Wordless Wednesday: July 31, 2013

Shhhh. Let's get wordless... 

 

Copyright 2013 Teresa K Cypher All rights Reserved

Use by permission only.

Visit other WW participants by clicking HERE

Weekend Writing Warriors: July 28th, 2013

                                                                 
Welcome, warriors!  And welcome to SnipSuns and anyone else who wanders in. Here we are, July sliding on the downside!

Weekend Writing Warriors is a weekly blog-hop. Each week, participants sign up HERE at Weekend Writing Warriors, then post 8 sentences of their work, published or unpublished, to go live between 12:00 noon Saturday, and 9:00 AM Sunday EST.  Then we visit each other, read, comment, critique, encourage--all those great things that do a solitary writer's heart good.

Set up:  Marissa has spent the last year homeless and delusional. In this week's post, she's moving into a small house owned by a church.  The pastor (Pastor Zaylor)  and Rayanne, her volunteer counselor, are helping her take this step from the homeless shelter to her new "home". Izzy runs the shelter

*note   You might encounter creative punctuation :-)

 

     "Rayanne's eyes squinted and Pastor Zaylor's cheeks dimpled, extending their smiles far beyond their lips.  Both had helped her, making a point of  talking about how moving day wasn’t moving from point A to point B, “You’re walking through two new doorways: one physical, a shelter, a home, and the other—  a new world, a new life.”

     With only a backpack to carry, calling it a moving day was the queen of overstatements. She'd said her few goodbyes at the shelter when she collected her bag. Only a couple of weeks staying there had been enough for her to form bonds. It had been her first step off  the streets and even though Izzy had not allowed Marissa past her steel exterior, the gruff woman had treated her with dignity, and right now she needed that more than she needed a friend. Still, she'd miss her."

     That's it, and I apologize for the crazy looking text. Blogger was uncooperative today :-(   

     What jumps out at you, good or bad ? I'd love to hear it and am truly grateful for every bit of criticism, opinion, and shared wisdom.  Thank you so much for visiting!  Sundays are extra busy for me right now, so it might take me several days to return visits, but I will. Have a great week, all!

Wordless Wednesday July 24, 2013

Shhhhh... Let's get wordless...

 

Photo: Copyright Teresa K Cypher 2013 

Use by permission only.

You can visit more Wordless Wednesday participants by clicking HERE  Have a good, Wednesday, all.

Weekend Writing Warriors: July 21, 2013

Welcome, warriors!  And welcome to SnipSuns and anyone else who wanders in. Here we are, July sliding on the downside! I think our heatwave is to cool off this week, into the low 80s ~sigh~ Hope the weather is improving where you are. :-)

Weekend Writing Warriors is a weekly blog-hop. Each week, participants sign up HERE at Weekend Writing Warriors, then post 8 sentences of their work, published or unpublished, to go live between 12:00 noon Saturday, and 9:00 AM Sunday EST.  Then we visit each other, read, comment, critique, encourage--all those great things that do a solitary writer's heart good.

Set up:  Marissa is homeless and delusional. She keeps a journal of how her dreams make her feel, and her feelings about her daily struggles often get into the journal, too.  Keeping the journal is at the request of Rayanne, a church volunteer counselor. This is the transition between Marissa staying at a homeless shelter for women, and moving on to a better arrangement.



*note   You might encounter creative punctuation :-)



I haven't met the other two people I share the house with yet,  but I know I'm fighting a lack of trust. You tell me that we are all children of god, Rayanne, and that we should love one another.  Well, I've seen some pretty terrible things that people do, enough to make me believe we live in a godless world. There is no god looking out for the homeless, for the crazy, for the hungry.

I don't know...maybe there is a god, but I don't know why people pray to him, because he never stops anything bad from happening. 

I have lived under bridges and in subways and have existed on the fringes of society for so long, but you know what?  I am not crazy, and with or without a god, I'm finding my way back.

That's it.  What jumps out at you, good or bad ? I'd love to hear it and am truly grateful for every bit of criticism, opinion, and shared wisdom.  Thank you so much for visiting!  Sundays are extra busy for me right now, so it might take me several days to return visits, but I will. Have a great week, all!

Wordless Wednesday: A swing in want of a child, in the rain...

There's a story here...

Happy Wednesday, all. To see more Wordless Wednesday participants, click HERE

Weekend Writing Warriors: July 7, 2013

Welcome, warriors!  And welcome to SnipSuns and anyone else who wanders in. Holy cow--It's almost July! All that's left of June is the whining that it flew by so fast!

Weekend Writing Warriors is a weekly blog-hop. Each week, participants sign up HERE at Weekend Writing Warriors, then post 8 sentences of their work, published or unpublished, to go live between 12:00 noon Saturday, and 9:00 AM Sunday EST.  Then we visit each other, read, comment, critique, encourage--all those great things that do a solitary writer's heart good.

Set up:  This week follows immediately after last week's post which is HERE (if you want to read it). Marissa is homeless and delusional. She keeps a journal of how her dreams make her feel, and her feelings about her daily struggles often get into the journal, too.  Keeping the journal is at the request of a church volunteer counselor, Rayanne. Izzy is at the desk of the shelter during the night shift. This is the transition between Marissa staying at a homeless shelter for women, and moving on to a better arrangement.

*note   You might encounter creative punctuation :-)



Anyway, I guess it doesn't matter why, just that I sure am glad  Izzy was able to wake me because there was a good day waiting for me. I don't have to tell you why, Rayanne, but I do want to tell you thanks again for being in my corner and making this happen. The room in the church-house is more than I could ever have hoped for. Having my own space with a bed, and a desk where I can write in this journal is, well, I keep looking over my shoulder to check if someone is peeking at what I'm writing. Privacy is something I'll have to get used to again. I'm not complaining about it. I'll never take privacy for granted again. I'll never take a lot of things for granted again.

That's it.  What jumps out at you, good or bad ? I'd love to hear it and am truly grateful for every bit of criticism, opinion, and shared wisdom.  Thank you so much for visiting!  Sundays are extra busy for me right now, so it might take me several days to return visits, but I will. Have a great week, all!

Don't Trample the Raspberry Brambles

Many a summer afternoon and evening I spent tramping over hillside and field, looking for that magical place between settled, and recently disturbed ground. At the places where passing time and changing hands have relegated century old pastures to recovering woodland, and at fence-rows and hedgerows and the edges of woods where brambles freely roam.

For the first thirty-plus years of my life, I pursued the sometimes abundant, sometimes sparse and elusive wild black raspberry,  with a gusto that ignored understanding my quarry.   I was focused. My mantra? "Get the berry in the pail." Tempting morsel of delight...a bite of ripe sunshine, the raspberries filled pies and halfpint Mason jelly jars when my children were growing up.

And the kids came along on the berry picking adventures.There was usually a small herd of us occupying pastures where herds of milk cows used to graze. That herd included the dogs, Gus and Pokey.

Somewhere in my mid thirties, on one of our forays, we discovered a round patch of brambles. There was no way in other than to stomp brambles down, creating a path. The berries were huge, plump, and filled our buckets faster then you can say, "I'll take a slice of that pie."We meandered home with heavy pails, and lips and tongues (and some cheeks) stained the darkest of dark purples.

We continued to visit the patch over the next couple of weeks, picking the berries as they ripened. And we found ourselves reaching farther and farther out on the brambles to reach the best berries of the day.  That in turn caused us to trample more and more brambles, especially those worthless ones that didn't have any berries on them.

The following summer when the raspberries ripened, we hurried to the round patch, and delight turned to  dismay. Where had our patch gone? There were some berry-less shoots and a lot of dead brambles. ~sigh~

I set to work to discover why our patch had died. and the answer, in a nutshell is this: raspberries have perennial roots and biennial shoots.

Don't trample the raspberry brambles. :-)

Translation: The roots live on and on. The shoots sent up by the roots live for two years. The first year, they send up a stem and leaves. The second years flowers (thus, berries).

This is a first year shoot--an example of the "worthless ones" I used to trample to get to the good ones:  Ha! Tender, pale-green skin, thin, needle-like thorns.

This is a second year shoot, what that first year shoot will look like if left to stand:

The stalk of the second year shoot changes color from a mint green to a deep red/burgundy. The thorns thicken and develop a toughness mean to puncture Kevlar. After the berries are mature, the shoot will have done it's sole purpose--procreated by producing seeds. Fait accompli. It dies, it's skeleton remaining to imbed thorns deeply into the hide of any berry-hound foolish enough to tempt fate by proximity.

Botanists might wish to add a note about the procreation part--since black raspberries do make new plants another way, as do red raspberries, albeit slightly differently. But that's a tale for another day. :-)

Don't trample the brambles...

Wordless Wednesday 7-3-13

The hill and her many moods: Enjoy.

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