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The Shadowpurr-r-rPress Writer
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Essays to Vignettes
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The Writer's Page, from the Shadowpurr-r-rPress Writer, will share Writings, Essays, Vignettes, Awards as well as special memories. I wrote a weekly news column on Marshall County News for the Gadsden Times for 5 years and features for a monthly Sunday Magazine for 5 years in the Gadsden Times, plus several special assignment pieces. For 2 years I wrote a children’s column and a business column for the Island Chronicle ( Gulf Shores/Orange Beach), plus special features on assignment and have published numerous travel pieces.
I have written several Essays - A few will be included on this Website - a Series of Vignettes I’m writing about growing up in rural North Georgia.
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Brown Eggs or White?
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I have a vivid memory from my childhood concerning eggs. Often on Sunday afternoons my dad would drive me and my sister out in the country to visit Grandpa and MaMa’. One occasion sticks in my mind. It was the summer of 1953. I was ten and my sister was eight. Daddy drove us out to the family homeplace on Grassdale Road in our 1949 shiny black Pontiac. He disappeared inside to talk to Grandpa, and find out how things were faring on the family farm.
My sister and I grabbed a small woven basket from its hook on the long country-style back porch and hurried out to the henhouse. We slipped carefully into the chicken yard looping a strap of leather around the wire gate top to keep the chickens from escaping their pen.
We crossed the yard watching warily for the rooster who strutted around like the boss and kicked up dust with his sharp claws and brush of tail feathers when riled... We hated him. The coast was clear so we slipped quietly into the small henhouse. The smell of dried hay, chicken manure and dust burned our noses, but didn’t stop our mission. Carefully we gathered the brown eggs and filled the worn basket. We always wondered why the eggs were brown instead of white like eggs at the grocery store in town. But we never asked.
Nancy and I whispered and motioned to each other to hurry. We didn’t want to disturb the hens and have them chase us squawking and flapping their wings in anger which was so scary. Tiptoeing back to the gate, we slipped outside the fenced pen to safety and hurried to the “Big House“ - a lovely two-story Federal style country home dating to the late 1800s. There we presented our eggs like a grand treasure to MaMa’, our grandmother.
She smiled and placed the eggs in a large blue pottery bowl on a wooden table in her big country kitchen. Then she opened the old-fashioned cupboard and pulled out a plate of biscuits baked that morning and just waiting for company to come. She rewarded us with a cold biscuit smeared thick with her homemade blackberry jam. What more could a child want on a lazy summer Sunday afternoon?
by Alice Gilreath Duckett
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Gift of Love
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I wrote this poem to honor my late grandmother, Kate Hammond Gilreath, who was such a special part of my growing up in rural North Georgia. She was a prolific reader, a wonderful cook, taught me the fine art of Old South etiquette, and inspired this poem from my memories of her sewing abilities.
I lift the delicate collar from my old cedar chest,
Reverently I hold it to my cheek, soft and lace-edged it is,
Homemade with gnarled hands by Grandmother,
A lasting love token for me.
Thirty years have passed. And the look and feel of it,
Surround me with memories — the delicate smell of violet toilet water,
Grandmama’s special scent (her trademark) lingers in the air.
And I’m eighteen again and fair.
I watch her tat, stitch by stitch, with arthritic hands,
In a low rocking chair she sits,
The lamp pulled close, to aid eyes dimmed by years,
But a twinkle still shines, not snuffed out by the ravages of time.
While the shuttle moves in continuous motion,
Her soft voice relates girlhood tales of times different from today.
The lace collar once my treasured graduation gift,
Now represents an heirloom sweet; soon to pass its softness to another’s cheek.
My daughter upon her graduation will be the proud new owner,
The story of Grandmama’s tatting etched forever in her mind,
Gently I fold the collar in fragile sheets of pink tissue,
And tuck a sachet of violets in the creases.
When the ribboned gift is opened,
Grandmother’s spirit will reign among the tatted stitches.
by Alice Gilreath Duckett
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Mama’s Weed Bouquets
“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder“... and to my mother simple wildflowers and weeds that others discarded formed her treasure to hoard in the windowsills of her North Georgia home. This article is a tribute to my mother, Marion N. Gilreath, who instilled in me as a child a love for flowers (including simple weeds and wildflowers)... a love for God’s creations in nature that has stayed with me throughout my life.
Small bottles and miniature vases of glass, clear and in jewel tones, catch the light and line the kitchen windows and breakfast room nook in my mother’s narrow kitchen. At every season of the year she filled them with the lowliest of God’s creations---- wildflowers, unwanted weeds, stems of leaves, wild vines, and berries— all interesting to my mother.
At age 88 following a severe stroke, her days of wandering the back yard, garden, roadside , forest, and country were over. But her collection of glass bottles and tiny vases still await her three visiting daughters’ hands to fill them with nature’s surprises. She gave us the legacy of appreciating wildflowers and many lesser-known plants. After her death at age 90, we still keep the tradition alive and fill the bottles and small vases for our 93- year-old dad to enjoy.
Mama said her “weed bouquets” were just as pretty and much more interesting than cultivated flowers because they represented rambling walks in the woods, wandering a garden path, investigating the neighborhood, meandering fields and meadows, or just walking in the backyard to discover what was blooming or colorful or caught her eye with an unusual shape. She enjoyed filling small bottles with snowdrops on sunny cold winter days in North Georgia; soon followed wild plum blooms and daffodils gathered growing beside a tumble-down farmhouse abandoned years before. These arrangements gave a hint that spring was just around the corner.
As the weather warmed in springtime, Mama would fill her windowsills with delicate purple and lavender violets plucked from the creekside on our family farm in the rural countryside near Cartersville, GA. Yellow dandelions from a backyard walk and purple vetch bordering Daddy’s backyard garden graced many a blue glass bottle. White and red clover from the roadside or orange trumpet vine flowers from a pasture fence or delicate Queen Ann’s Lace from a field found it’s way to our supper table in June.
Summer’s bounty included wild pink primroses and more Queen Ann’s Lace from a highway’s shoulder. Wild purple asters and pungent white fennel filled the bottles during July and August when most garden flowers fizzled out in the South’s summer heat. A few purple maypops made an interesting design at the table with several green maypop fruits beside the arrangement in a bowl. This could be the topic of conversation at a late night summer supper.
A Sunday afternoon tramp in the shady woods near our Grandpa’s farm might deliver up the spicy fragrance of “pig’s feet” from the heart-shaped leaves of the Trilium plant. Many times in the early fall, I took the peculiar “pig’s feet” to school on Monday to show to all the town kids who never went out for these delicious walks in the country. They were mesmerized by the look, feel and smell of the lowly “pigsfeet.” .
In September Mama would bring in tufted grasses and weeds bleached colorless from the dry, dusty heat of summer. My sister and I would spray them with Aqua Net Hair Spray so the tufts wouldn’t fly away into the kitchen and bring on an allergy attack. Soon October’s offering included the reds, yellows, oranges, and browns of fall leaves gathered in the yard. Usually only 1 or 2 leaves filled Mama’s tiny bottles lined up in the windows of the breakfast room to catch the morning light rays.
Before winter’s cold moved in she would take us for walks to gather ivy and other vines to root in several vases which would offer some green through the gray rainy months. Sometimes a stem or two of beauty berries or a cluster of polk berries would mix in with the last of the fall leaves.
Winter brought holly with red berries or a short length of pine and cedar to fill the small containers. Often she added a little branch with acorns or miniature pine cones attached. She even had a few cut crystal vases in her collection that caught the sunlight on clear cold winter days filled with a stem of bright red pyracantha berries.
Mama always stressed, “You don’t have to be a master gardener; you just need to be a wanderer with a spirit of adventure and a keen eye to observe nature’s delights.” Her idea was that whatever you find can make a wonderful arrangement in a tiny bottle or vase. Now you have a weed bouquet to catch the eye of a child or just enjoy all by yourself.
by Alice Gilreath Duckett
Jul. 21,2007... 11am-CST... Alabama Writer's Conclave Writer's Conference Auburn University Conference Center Auburn, AL Author Alice Duckett of Anniston, AL won a writing award in the AWC International Writing Competition (included writers from all over the United States, Canada and several Foreign countries). She received an Honorable Mention award for her Nonfiction article entry, "Mama's Weed Bouquets," in memory of her mother, the late Marion Gilreath. This is Duckett's 11th Writing Award in Southeastern competition.
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Country Pass-a-Longs
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I’d like to pass along the idea of “Weed Bouquets“ to you and your family members. This is a great way to observe nature and build an appreciation for simple beauty with the younger generation. It’s also a fun way to spend time together hiking and collecting and learning to recognize the wildflowers and lesser-known plants of your state.
Some Good Choices for “WEED BOUQUETS” in Different Seasons of the Year Include:
SPRING: Snowdrops, Daffodils, Jonquils, Woods Violets, Wild Plum, Roadside Redbud, Dandelions, Early Queen Ann’s Lace...
SUMMER: Pink or White Primroses, Wild Purple Asters, Fennel, Queen Ann’s Lace, Trumpet Vine, Maypop, Trilium Plant with Pigsfeet, Purple Vetch, Red/ Purple/White Clover, Goldenrod...
FALL: Tufted grasses, Fall colored leaves of infinite variety, Trilium plant, Beauty Berry, Polk Berry, Dried Roadside Weeds like Goldenrod...
WINTER: Holly with berries, Pine, Cedar, Spruce, Pyracantha, other Evergreens
It’s so easy to make “Weed Bouquets”. You don’t need any arranger’s talent. Just poke flowers, weeds, leaves or berries into a little jug, bottle, vase or interesting container. It only takes a few to fill the space. Keep it small and enjoy the results.
(These are suggestions for Georgia and Alabama where I’ve lived and wandered.)
 
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