Lil's Garden

  We have had an abundance of pecans this year. It has been several years since our four trees produced a really good crop, but this is the year. There is a kind of satisfaction in the good work of gathering, cracking, and shelling pecans. Robert and I were listening to The Membership: A Wendell Berry Podcast the other day. The hosts were discussing the poem "Awake at Night" by Wendell Berry. In the poem Berry recounts some of the thoughts that go through his mind when he is awake at night. This line just grabbed me: I think of a luxury in the sturdiness and grace of necessary things, not in frivolity. That would heal the earth, and heal men. It is a luxury for me to know the sturdiness and grace of shelling pecans. Being sheltered here at the farm is helping to free me from frivolity. I don't need new clothes or gadgets or entertainment. These old clothes serve me well. A manual nut cracker is designed to do the job of cracking pecans very well, and it lets ...

  I've been thinking that my life lately has become a bit like a patchwork quilt. I've just been taking the pieces as they come and stitching them together one by one. Sometimes the pieces don't fit too well and most times my stitches are not fine. But I hope that it is turning into something pretty that gives me warmth and that when I look back, I can remember how the pieces came to me. I suppose I'm thinking about quilts, because one of Grammy's quilts has come back home to us. After Pat Brown read Robert's article in the Wilson County News about his grandfather , she decided to give the quilt that Grammy made for her mother and fellow church member, Julia Brown, to us. It has come home to the place where it was made. Thanks, Pat! I remember listening to a Bobbie Gentry album called "Patchwork" when I was a teenager. I loved many of the songs, especially, "Benjamin" and "Jeremiah." I got the album out the other day. It was still w...