Gardening for the Brain

The tea at Clear Creek was great. And I found out the church is way over 200 years old. It was established in 1785. Wow! And it is a beautiful church with beautiful people. My talk wasn't as good as I'd hoped it would be. I can never decide whether more practice is better or less practice is better. Sometimes when I prepare too carefully then I get hung up on wanting to say those great words I've thought up exactly as I wrote them down and then I'm stumbling around trying to remember what it was I had worked out to say. So then I try just preparing an outline of ideas and that works better, but then I skip over what I'd hoped would be some of my best points. I like to speak and I hope as I have more opportunities that I will get better and find my comfort zone somewhere between too much preparation and not enough.

One thing sure, the ladies at the church had done the proper amount of preparation. The tea party was great. The place was decorated in chocolates. Now you can't go wrong with those kind of decorations. Everything was pink and chocolate brown. And the centerpieces were elevated cake plates with brightly wrapped mini candy bars. Then the food was fancy with lots of dainty sandwiches, crackers and cheese dips and pretty and delicious desserts. Oh yeah, and my favorite part, fruit. I'm just saying that to keep everybody from thinking I totally pigged out on the chocolate. There was strawberry tea and peach tea and raspberry tea. All very yummy and served up by some of the guys in the church.

You'll be glad to know I did come up with something to say. I probably even talked a few minutes past twenty, but only a couple. Nobody went to sleep (that I saw) and only the littlest baby got so tired she cried. I enjoyed meeting all the ladies and appreciated their kind words about my books. There was a momma there who has an eleven month old baby boy, a twin, with a serious health problem. Evan is facing a bone marrow transplant when they find a donor, so keep him and his mom in your prayers.

Now to the title of the blog. I always make you wait. I just read an article in the newspaper that gardening can help us hang onto our cognitive abilities. I want to hang onto mine for sure, although I have to admit to being more forgetful than I used to be. I can turn around once and lose something completely and totally. I usually find whatever it was. But sometimes not for a couple of days and half the time it's right where I thought it was all along. I think the gremlins are playing tricks on me. You know about gremlins - those invisible little beings that collect odd socks and hair clasps and paperclips and dozens of other necessary and chronically disappearing items.

Anyway, I've been vegetable gardening all my life. Darrell does most of the gardening work these days. Now I realize how I'm blessing him by letting him do most of the planting, hoeing, etc. since it's helping his brain stay young. But I'm still in the garden a bunch, picking the veggies and pulling the weeds you have to lean over to get. If Darrell can't get them with his hoe, they don't get got. So maybe we'll both fend off dementia for a few more years and even if we hang up our vegetable garden hoe, there will always be flowers to plant and water.

I guess I'll keep digging in the dirt until I forget which is a flower and which is a weed. I was showing my grandkids which were weeds and which were not the other day. They're growing some beans in half our garden. The little one who just turned three pulled up the morning glory vines out of the beans and then very carefully planted them in the middle of the rows to keep them from dying. One thing sure, gardening is more fun with kids around.

So grow something this week and stay brain young. See you again on Wednesday. No telling what I'll talk about then, but maybe it won't be more than fifteen minutes worth.


My son

What to say? What to say?

I am giving a talk this Saturday to a bunch of delightful ladies at a tea. I haven't actually met but two or three of them, but I'm sure if they're coming to a tea they'll be delightful. It sounds like a fun thing to do. At least the tea part. I don't know about the listening to me part. Maybe the organizers won't tell them about that. Maybe they'll just advertise the tea cakes and cookies. You know how sometimes you have to get through something not all that great to get to the better part. I'm speaking first. So they have to listen to me, then enjoy the food. It's being held at one of the oldest churches in this area. A church even older than the one I go to and our church will be two hundred years old in three years. But Clear Creek Baptist Church in Woodford County has been around even longer.

So I'm looking forward to being there again. I've been in the church before with the guys (Patriot Qt) when they sang there. The church considers The Patriots practically a home group for them since they've sung there so often and the people support them with love and prayers. But they're not singing and don't worry. Neither am I. But I am talking, so I need to decide what I should talk about. I have twenty minutes. When I told somebody that (I've forgotten who which is good so I can't get mad at them), the smart alec said do you think you can just talk twenty minutes. As if they thought I'd talk all night. They won't have to worry about that. I'll want to get to the tea and cakes too.

But right now I just have to come up with what I'm talking about for twenty minutes. I want to say something inspiring and fun. I could give my "how I got to be a writer speech." Most people are interested in hearing about a writer's path to publication, but would that be inspiring? I think the lady in charge wanted inspiring. I could give my "Where in the story of Jonah are you?" speech, but I don't think this is the right place for that. Guess I'm at the beginning of the story of Jonah and saying I don't think I want to go to Ninevah on that one. I did a talk once about hands and how the Lord wants us to use them to help others. That went over well, but again it doesn't feel right.

Maybe I'll do like the old Regular Baptist preachers used to do and may still if those type of churches are still around. They didn't prepare sermons. They just opened the Bible and went to preaching. They called it grabbing onto heaven and holding on with their fingernails. They thought it presumptuous to prepare and showed lack of faith in the Lord to give them the message He wanted preached. I won't be able to do that. I'm a preparer. But I hope I will be open to what the Lord wants me to prepare. I think He can inspire you before the talk the same as during the talk. Of course the Bible does say the Holy Spirit will give you words to say when you're telling people about the Lord.

I'll probably end up combining something I hope will be inspiring and talk about my writing too. I'll try to keep it moving and watch my watch and talk just my twenty minutes or less so there will be a few minutes for questions and answers. That's always my favorite part of any talk. Of course the best questions come from first and second graders who have been told by the teacher to come up with a question to ask. You get some good ones then. Adults are usually too well mannered to ask those sort of questions, but you never know. This bunch of tea drinking ladies might surprise me with some doozies.

What is the worst or best question you've ever been asked? I guess a lot of people might say "Will you marry me?" is the best question, but there may be some who also say it could be the worst. I'm going to have to think about that in regard to writing questions. Maybe the hardest to answer is "What is your favorite book?"

And since we're talking about favorite books, I did my drawing for Summer of Joy by yours truly and Age Before Beauty by Virginia Smith and Bobbi from Kentucky is the winner. Bobbi has some great blogs and one of them is about books. You can check it out at Bobbi's Booknook, http://bobbisbooknook.blogspot.com. She reviews all sorts of books and has been kind enough to review a couple of mine in the past.

Thanks to all who entered the book giveaway in May. I'll be posting a new giveaway next week after I finish my work in progress. I'm going to give away a couple of copies of my new book, The Believer in June, July and August so there will be lots of chances to win. I'll give you details in the newsletter I plan to send out next week.

Think about me Saturday and pray that I won't put everybody to sleep. Maybe we should have coffee first. I'll tell you how it goes Sunday.

Time in May to Enjoy

Here it is May already and such a beautiful May day here in Central Kentucky this first Sunday of the month. Yesterday was Derby Day and while the weathermen threatened rain and storms it turned out to be a beautiful afternoon for everybody who takes part in Derby activities. The night before wasn't quite as nice for the Derby parties as rain dampened a few hats. I'm not a Derby partier although I have had the church out for picnics on Derby Day just because it was the only day we could agree on for the most to be able to come. I used to have a picnic here every Spring but then Darrell started being on the road singing most weekends and I have a hard time finding a Saturday when he's going to be around to help host the event. But in years past, we always had fun. Our church has a small congregation, but we like to think of ourselves as a big family of God. And we are definitely part of the family of believers.

Back to Derby Day. I have never been to a Derby. Don't really have any plans to ever go to a Derby, but there are those who say every Kentuckian should experience it at least once in his or her lifetime. I do enjoy watching the race on t.v. Of course now the coverage goes on all day and I wouldn't mind seeing the crazy and the extravagant hats and hearing all those human interest stories about this horse or that trainer or owner, but I don't have time to watch t.v. all day. I usually just watch the 6 p.m. Run for the Roses. You know I never saw those roses yesterday. Big Brown was being so fiesty after the race, he would have probably eaten them. Of course it was sad with Eight Belles being put down. I've researched horse racing for a couple of books in the past and that's always a sad part of racing. Some horses want to run so much, have such a big heart, that they break down trying too hard.

Anyway, as I was saying, I don't have time to watch all the race coverage. How often do we say that? We don't have time. Our pastor used to correct us when we said that we didn't have time to do this or that. He told us we all had the same amount of time in the day the Lord gave us. It was just how we chose to use that time. Like now I'm blogging when I could be walking in the sunshine or cleaning up my kitchen or reading a book. I could be doing a lot of things and some of them are things I really should be doing. I've been putting off doing some chores like cleaning out my closets for so long that my closets are reaching critical mass point where I may very well end up under an avalanche of clothes I should have taken to the Goodwill Store months ago. But there are so many more interesting things to do and so many more "I said I would do it" things to do. I have another speech on Thursday night. They're expecting me to show up with something to say. All right, those of you who know me -- I know what you're thinking. When doesn't she have something to say? But I want it to be something that people will enjoy listening to for thirty minutes or so. I want to come up with some fun trivia questions. I want to get some good doorprizes together and I will do my best to get it done. But in order to do that I'm going to have to put those closets off a little longer and hope I survive the avalanche when it comes.

My talk to the Administrative Assistant luncheon on Thursday went okay and I had fun meeting some of the women who keep the churches going in the Frankfort area. The luncheon was sponsored by the Corinth Christian Bookstore in Frankfort. They are so supportive of the area churches and of writers like me. They always let me have a book launch at their store and have other writers in as well. In fact Beverly Lewis is going to be there for a signing on May 16th. They're excited to have such a well known author at their store. So go by if you're in the area and you're a Beverly Lewis fan. I've been told she's a super nice person. I may meet her on the next day at the Blue Grass Festival of Books at Joseph-Beth's Bookstore in Lexington. I'll be signing books there on Saturday, May 17 from 9 to 5. I hope some of you will come by and talk to me so I won't be tempted to wander away from my post and spend all my money on more books I don't have time to read. See there's that "I don't have time" again. It pops up everywhere.

Maybe I should think about how I'm spending my time. Is it the way the Lord wants me to spend it? Is it the way I want to spend it? Am I just letting the hours roll past without thought and those hours are rolling into days and then weeks and way too fast becoming years slipping by. "I don't have time." You know, one of these days that's going to be so true. Now while I do still have the time the Lord has given me, I need to make the best use of it. I need to squeeze and shove all the minutes together and make time for work and family and friends, but first I need to make time for the Lord, the giver of all time. The closets can wait.

Hope you have all the time you need this week and every week.

Speeches and Book launch for Summer of Joy

Finally got those galleys corrected and off to the editor. I'm hoping I made the story read better. I like to read books that don't jar the reader away from the story because of awkward wording and so that's the kind of book I want to write. I even sometimes read my final copy aloud so that my ear can catch what my eye missed. And then I still miss stuff. Like those too many stills.

I didn't lose my voice and I was able to give my speech at the Anderson County Historical Society. I told them I was talking about the history of one Anderson County writer -- me. That's the only history I know well enough to talk about for very long. I like reading history, but I'm not exactly a sponge when it comes to facts and figures. I remember things that happened that I think might make a good story, but I wouldn't want anybody quoting me. The temperatures plunged that night and we had windchill temps that sound scary when they talk about them on the radio and t.v., so the place wasn't packed. But we still had a good time and the people asked lots of good questions. That's what I like best about giving speeches. The question and answer time. I used to do a lot of school visits and kids could come up with the best questions. One thing most everybody always wants to know is how long does it take to write a book. And that's not a one answer fits all. It's according to the book and according to the writer and according to what else is going on in the world around the writer. Not to mention the level of inspiration. Some stories are harder to dig out of the brain than others.

I'm hoping to do more talks in the future. I'm coming up with some good motivational topics and of course, I'm always ready to talk about my writing. I'm doing one speech on "Where in the story of Jonah are you?" Another is "You didn't mean me, did you, Lord?" But although I enjoy speaking, my first love is writing. I'm ready to get started on a new book.

I'm still not sure I've named this blog for the final time. I've changed the name three times already. I'm thinking about another name, but maybe I'll wait another week and think more.

I went to Georgia last week with Darrell and his group, The Patriot Quartet. They had a couple of great concerts or singings as we've always called them in the Southern Gospel world. And the bus ride was long, but we had fun. Next trip for me is the South Carolina Book Fest in Columbia. But before that I'm having a book launch at the Corinth Bookstore in Frankfort, Kentucky. That's a great store run by some great Christian people. Come by and see me on Friday, February 15 and get your copy of Summer of Joy autographed. Also my interview with Novel Journey will be posted February 2. http://www.noveljourney.blogspot.com/

Till next time, keep the faith and never, never forget the power of prayer. Ann