"For a tree to become tall it must grow tough roots among the rocks." ~Friedrich Nietzsche
We've been having dry and hot, very hot weather here in Kentucky. It's weather a lot of others in the country are sharing. In a stretch of ten days we set seven record highs and went over 100 degrees many of those days. And that's without those heat indexes that can make us feel even hotter. We didn't need anything to make us feel hotter. While it was hot, the wind kept blowing. That helped us when we were out in the scorching sun, but it didn't help the plants and trees. The wind whipped any remnants of moisture right out of them. Even the ironweeds out in the fields looked wilted, and there's a reason they are called ironweeds. Almost nothing can bother them. A friend had a digital thermometer that he could point at things and see the temperatures on that surface. He said the asphalt was 169 degrees. The black rocker on my deck topped out at 140 degrees. A real hot seat!
It's no wonder then that some of the trees are losing leaves as if it were October instead of July. Most of the leaves on the tree in the picture above are yellow, worse than its brother trees down the fence row. There's a reason for that. It's growing near a wet weather spring--a place where there is plentiful moisture most of the time. So the tree never had any need to put down deeper roots. Now its shallow roots can't reach the moisture stored deeper in the ground.
People can have trouble too when their roots are shallow and suddenly they enter a drought period in life. A time when troubles come, when the good things of life are no longer easy to reach. But people have the advantage over my stressed out little tree. It no doubt is trying to shoot out longer roots but it takes time for a tree to grow those roots. It takes people time to put down roots too but they can find plentiful help in showers of blessings even in a time of drought. Clinging to those blessings of faith and trust in the Lord can help us stand strong when the harsh winds of troubles blow against us. We aren't promised no troubles, but we are promised One who will stand with us through the droughts of life.
I hope you are being showered with blessings and not in any kind of drought. Some things have been difficult for me this summer, but other things have been very good. I'm excited about The Gifted being out for readers and love hearing from you. I'm getting ready to have my Hometown Book Celebration this Sunday at my local library. If you live in the area, come on out. We'll have a good time talking books and I'll have door prizes. I like giving things away. That's why I've got the Celebration Giveaway going on my website and you've got a few more weeks on the Fresh Fiction giveaway too. Fun prizes in both.
Thank you for reading.
Kind hearts are the gardens,
Kind thoughts are the roots,
Kind words are the flowers,
Kind deeds are the fruits.
Take care of your garden
And keep out the weeds,
Fill it with sunshine
Kind words and kind deeds." ~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
A bubbling pot of sweet goodness. That's what you're seeing here. I was making jam out of a combination of blackberries and boysenberries with some raspberries (frozen earlier for just this purpose) mixed in to make the whole pot sweeter.
And that's where the roots and connections come in. That's what my grandmother did and my mother did before me. They passed down the recipe. Of course there's no real recipe - just pound for pound berries and sugar and then cook until it's right. There were other hints though. Some advised putting a marble in the pot to keep it from boiling over. I never tried that. Instead, I used the swipe of butter around the upper rim of the cooking pot. That worked today. I wasn't sure it would since I had the pot pretty full.
Even the pot connects me to my past. This heavy duty pot has been in use canning and preserving and making jams and relishes since before I can remember. I don't know if it was new with my mother, but I do know that it's boiled a lot of pots of jam, not to mention cooking tomatoes and pears and green beans to get them ready to pack in canning jars. I've done all that too. Now I just do the occasional pot of jam or relish. I do can a lot of green beans but have packed them raw into the jars for these last many years after a home extension agent convinced my aunt it wasn't necessary to boil them before packing them in the jars. She shared the easier method with my mom.
I use some of these canning roots in my stories. I had Kate and Evie canning beans in my book, Angel Sister. In the Hollyhill books, people were sharing garden produce with their preacher all the time. Gardens are a great way to make connections. I have one daughter-in-law who likes gardening and putting up her own produce. She too feels the connections as she is following in her grandmother's and mother's steps.
Most every body who could gardened in the generations past and then canned and preserved. It was patriotic during the war years when anybody with a backyard was encouraged to plant a "victory" garden. Gardening then wasn't a hobby or for fun. It was survival and a way to have good food summer and winter. It's not survival for me. I can buy good food at the store. Produce is available all year round. But it seems wrong not to preserve and can.
Many years ago, I read an autobiography of Janice Holt Giles, a popular historical novel author who lived in Kentucky and wrote about Kentucky history. She had to use her mornings to can the produce Henry (her husband) insisted they had to raise. A city girl, she wasn't a young woman when she married Henry and moved to his family farm in Kentucky. She sounded a little resentful when she wrote of having to spend time canning instead of writing as she wanted to do. Especially after her books were making money. But roots go deep for country folk. To Henry, canning that garden produce was as necessary as breathing and probably seemed more necessary than writing. Maybe it is for me too. A connection to my country roots. A connection with a bonus. It's kept us well fed and has given me fodder for my stories.
How about you? What connects you to your roots?
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