Remembering Roxie, My Walking Buddy Saint Bernard

Dogs come into our lives to teach us about love; they depart to teach us about loss. ~Erica Jong

I lost one of my walking buddies last week. Roxie lived across the road from me. She came to her family when she was a pup and already bigger than many dogs are when they are grown. A fuzzy furry sweatheart. Then she grew some more and became a regal, full size Saint Bernard. Her family has a house with one of those porches that go around two sides of it and Roxie liked to sit on that side porch facing my house and keep watch on her world. When the grandkids came to visit and we were outside, Roxie liked to meander on over to our yard to check out what was happening. 

And she loved to go walking with Oscar and me. Every day she'd be out on the porch or yard with an ear out to listen for us to head out to the field for our walk. In her early years, she always heard me, but the last couple of years, her hearing suffered and if she fell asleep on the porch waiting for us, she didn't always wake up. I couldn't help feeling a little guilty when we came back from our walk and she'd be awake and come off the porch to give me that look that said "why did you go without me." A few times I would walk back down the lane because she looked so disappointed. 

She did have that slobber problem that dogs with big mouths have. And she did like to lean on you. Early on, I decided that blue jeans are easy to wash and a little Saint Bernard slobber is a small price to pay for such a sweet companion. My grandkids weren't as sure about that, especially when she came close and shook her head. Then the slobber slingers got them. She wasn't a neat dog. When we walked in the cow pastures, she would rub her neck down in the fresh cow piles as though putting on a little perfume. Not sure her family appreciated her walking with me on those days! She was also quick to scavenger any dead animals we came across. It was useless trying to get her to leave the carcass be. She simply picked whatever it was up and headed for home. Another time her family probably wasn't so happy I'd led her astray. 

She loved the snow because that was her element. She was more than ready to walk when the ground was covered in white. It was easy to imagine her in the Alps with a keg around her neck searching out somebody lost in the snow.  Oscar, who also likes the snow, enjoyed having Roxie along on our walks. They were buddies and the longer walks the better for both of them. Snow in the winter, the creek in the summer were their favorites. 

Then Friday a week ago after I got home from my trip to California, I went for a walk in the rain. Roxie was right there with me and seemed the same as any other day. But the next day she must have had a heart attack. They found her with no sign of trauma, just gone on. I miss her now when we walk. A little Roxie slobber on my jeans would be more than welcome. Roxie bulldozed her way through life, going where she wanted to go and living her her dog life to the fullest. She was a very good neighbor and walking buddy. Go rest high on that mountain, Roxie, where all good dogs surely wait at the gate to welcome their families (and a neighbor or two) home.


Dogs' lives are too short...their only fault, really. ~Agnes Sligh Turnbull

A good dog never dies. ~Mary Carolyn Davies

Spotted on My Walks through Nature's Garden

There are always flowers for those who want to see them. (Henri Matisse)

I usually take a walk every day if at all possible. My dog, Oscar, would be disappointed if we didn't, although on some of the hotter days in summer, he sometimes looks at me as if he thinks I might have lost my mind wanting to walk when it's 90 degrees in the shade. Actually I try not to walk when it's that hot unless I can keep to the shade. Not for me, but for him. His black fur coat is hot.

But I love spotting gifts of nature when I walk. A couple of days ago, I found this beautiful pink flower. One stalk with all these blooms. No others anywhere around. I've never seen one like it before. It looks like a flower that belongs in a cultivated flower bed, but there it was on the edge of the hayfield in nature's big, wild garden. I haven't tried to look it up. Maybe one of you will recognize it and give it a name. 

I enjoy walking in Nature's garden. There are weeds too and sticktights or what some of you call beggar lice. You hear the whine of a mosquito now and again and flies can be worrisome when you get around the cows. But always there are sights to see and things to spot when I take a walk. 

I like sharing some of the things I spot on my Facebook page. It's like taking my friends for a walk with me. So tonight I'm asking you to walk along and see what we can spot. 

 

I always keep an eye out for flowers. The daisies are a favorite. They bloom with such determination and so cheerfully. It doesn't matter if I pick a few to pluck the petals. Another will pop up in its place. Tiny, more delicate looking flowers scatter color through the grasses.

 

 

 

Sometimes the blooms are small but so plentiful they carpet the whole field 

 

 

Then Kentucky's state flower, the goldenrod lights up the summer with color.

And among all the flowers are the butterflies. Beauty on wing.


Hope you enjoyed walking with me and spotting a few of the things along the way.

One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today. (Dale Carnegie)

Spotted on My Walks

"Happiness is a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but which if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you." ~Nathaniel Hawthorne

I love spotting things on my walks like this butterfly. I've been pursuing him or his brothers and sisters for the last couple of months in order to take his photo. They were all very camera shy, not wanting to reveal those spotted wings for me. Butterflies are a gift of summer that edges over into autumn. I see them in my walks through the fields before the last cutting of hay harvests the late blooming flowers for the cows to eat when snow starts flying.

Some of you who follow my Facebook author page know I post photos from time to time that I take on my walks. Sometimes the clouds and sky. Sometimes flowers.

Sometimes butterflies. Sometimes Oscar. Sometimes snakes and bugs. The digital camera on my phone makes sharing my walks easy. But it does take a while to jerk the phone out of my pocket and click on the camera icon. Often too long and I miss some great shots I would love to share with you. A few weeks ago, I was walking along a fence row and a wild turkey flew up right in front of me. So I think that it sure would have been nice to have had my camera out, but I didn't get that camera out. Two steps farther on, another wild turkey flew out right in front of me. A missed opportunity. A day or two later, I was walking along a thicket of trees in another field and a fawn, still sporting spots, must have been spooked by Oscar. It jumped out right in front of me. Again, if only I'd been ready with my camera. Maybe I should start wearing one of those motion sensor cameras around my neck. :) 


Then there are these butterflies I've been chasing all summer. I get my camera ready and try to sneak up on them but just when I'm set to hit the picture taking button, the butterfly flutters away. That's what butterflies do. Flutter away and refuse to cooperate with the picture taking human.

So some of the things I spot on my walks I can only share in words. I do that at times on my Facebook page and all the time when I'm writing. I want the words of my stories to make pictures in your head. The things I spot on my walk may or may not find their way onto my Facebook page, but they have a good chance of someday finding their way into one of my stories. 

I took a break from birthday stories tonight, but I have a few more I hope to share. You have seven more days to throw your name in my giveaway hat if you haven't already. You can read about the prizes on my Website Events Page.  Leave a comment here with a way to contact you to enter or send an e-mail from my website. Always fun to hear from you and I've enjoyed all the birthday stories you've shared. 

Thanks for reading. Hope that happiness butterfly lights on your shoulder.

Singing, Walking, and Writing

--Here's the Patriot Quartet singing at Goshen's Homecoming. That's our church and that's Darrell on the right with the patriotic tie. If you like Southern Gospel you would probably like their sound and their new song "An American Christian" that's getting some play on gospel stations around the country right now. They're going to have their Homecoming singing on Friday and Saturday night at Sand Spring Church. So if you're in the area, come on out and hear them. For more info or to hear how they sound, you can check out their website, http://www.patriotquartet.com/. They're planning to make a DVD. Guess they'll be in the movies - sort of.

--That's something I never thought I wanted to be. In the movies. I'm one of those people who try to hide behind a tree if somebody points a camera toward me. I'd much rather be the one pointing the camera at the other people and making them groan because I'm taking their pictures. Of course grandkids are a grandmother's favorite subject. Some of my grandkids beg to have their pictures taken and others of them are ready to hide behind that tree with me.

--My new dog, Oscar, doesn't hide. He's quite the ham. He actually seems to pose at times and wait for me to take the picture. The dogs and I went on a long walk today. It was a perfect October day here and sometimes you have to seize the opportunity when it presents itself. So I stole a couple of hours from my writing time and went out into the woods to enjoy. Actually it wasn't totally wasted writing/creating time. My characters are coming to life inside my head. I'm figuring out what they look like and what they think about and what they talk about and what they're doing and why. But I'm not going to know that all at once.

--But I don't have to know everything yet. I just have to know them well enough to start the journey. I'm reading a book about writing, bird by bird by Anne Lamott, and in it she quotes E.L. Doctorow as saying that "writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way." So I'm anxious to turn my headlights on and start driving. Yet at the same time, I'm timid about turning the key and pressing on the gas pedal. Will the story be there again? It has been so many times before, but how can I be sure it will be this time? I guess I can't be sure. I can only rely on the truth that the stories have come in the past and then click on those headlights and start the journey one more time.

--I posted some new photos on my Facebook page and also in my website gallery, if you're interested. The Facebook pictures are the grandkids and the website pictures are a mixture. And don't forget to send me an e-mail if you want to have a chance to win an autographed copy of one of my books and a hardback copy of Less Than Dead by Tim Downs. I'll be drawing for the winner around Thanksgiving.

--Till next time, remember - always laugh when you can...it's cheap medicine.

A New Book in the Mail

Another busy Saturday with an even busier Sunday coming up - maybe. The Sunday School kids couldn't make it for the Panther Rock walk last week, so maybe they'll want to go this week. It's a good thing we didn't go last week because we had a gully washer about 3 p.m. We'd have been way down the creek by then and would have gotten WET. Of course the kids wouldn't have cared. They would have already jumped in the creek by then anyway. But somehow getting rained on is different than getting wet in a creek or pool. Of course when I was a little girl we went out and played in the rain when there was no thunder and lightning. We had great fun getting soaked and running through puddles. It was the closest we ever came to playing in a sprinkler.

So we may do the walk again. Then my son and family are coming out to try to get one more gallon of blackberries for some more jam. He got back from his business trip to China on Wednesday. Just in time. His kids were really missing him. The little two-year-old kept saying she'd "lost" her daddy. Anyway to let him know he's back on home ground here in Kentucky, I'll let him climb into all the worst brambles this time to find those biggest berries, because of course, that's where all the best ones are. School starts around here in about ten days so the grandkids are going to spend the night. So now you see why I'm blogging tonight. We'll be busy tomorrow night. Those little rascals like to go to bed late and get up early when they're at "Grammy Camp."

I didn't have a grandmother who spoiled me rotten when I was a little girl, but I did have an aunt who stepped in to that spot. We spent the night with her every Friday and she loved us without boundaries. She cooked us hotdogs (a rare treat for us when I was a kid) and bought us soft drinks. Sometimes she let us make Brown Cows (ice cream and coke). I didn't really like it, but it was fun to make. She had an old Underwood typewriter she let us type on. I typed "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog" a zillion times. Perhaps that was the beginning of me thinking I could be a writer. I still miss Bond and she's been gone now for forty years. I don't suppose we ever really stop missing the ones we love. We carry them in our heart and the love they had for us somehow stays with us and makes us stronger.

You'll be happy to know I got my copies of The Outsider Friday. The publishers got them out to me ASAP after I called to let them know they hadn't arrived. I knew they hadn't really lost my address. ;o) So, Donna and Jane, the books you won in my book give-away are in the mail to you. I've been giving books away right and left to family. At this rate, I'll have to order more next week. But that's okay.

It's always fun getting a new book. This is my eighteenth (I think) and it was just as exciting as the second one. Note, I didn't say the first one. Holding that very first published book in your hands is extra special. Of course it was so long between books before The Scent of Lilacs was published that getting that book was about the same as seeing the first one back in 1978. There had been black months in those unpublished years when I wasn't sure I'd ever see another of my books in print. And then I decided to write about a preacher and his daughter and discovered a whole new group of readers. A great group of readers. I'm glad the Lord put Jocie's story into my head. I just wish I had dived into the inspirational market a few years earlier than I did. But you know, I can't go back and do over yesterday. I just have today with hope for tomorrow.

I wish you a great today and an even better tomorrow. If you get The Outsider and read it, let me know what you think. Write me a review on Amazon if you take a notion. I've already received one e-mail from a lady who has already read The Outsider. And liked it, thank goodness. Talk to you Wednesday with some inspirational quotes this week. Quotes to keep you hanging in there and working toward your dream.