Month: July 2020

Plaid & Garden

By Anita Garner

Years ago I moved into  a cottage in Mill Valley with a lush backyard garden planted by the person who lived there before me.  I was grateful every season for the gardener who created the magical retreat.  Every time I looked out a window something new was blooming and that first year I had no idea what would appear next.

My one and only Grand lived in Woodland Hills.  Mill Valley to Woodland Hills on California’s I-5 was a regular road trip every few months.  Between visits, they sent me photos of The Grand and and I sent them photos of whatever grew in the garden.   On my phone are hundreds of pictures of The Grand and many, many photos of flowers.  Am I the only person who saves pictures of tiny bouquets for years?

In these photos, the coffee tables change, the vases change, the blossoms  change, but the one constant is the plaid couch.  I loved that couch.  It was already vintage when I bought it and even more nicely worn in after I had it a while. Finally, the couch sighed its last. That’s when I realized that in all these pictures, lovely as the flowers are, the couch still draws me in. I miss it.

A plaid fan knows it’s not just for fall and winter, and once in love with plaid, you don’t break up.  You might date a few other patterns, but you’ll always go back. Someday another plaid couch will come knocking at my door and I’ll invite it in and take pictures to show you.

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Lucky Pennies

By Anita Garner

Southern superstition in my family says when we find a penny on the ground, if it’s  heads up, we put it in our shoe and wear it the rest of the day.  I always do and when I remove the pennies I save them in a little vase.  Mother put a lucky penny in every new purse or wallet and never took it out. I do the same.

A gift from New England artist, Steve Bradford, is a keep-it-forever thing.  Here’s what he sent for my recent birthday.

I love jars.  I love wood.  As soon as this arrived, The Grand and I unpacked it and fell in love.

What to put inside?  Maybe a few bits of sparkle. I’m thinking an old rhinestone clip from the 40s now hiding in my jewelry box would fit up there in that small jar on top and a few tiny pine cones in the jar below.  The biggest jar could hold all the pennies I’ve been saving and all the pennies I’ll find in the future.  Lucky pennies.

Here’s another look at what an artist can do with empty jars and wood.

Steve specializes in assemblage art, but like many artists, he’s a practitioner of multiple disciplines.  Found objects and tiny morsels become feasts for the imagination. Click the picture below to visit his website and see more of his work.

Steve with Willow at Bayview Beach, Saco, Maine  

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California sports car, part of our Southern migration on The Glory Road

By Anita Garner

Leslie Ray’s first sports car, 1960s
Glendale, California

This is my brother outside Gramma K’s house on Raymond Avenue in Glendale, with the Verdugo hills rising in the background.  Gramma was the first of our Southern clan to move to California.  Leslie stopped by to show her his latest car.

During his rebellious period in the late 50s, Leslie left our house in Louisiana to live with our mother’s mother.  It wasn’t just teenage rebellion that brought him west.  The car she promised to buy him had something to do with it.  There was a great deal of bargaining between Gramma and our parents,  who were always in motion, traveling the Deep South in their evangelist/pastor/gospel performing circles. Their nearly-grown son objected to every part of our life and threatened to run away from home.

This is not the car she bought.  That first one was an old Pontiac that got him through Hoover High School, through plenty of traffic tickets and a months-long ban from Bob’s Drive-In.  When the rest of our family joined him in California, Leslie taught me terrifying freeway merging lessons in that Pontiac.

The yellow car was many vehicles later,  one of several sports cars he bought on his own and drove too fast.  Then there was a plane, then motorcycles he raced.  Nothing slowed him down.

This next picture was years later when we all gathered at Gramma’s for one of our Sunday suppers.

Leslie Ray is reacting the way he always did
when Gramma scolded.

She’s re-telling the story about how many times she took his car keys away during high school and hung them on a nail in the kitchen.  She confiscated the keys after each infraction and threatened to leave them there, but he always knew he could charm her into giving them back.  When the nail wasn’t displaying my brother’s car keys, it was holding her  beloved Vidalia onions.

All of us who traveled Route 66 back and forth from the South to California brought her Vidalias when we could get them.  Gramma added a thick slice of sweet onion to her morning biscuits,  her Southern tradition continuing in Southern California. To hang onions from that nail, she dropped an onion into the toe of an old stocking, tied a knot, dropped in another one and kept knotting until she had a pearly Vidalia necklace.

I’m working on a collection of stories and essays and while the dramatic milestones, the setbacks and the triumphs get much of the attention, every now and then one of these small moments nudges, wanting to be heard. Today I’m thinking of my tall and charming, silly and stubborn brother.

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