December

"December is Christmas...

With each setting of the sun,

 and the rising and setting of the moon 

and stars in the dark sky, the wonder grows.

 It is not so much in color as in absence of color, 

less in sound than in absence of sound, 

not at all in fragrance but in absence of fragrance;

 that is of the earthly color, sound and fragrance. 

Each day there seems less of all that has been familiar

 in the earlier months of the year, 

and more that is new though not strange.

 Gradually the world becomes another place, 

suffused by gentle radiance, 

cupped in innocence and infinite wisdom, 

carried aloft by unseen winds which bear it

 closer and closer to the Source of all wonder."

Gladys Hasty Carroll

November

"November is a russet apple with a glint of gold in

it's rough brown skin,

 one dry leaf clinging to its blackened stem, 

 a brisk spicy flavor at its core. 

It is cider working in dark barrels,

 reddish brown sawdust blanketing the sills,

 amber-eyed cows chewing all day in the stanchions.

 It is stately fowl on yard parade in brown and gray feathers 

and red combs, and many brown eggs in the barn cellar nests at night. 

It is grey crocks filled with barberry sauce

 and great cubes of translucent pumpkin, 

scarlet cranberries drying in the open chamber

. A lamp or lantern held high in the dark dairy

 reveals a mosaic of jellies, preserves, shrubs, 

wines, bottled herbs and yellow cream rising in shallow pans."

Gladys Hasty Carroll

October

October is age regal and triumphant, 

the impartial judge on the bench,

 the dowager duchess, wise, strong, 

and in excellent health, 

bearing easily the weight of velvet robes 

which change with shifting light from deep blue

 to plum color and crimson,

 of heavy chains, heavy pins, 

heavy rings all of gold, 

all of the great keys which this month

 is the keeper of the coin of the realm

 secreted in the robe's capacious pockets."

Gladys Hasty Carroll

September

"September is a banner of soft purple 

and metallic gold proudly 

suspended across the sky...

The sand y roads are bordered deep 

in goldenrod and wild asters.

Sweet apples and Porters are yellow

 in the orchards and blue

pearmains are ripening.

 Maple trees are touched with yellow

 from the first frost.

Pumpkins are drawn by the cartload 

from the fields and stacked beside the barn."

Gladys Hasty Carroll

3rd Birthday

It was a monster truck bash,

and it had to be green!

That's what my 3 year old

grandson wanted!

He drove the truck up and down the frosting hill

and that made him very happy:) 

August (A Little Late)

"August is hot. Opulent, tired, thirsty, hot...

She asks no questions about the purpose of life,

is heavy with answers as a cow with milk

 coming up the pasture lane at days end.

 A child is to play and get into mischief

 and do his chores and eat and sleep and grow...

August is the meeting place of the currents of the year.

She feels the meeting within her,

the waters from many directions 

surging into a mighty eddy;

but she is not shaken by it, 

encompasses it calmly

 as she carried her children to full term 

despite their struggles to find a way out

 of the pocket in which she held them

 until it was time for them to go.

She is even faintly amused by the surging

 and eddying as she was by the struggles of her unborn."

Gladys Hasty Carroll

Outfit for a Little Lass

This coat and bloomers was made

for a very special little lady

Juniper Kate

 who was born on her 

Great-Great Grandma's

( My Mom)

Birthday.

The coat is called a Brunch Coat

and the fabric was one I was saving for

some special project.

One Year Birthday

The month has flown by and I still haven't posted 

Beckham's

one year birthday!

I did a Camping Theme

 With a tent and campfire cake...

 The cutest bear ever for the don't feed the bears sign...

 Lanterns, sticks and pinecones.

 The birthday boy did not think it appropriate to 

eat with his fingers,

he requested a fork and carefully

ate one forkful at a time!

His older brother however put his whole

face on top of a s'more bar

and had marsh mallows stuck to his face:)

It

July

"July is the beginning of the year's prime of life...

The long days roll by on greased axles,

laden with tall grass, new-cut and drying in the sun,

the corn knee-high and ready for hoeing,

potatoes, squashes and pumpkins in bloom,

sweet peas climbing up chicken wire to cover the shed wall

with pink, white, red and lavender,

pond lilies starring every spring-fed pool of water

and filling a washtub under the dooryard tree.

The nights are short and the dark is thin and soft,

a-twinkle with  fireflies,

heavy with the heat of the sun 

which has scarcely gone down

when the east begins to brighten,

and rich with the smell of fruit and flowers and swamp

and the sea on the other side of the mountain."

Gladys Hasty Carroll

Porch #1

This is my front porch...

or is it the back porch...

maybe it is actually the side porch!

Anyway it is where I walk in when I

park my car:)

I just love a porch.

New Look in the Booth

I've been working hard to get 

a lot of new items into my booth

at Rusty.

It was a super fun way to create

and I love the little bit country,

little bit rock and roll:)

Chairs with a Story

I was asked by a lovely young bride to redo the seats

on some chairs her parents had given her for

her first apartment with her groom.

The chairs had been in her parents attic.

 So I took off the old seats, tightened the rickety

spindles and legs and recovered them.

I used a monogram that she had on her wedding invite

and put that on the seat.

When the brides mom saw them she told how

once upon a time when she was getting married

she and her groom found these chairs 

at a garage sale and proudly brought them

 to their very first apartment.

They didn't mind that they were a little bedraggled

because they were THEIRS!

Isn't that the neatest thing?

I'm so glad I got to be part of the story...

New Projects

I have been very inspired lately

by ideas for my booth.

Not sure if the customers will be as

excited as I am...

but I can hope.

This was a very ugly canvas of a flower

that I got at a sale.

Loved painting over it and starting fresh with

this look and color.

 The horse is an American Girls size

but I painted it and glittered and glammed it up!

Prairie Aprons

I am in love with my new apron designs!

I call them Prairie aprons and 

will be selling them in Rusty G.

 The one above I used a vintage napkin for the 

front and also a ruffled piece on the side 

which doesn't show in the picture.

June

"All the smells of winter are washed away 

by the flood tide of the perfumes of June--

an incomparable blend of a thousand flowers

 caressed by the sun, 

of fruit springing from bud in the orchard,

 of roots thickening in loose, rich soil, 

of sea turn, swamp mist, running brooks,

 birch and pine. 

The outdoors comes in and there is no indoors...

Small children, barefoot, roam at will,

 wading brooks, peering into muskrat holes,

feeding small birds in the hollows of trees, 

following woods trails, digging sand banks. 

Women's fingers are pink-stained at night

from the picking and hulling

 which bring strawberry short-cake to the table."

Gladys Hasty Carroll

Iconic in Turquoise

I beg pardon y'all if  I offend the purists

on this post;)

I bought an old pair of cowboy boots...

very cheap and too big for me

But I really "needed" a Turquoise pair, 

not to wear but to display in my bedroom.

So out came my Annie Sloan chalk paint

and now they have pride of place in my room!

Now I really wish they did fit!

9 Months and Stolen My Heart

We call him Beckham boy...

and he is the snuggliest, most expressive

little munchkin!

How Many Miracles?

How many miracles can we ask God for? 

Is there a limit to His mercy

and His grace?

If we ask do we expect to receive what

our minds think is best or what God thinks is best?

These are the questions I have been thinking

a lot about in the past few months and 

especially tonight as our church

faces another night of prayer.

Our Pastor has gone into surgery

for a liver transplant...and we wait

with anxious hearts and prayers for 

just one more miracle!

In his family we have prayed for a 

miracle of release from drug addiction

and his son has been clean over 2 years...

in his family we prayed for his other son

to survive leukemia, pancreatitis,

pain med withdrawal, broken tibia,

ongoing healing...

He has made it 2 years in remission despite

all the complications.

For our pastor we prayed that his liver cancer 

would be healed,

and tonight he gets a new liver...

if God wills it to be so and all goes well.

How many miracles can we ask for

 in one family? 

I don't know-- but what I do know is that there

are no limits set for us in His Word.

He makes it plain that we ought to pray and

ask without ceasing, with faith and in His will.

We should pray even if our faith is as small 

as a mustard seed and He will do

as we ask...according to His will.

So tonight I ask He who knows best for

 just one MORE miracle,

for this family that I have come to know 

and love in such a special way.

I love you Pastor H and Family

May

"May is the tender promise we know will come true.

If in the earlier months any of us has doubted that

God loves his children, every one, we doubt no longer.

The sun has come back and rises north of the mountain,

gently flooding the windows of the east chamber

 as it comes up, and casting a soft light

 on the brown kitchen wall

behind the supper table as it goes down.

The grass is green and growing and the cattle are out.

One night at milking time a 

new calf is brought up from the pasture.

The seed is in and the long rows of twin leaves rise from the earth.

The apple trees are in rosy bloom, the blossoms of 

wild pear and cherry like white torches 

against the dark woods and the stone wall.

Day and night the air is bright and sweet 

with the scent of budding fruit, 

the flash of wings, and the song

of birds building nests among the flowers.

The whistle of the whippoorwill is a bugle call to summer."

Gladys Hasty Carroll

2 Years

Today was a hard day-again.

It was Logan's funeral day.

And it is a day that stands alone in the halls

of pain in my own life.

2 years ago today my husband left for rehab

in CA and from that point on we have 

been separated.

He chose to live in bondage to a substance

and I chose to remove myself from the daily pain

and chaos that had been my life for 10 years

before that day.

This was before...trying so hard to make life

better and easier so he could maintain

sobriety and live a happy life.

This is now...living alone and trying so hard to make 

life better and easier for myself

so I can maintain joy filled, godly living

and be content.

Did I make the right decision?

Did I do enough?

Do I know what the future holds?

Will addiction rob me and my children of 

the man we all love?

These are the hard and unanswerable questions

that I face each and every day.

When I think I am okay and things are better

then something comes along that brings it

all into sharp focus again and I realize

afresh that the pain still hurts just as much,

the tears are just as bitter

and the wound still is not healed.

But...

Gods faithfulness and grace meets me

every day fresh and real,

His love tenderly pours the Balm of Gilead

into my wounded heart and it IS enough

to face each day, not the future with

it's fears and sorrows, but for today.

I will trust that He who says He came to bring 

life abundant means what He says!

Silent Sorrow

This is an extremely difficult subject

that I am addressing in this post.

My heart is full of tears.

Another dear and precious friend lost

her 24 year old son this week-

but he did not go from joy to joy.

He was on a silent and sorrowful path and 

it ended in a silent and sorrowful 

passing-suicide.

The reason I know this friend in such 

a deep and personal way was that we

share the terrible path of watching someone we love

fall ever further into addiction.

I tried to walk the journey along side her as they tried 

to save him from the slide downwards.

There were many times that I hugged her

and felt her shaking with tears and many

times she hugged me and let me cry.

We didn't do things the same, it was her son 

and I am dealing with a spouse, but we

understood how the other felt, the fear

and the pain and the anger and the rage and 

the fierce love and the aching misery.

We walked silently together many times in sorrow.

I look back and think was there ANYTHING I could have

done differently or better to help him,

but it never pays to look back unless we

can learn from it in some way.

This is what I know-

Logan believed in Jesus

he was in terrible bondage to a substance

he couldn't bear the pain

he is Home.

Beyond that I cannot say anything that

I know for sure.

And when I saw her that terrible morning

not one word came from my mouth,

I could only sit by her and hold her hand 

and weep in silent sorrow.

I love you family of Logan

From Joy to Joy

It has been a difficult week to find

the words or interest to write anything here.

My dear friend, since my single days,

lost her first grand child

in a tragic farming accident.

Her daughter posts at 

Whispers of Joy

He was 5.

His life was joy,

each day was full of all the special

delights of childhood.

He didn't get a terrible sickness

that brought him to this place.

He simply went from joy here

to joy there.

That is not the way it feels,

the pain all who love him feel

is incomprehensible.

But for him he never had to know

that life is hard and people hurt you 

and loved ones don't love Jesus,

and the world can be a bad and scary place.

He just passed from joy

to JOY.

and that is amazing.

I love you, family of Skyler.

Holy Week 2014

This year I have been reading through 

the Bible in Chronological order-

amazing and eye opening!

At the start of this Holy Week

leading up to that most glorious event

Resurrection Sunday,

I had been stumbling along through

the prophet Zechariah, feeling depressed

by the dire warnings and the heedless

captive Jews. 

Then right in the middle of this a verse leapt off

the page and brought an instant surge of tears.

""then they will look on Me whom they pierced. 

Yes, they will mourn for him

 as one mourns for his only son, 

and grieve for Him as one grieves for a firstborn."

And then a few verses later

"In that day a fountain shall be opened for...sin 

and for uncleanness. "

And then 

"And one shall say unto him, 

what are these wounds in thine hands?

 then shall he answer,

 those with which I was wounded

 in the house of my friends."

I bow the knees of my heart and worship

the One whom my soul loves

and who gave His all in the 

"house of His friends"

that I might look on Him who I pierced

and be cleansed in that Fountain

from all my sin and uncleanness.

April

"April is the two-week-old kitten, the 

month-old lamb, the six-month-old heifer,

the two-year-old girl.

Too young to know it has either past or future,
 it wears the ribbon of the fleeting present
 as part of itself--a crisp bowknot
of iridescent taffeta changing with the colors of the sky

from the pale pink of dawn
 to the pale blue of noon
and the dusty rose of sunset.

It dances on legs too unsteady to support it,
 but they are unaffected by the pull of gravity
and touch the feathery pillow of the earth
only to spring away."

Gladys Hasty Carroll