and understand the name in a moment.

It is a photogram I created when I was taking a photography class one summer in college (you have to remember I was a “non-traditional” student at 37).   A photogram is an image produced without a camera by placing an object on photosensitive paper and exposing it to light.  I did mine in a dark room.

We were working in black and white only, learning how to handle long rolls of film, cut the film, develop it, then create our own photographic images in the dark room.  I absolutely loved every second of that course and spent long hours in the dark room all summer (also burning up boxes and boxes of good quality, expensive photographic paper).

We then had to mount our creations on 11″ x 14″ black boards for grades all along, with a 3 picture w/copy (words) piece on a 16″ x 20″ for our final.*  (I made an “A” for the course.)

Here’s one of my photograms I have hanging in our home.  It is in our living room and I call it “Texas Angel.”  Look closely at it and you will see the profile of an angel in the bottom right corner reaching out and holding up a stalk of cotton, with one open cotton boll “puff” on the left and one closed boll at the top.  They are all three actually cotton bolls, of course, but I immediately saw the angel and having grown up on a cotton farm where God is always in control of the crop in the end, I had to call it “Texas Angel.”

I gave one to my mom and dad that was similar.  (Each photogram – and photograph, for that matter – is going to be different, of course, because of all of the variables, even with the same setup.)

What say ye?  Can you “see” what I saw as a “Texas Angel?”  I hope so, because it has great meaning to me after all these years (I did it in the summer of 1984).

That’s my story for today, with a little background first.  Most of my stories won’t be nearly this long, I promise.  I hope to share them with you for a while, about once a week, until either you get tired of them or I get tired of telling them!  I sure have enough material here in our home to tell you these stories for a long time to come.

Many blessings to each of you today!!  Dee

*Note:  After all the photography classes in the entire journalism department had completed their courses, the professors and all students judged the works and mine was chosen the very best work against not only advanced classes, but the color works, as well.  I was very excited about that award!!  One of my all time favorite awards!

I used it, again, in a final I did in a graduate course, in which I made an “A,” also! I still have my work, but it is rather in dismal shape and in a closet.  But I cannot bear to part with it.  I’ll show it to you when you come over, hear?!