Penny Sanford Designs

My Grandmother, Ora Belle

My best friend Pamm sent this picture to me today by email. I must have published it on this blog in years past. This is my cherished grandmother Ora Belle Dunn Hamer who died in October, 1979. (This picture was before 1975, but I am not sure when.)

I was so close to my grandmother. She taught me to sew and to enjoy shelling peas and butterbeans. I can taste her wonderful cooking. I can see her sitting on her cooking stool, talking to me while she turned her incredible fried chicken.

I can see her brushing her long hair and braiding her thinning braids to criss cross over her head.

I can feel the nobbly chenille bedspread as I napped on her bed, waking up with bumpy imprints on my cheek. 

My world changed forever when she died. Looking back over the almost 40 years since her death, I can now see "the rest of the story" on the various people that populated her prayers and hopes and conversations.

Grandma was easily hurt, but I remember her as very forgiving and generous to a fault. She taught me there is pure joy in giving without expecting anything in return.

I am sure Grandma had annoying habits and the flaws we all have, but I cannot remember a single one of them.

I just remember a crippled, withered old lady who walked with a severe hunch who radiated pure love.

She had lived what we would consider today a very hard life on a farm during the Great Depression.  If anything, that hard life kept her tender and vulnerable.

I wish I could talk to Grandma about so many things. How could almost 40 years have passed since her death? Tears have been flowing all afternoon as I remember wonderful memories and wish I could share more of her time. 

She must surely be in Heaven, so, in the proper time, she and I can pick up where we left off...

 

Happy Birthday #51

I can greet my 51st birthday with a good bit more enthusiasm than I welcomed my 50th birthday.  I'm coming around to being in my 50's, editing myself and my outlook.

Every day is a new beginning, and I see working on a project for 15 minutes as a victory.  This past year has been full of tiny little victories.  There were some bombshell problems, but every week, every day, I can spot God at work.

So, in the spirit of starting afresh on my 51st birthday:
I am blogging again.
I've recorded a podcast again.

PennyCast_Sept21c

I am sculpting something new this week.
I am writing on a project today.
I am jumping into a watercolor project this week.
I am pursuing my own brand of yoga.
I continue to develop the habit of being thankful.

 

To elaborate just a little, the yoga...The  nearest class would be 25 miles (Grenada) or 30 miles (Greenwood) or 50 miles (Starkville) or 90 miles (Jackson).  So, I am making up my own yoga positions.  These are open to your own creativity.

1. Come-Back-Here-You-Damned-Sliver-Of-Soap:  This is my most practiced move, and I look forward to practicing it with every shower.
2. French Braided Limbs:  This is also a shower yoga move as I intertwine arms and legs to reach one of those hard-to-reach places.

This is as far as I have gotten in naming and pursuing my very own yoga workout.

The Habit of Being Thankful:  I was surprised this week when I got out of the shower thanking God for the forceful water pressure (overcoming old pipe problems), the long-lasting hot water (recently replaced a leaking hot water heater with one almost unused hot water heater we already had in a building on the farm that was not being used).

I realized how developed was this habit of being thankful when I was in the middle of thanking God for getting the two toilets back in good flushing problem with only the expense of Dawn soap, Baking soda and Vinegar...and three weeks of perserverence.  WORKING toilets with a powerful tornadic vortex of flushing power IS something for which to be thankful when one  is enjoying the prolonged visit of an intestinal parasite.  Trust me.

My water-related spriit of thankfulness continued to the DIY clothes washer repair with a little part that cost under $5.  I'm also thankful the refrigerator has been coaxed through the long, hot, dry summer.  The refrigerator is on life support, but I appreciate it's valliant effort until we are ready to purchase a new one.

That's all for now. Fifteen minutes...in and out.  That is another continuing goal to break down big projects into bite sized 15 minute pieces.

Speaking of pieces.  This was to be my birthday cake.  The candy did not survive long enough to make it to the cake assembly phase.  That's ok.  The candy was thoroughly enjoyed!

See How-To's and more Candy Cake ideas here

The Eyes of this House

We started re-glazing the old windows in this family farmhouse late yesterday afternoon.

There were two panes in one of the windows in the upstairs-guest-bedr00m-turned-sewing-room that fell to the ground back in the summer, but miraculously they did not break.

This is the very window, photographed in the spring. A thick carpet of periwinkle buffered the fall of the glass panes, and the old glass must be quite durable.



It's been too hot, or we were too rushed with deadlines to actually start reglazing the windows in this circa 1870 farmhouse.  Some of the procastinating was my fear of the unknown, having never glazed windows before.

So with a forecast of 35 degrees Farenheit for early this  morning,  it was time to get those old bubbled glass panes back in their proper spot and for me to  jump into reglazing with both feet.

I've volunteered to reglaze every window in this house (and anywhere else on the farm that needs it). It's a frugal step, but I also like tedious, repetative work. Well, maybe I don't automatically LIKE tedious work, but I know how to talk myself into thinking that I am enjoying it. *grin*

What I did not expect was to cry as I scraped oversized layers of putty from the panes.  I cried as I tried to explain to Gordon and Unc why I was crying over the window on my work table. I cried while trying to put this into words last night. (I'm finishing this post Tuesday afternoon)

The emotions are still raw and not quite captured in words in my mind, but as I struggled with the layers of old caulk, I thought about the tenacious, weathered family from which I come. 

The erosion of the old wood on the outside of this second story window brought to my mind the family stories of the natural disasters that left footprints on this farm.  How many storms with driving rain have pummeled these windows? How many ice storms, snow storms, hail storms?

This 141 year old window is quite fragile when compared to tumultuous events in those 141 years of protecting this family. Up here on the second floor, the windows have received less attention and more temperature fluctations, so life's toll is easier to see.

So, why did I cry over the mundane task of reseating a couple of window panes? The contrast of our little petty family dramas of the last couple of weeks compared to the scars and erosion of the 141 year old wood in this 141 year old window...is what made me cry. 

The three of us in this house had gotten caught up in a silly merry go round of "he said, he did, he didn't, it's his fault, it's not my fault"...when the REAL battle was and is how God continues to protect us and provide for us as a family in a never-ending script of quite daunting problems.

God's constant protection could be illustrated by these fragile, beautiful old windows that have never failed to protect us. If the panes of old wavy glass were representative of faith, then our view of the world is filtered through the intangible of faith just as my view of the falling leaves that I am watching right now  through the panes of this old wavy glass... is slightly altered because of the unique character of the old glass.

SO in the weeks and months ahead as I tackle this re-glazing process one half window at a time, I will be removing the old "scar tissue" of cracked putty and paint. Then as I clean each beautiful pane of bubbled, wavy glass, I will be removing the cataracts, so to speak, from the eyes of this old house.

I fully expect to learn quite a lot as I putter along with the putty and glazing points, primer and top coats. It's as if God is saying that it's time to clear off the debris of the past generations and the lingering scars of unforgiveness, jealousy...the old family stories of "He said, he did, he didn't, it's her fault, it's not my fault".  

We inherit those emotions too, you know, from the old family stories.  Cloaked in the shadows of passing along family stories, we also pass along the negative emotions.  Those toxic emotions  in turn hold us back from the kind of life with which God wants to bless us.

Yes, I have MUCH to learn from these old Eyes of this old family farmhouse.

PennyCast 2: Molly and the Turkey.

Mollyandturkey

A Lilibeth/Belle Memorial Podcast

Memorialpodcast

 

Snowdrops and Snowflakes (sung to "These are a Few of My Favorite Things")

(cue music "My Favorite Things" from The Sound of Music) 

Snowdrops and snowflakes and Lily of the Valley
Pretty cut flowers or hats for little fairies
Grandma's cute flowers are blooming right now
These are a few of my favorite things.....



My Facebook friends helped me identify these as Spring Snowflakes or Leucojum vernum. They are the shorter six to eight inch tall version compared to the Summer Snowflake or Leucojum aestivum which blooms later and grows to two feet.

In our family, we have always called them "snowdrops" and sometimes "lily of the valley". I'm glad to know the real name of them now! Note the little lime green spots on the tepals, another new word I learned in this quest.



My Facebook friends also tell me this little diminutive bulb is invasive. Yippee, I say! It can invade anywhere it wants to around our house.

You can see how just one clump of Grandma's Spring Snowflakes have multiplied in just five or so years. I don't remember exactly when we naturalized the little bulbs in this area of the yard, putting just one or two bulbs per hole.

I just love these, and they bring back wonderful memories of picking flowers in Grandma's ever-blooming yard!

84 Year Old Uncle Conquers the Computer!

Sometimes it takes just the right lure to catch an elusive fish!



My uncle, Charles Kelly Hamer ("Unc") has shown only moderate interest in learning how to operate a computer, UNTIL he found the computerized version of jigsaw puzzles!

www.bigjig.com is the program I have enjoyed for years. It is a stress reliever, and it helps me get my mind in order to put little pieces of a puzzle in place.

I grew up putting together cardboard jigsaw puzzles together with Unc, and I've blogged about it before here and here. We have a closet full of the cardboard jigsaw puzzles that we have enjoyed over the years, and a packet of orphan pieces we have found hiding under a chair months later. Many of those pieces have little teeth marks in them! *grin*

Gordon and I are SO IMPRESSED that age age 84, Unc took to the computerized version like a duck to water!  This was his first finished puzzle, something around 1800 pieces!

With this program, you can choose the number of pieces you want the puzzle to have. There are plenty of other choices to make the game more challenging. There are new designs frequently added to the library of puzzle pictures.

Just think, no tabletop devoted to a cardboard jigsaw, no lost pieces, no aching back, and no waiting for the box top to look at the picture! *laugh*

What impressed me the most is that when I recently needed my registration and password to get into the site, the author of the program, Lena Pankratova, emailed the info to me. It has been at least seven years, maybe more, since I paid the nominal price for the full version of the program! Talk about good customer service!

Way to go, Unc and Lena!

Fuzzy Slides of Easter Past

Just sharing some pictures of Easter Past. Notice in the first few pictures that I am a TWO Easter Egg Basket kinda girl!

 


I've always loved hunting Easter Eggs and dying or decorating Easter Eggs.


How I wish these old slides were in focus; nevertheless, these old images are still precious to me.


I think this one was taken at my Uncle Luther and Aunt Ila Dixon's house in Mansfield, Louisiana.

This four section basket belonged to my great-grandmother who died in 1938. I'll post separately about this unique old basket and see what you might know about it.

Growing up, I'd beg Daddy or Unc to hide the eggs again somewhere in the den or around the house so that I could find them all over again...and again. It was always curious to me why they counted the eggs so often! *wink* (No one wanted a rotting egg somewhere in the house that had been overlooked!)


My favorite memory was of Wigglenose, a real live rabbit that Daddy kept cornered in a little patch of clover at our house in Jackson until Mama got me outside to discover it! Well Wigglenose and I bonded and slept together the whole 90 mile trip back to the farm that Good Friday!


They let me keep Wigglenose for the whole weekend, and then as far as I knew, he went to live with his family in the woods. Years later, I learned that Wigglenose was given to a young man who was raising rabbits for 4-H, and he and Wigglenose won some ribbons! Yeah, Wigglenose!


Yes, I know there is a discrepancy in the date of the Wigglenose pictures. The dates and ages are all over the place. The slides were scanned and edited at three different itmes, and I have way to be accurate until I find the original slides again and see what is marked on the slides. I am also no good at looking at a child and guessing an age. Not that it really matters in this case. 

If Gordon has any Easter Egg Hunting pictures, he has not shown them to me yet. Otherwise, I would have included them in this post.

We had a cute video we planned to shoot with the Westies this afternoon. I have all four of them trimmed and washed. They just need a quick brush out, but those plans are on hold now. I think I will save the idea for next year when the daffodils are a bit fresher. We had a hard rain last night that battered the daffodils around.

So I hope your Easter has been filled with happy memories this year and that you take time to remember why we really celebrate Easter in the first place.

"Dancing with the Daffodils"

A happy, beautiful Easter to everyone! This has been such a spectacular year for the spring daffodils at Hamer Hills Farm! They are just begging for an Easter Egg hunt among the vivid blooms!

We shot just a sampling of the many different varieties here on the farm to share with you. It is just 1.5 minutes with narration.

Do you recognize the poem that Penny is narrating? It is William Wordsworth's most famous work, "Daffodils" or "The Daffodils", also known as "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud", written in 1804 and first published in 1807.

Wordsworth then came back in 1815 and edited the poem, and that is the version you will hear in this clip.

The inspiration for this classic romantic poem is widely presumed to be a walk Wordsworth took with his sister Dorothy near their house in the Lake District in England.

Dorothy later wrote about this inspirational walk among the daffodils:

"When we were in the woods beyond Gowbarrow Park, we saw a few daffodils close to the water side. We fancied that the lake had floated the seed ashore and that the little colony had so sprung up. But as we went along there were more and more and at last under the boughs of the trees, we saw that there was a long belt of them along the shore, about the breadth of a country turnpike road.

"I never saw daffodils so beautiful they grew among the mossy stones about and about them, some rested their heads upon these stones as on a pillow for weariness and the rest tossed and reeled and danced and seemed as if they verily laughed with the wind that blew upon them over the lake, they looked so gay ever dancing ever changing.

"This wind blew directly over the lake to them. There was here and there a little knot and a few stragglers a few yards higher up but they were so few as not to disturb the simplicity and unity and life of that one busy highway. We rested again and again. The Bays were stormy, and we heard the waves at different distances and in the middle of the water like the sea."

– Dorothy Wordsworth, The Grasmere Journal , Thursday, 15 April 1802

Charles Hamer carving a fork.

Charles Hamer, age 83 of Kilmichael, Mississippi, carving a wooden, primitive fork made from trees blown down by Hurricane Katrina in August of 2005.