Loose Leaf Notes

~ The summer in review, taken from first lines in past posts. Click on the last word in each line if you want to read more.
1. By the end of June the Parkway rhododendrons are weeping petals and roadside lilies are looking sassy. ‘Fireworks For Sale’ signs have become evident and everyone seems to be having a yard sale.
2. The first taste of blueberries picked from the garden, the first splashed dunk in the Country Club pool. Meals on the porch. Everyday an outside tea party attended in sundress style.
3. Having just come off a dizzying roller coaster ride of the written word, I went to an open house art day at Rosemary’s house to play in the world of non-verbal fairytale, to tell a deeper story with image and color.
4. My corn is taller than a toddler.
5. With the warm glow of evening sun streaming in, the café was abuzz with a celebratory din left over from the town’s Jubilee festival that day.
6. I catch myself smiling a lot at Floydfest like I do in the garden at home. Every whimsical encounter and seemingly random exchange with others feels like a line up of destiny and adds to the whole of the enchantment that makes the festival special.
7. He gives kisses now and has stopped throwing sand in his hair.
8. What lies beneath is eighteen years of junk collected in the cellar, piled on the pool table we bought to keep teenaged boys home a little longer, crammed into cement block corners, strewn on dusty shelves.
9. A tour of the gingerbread cottages in Oak Bluffs, Martha’s Vineyard is like walking into a storybook. Home of munchkins? Hobbits? Hansel and Gretel’s witch?
10. My two favorite words heard recently are brouhaha and jalopy.
11. A month with a trackhoe on two acres of boulder filled land in rural Madison County brings a whole new meaning to the term “rock and roll.”
12. This morning I woke up to a rooster going off like a Big Ben clock tower. Will it crow 6 times for 6 a.m. and then 7 for 7 a.m. and 8 for 8 a.m.?
13. A rattle under my car turned out to be a heat fan loose on my catalytic converter, which I like to call a “Cadillac converter.”
14. I don’t know that you ever get over losing a loved one or if you just become hardened to the fact.
15, I recently did a story on a local artist in which I had to edit out all the F-U-s and made sure not to mention that we sipped some peach moonshine at the end of our interview.
16. I learn best through self-reflection and meaningful dialogue, an exchange of authentic living language spoken without agendas. I value independent thinking and resist formula and dogma.
17. The literary flavor of summer’s Floyd County Moonshine is as striking as the bright red wildflowers on its cover and as local as the next door neighbor.
18. Pages tossing … Venetian blinds turning … Words lose meaning … Drowsy eyelids drop.