Texas Fall Garden and Thanksgiving Food

Thanksgiving harvest

Here it is, the day before Thanksgiving, a little windy, a little balmy, and 81 degrees. I am harvesting more veggies from my garden. I love fall gardening in Texas! In the picture above, the rectangular platter is full of what I picked from my garden this afternoon, 15 tomatoes, a dozen peppers and some okra. In the bowl, are tomatoes and okra from the last few days. I am picking a few tomatoes a little early, because, in the mercurial nature of Texas weather, we are going to go from Indian summer to 28 degrees tomorrow night. I have so many more green tomatoes and peppers to pick or cover up before the cold front.

Most of the green tomatoes can be cut off on the branches and hung up in a dark closet, where they will ripen slowly, and give us ripe tomatoes for Christmas.

Fall flowers, pansies and chrysanthemums

In the spirit of the season, that is...FOOD...here is one of the dishes I will be bringing to my mother's for Thanksgiving tomorrow, Wild rice mix with butternut squash and green apples.

Unfortunately, I won't be using the butternut squash from my garden, my biggest squash is the size of a squat zucchini. I guess I'll be covering it during the cold snap and hoping for the best.

New Fairy Tale Poetry Anthology

Well, I am taking the plunge again!

My good friend and wonderful poet Christopher Soden and I have just launched Rainbow Crow Press.






Fairy Tale Poetry Anthology

Call for submissions


Rainbow Crow Press is currently seeking finely crafted, imaginative poems for an anthology of poetry based on traditional fairy tales. Submit up to 6 poems to RainbowCrowPress@gmail.com with Submission (poet’s last name) as the subject. We will ask for selected poems to be sent to us in an RTF attachment, but we will not be opening attachments during the selection process.
Deadline January 1, 2011.



I was very excited to get our call for submissions listed on Duotrope this morning, and have sent requests for listing to New Pages and Poetry Kit as well. Hopefully, wonderful poetry will be rolling into our inbox soon!

I have always had a strong attachment to fairy tales. I think they speak to something very elemental in us. Over the years I have written 13 or so fairy tale based poems. It seems that quite a few of these turn out to be coming of age poems.





Here is a sample poem, by me...

Red

All day I am enchanted.

Newly nubile,

clothed in red—

a secret I did not yet

let my mother in on.

Sent on my errand,

guarding the cakes, my goodies,

I am not to speak to strangers.

I am not to speak.

Body held clean and warm

and safe, swaddled in red.

Red for fullness, life—

secrets whispered for a maid,

a woman’s promise.

The forest floor is soft

with leaves, crimson and brown,

year after year of brittle autumn

cradling new life, bed of ferns

uncoiling, tender green.

I must keep my eyes straight—

mustn’t stray, look into the eyes

of hungry wolves in the shadow—

guard my sweetness.

Crunch and give, as I step off the path,

the forest floor is soft.

I have walked this far.

When my fingers find his tangled hair,

there is no cake, no thought

for Grandma.

He says, Red.

Suddenly, I am ravenous.

-Anita M. Barnard

published in Illya's Honey

nominated for 2008 Pushcart Prize

Arts Goggle Fort Worth 2010

On October 2nd I took part in the Fort Worth Arts Goggle, an event that is equal parts Gallery Night, Art Festival and Street Fair. I had a wonderful gallery/room to myself in an historic building in the Kelly Architecture office.



It was a beautiful night, the weather was perfect, lots of friends, family and art lovers came out. It was great to be able to display so much of my art: paintings, collage, mosaic and also jewelry.



R put herself in charge of the jewelry display and spent a lot of time arranging everything just so.


Damon and Edward settled in to hang out with me for the evening, in the the mosaic corner.




Ian was offering to take off his shirt to attract more customers, but, as generous as that was, I took a pass...

Arts Goggle happens in FW's Southside neighborhood twice a year. If you are local, make plans to check it out in the spring.

LIVE to see..It Will Get Better!

This morning, I turned my Facebook picture purple, I wore purple today.

I just want to say how proud I am of our Fort Worth City Councilman Joel Burns. His courage was amazing , and his message went out via youtube to over 1.5 million people, including the bullied children and harassed teens who so needed this message. It really made me proud to be a Fort Worthian, and I was very pleased to see our City Council stand up to applaud him after his very emotional speech.

As many of you know, he and his mom, were on Ellen today. This is also very moving and worth watching.
This followed the sad and powerful video that Ellen put out about all the recent suicides of bullied young people.

Ellen: We just need to love one another and accept one another.

Red, Like Love

My love is like a red, red rose

That’s newly sprung in June :

My love is like the melody

That’s sweetly played in tune.

-Robert Burns

I don't know if it was the deep red long stem roses I got from my sweetie, or the memory of us celebrating a yummy Valentine's Day dinner with our daughter, all in our red shirts or dresses, but I woke up this morning thinking about red art, and I just thought I'd share a few images.

When We Did Not Sleep
Acrylic on canvas 14x11x1.5'

Red Mosaic...Stained glass, vitreous glass tiles, glass gems, tempered glass over acrylic wash and one unglazed ceramic tile on plywood....still not titled.

On the Eve of St. Agnes young girls would look into the village well hoping to see their future husbands.

With its rich colors of ruby and garnet, this mirror gleams with its own romantic spirit. The iridescent pink petals of a flower bloom in the bottom left corner, and a strand of deep red faceted beads runs down the right. This piece was designed to be slightly asymmetrical; the angle of the mirror reflects the slant of the left side of the wood base.
(Description, and also available, from my etsy site.)


Photographing mirrors and shiny iridescent things can be difficult, so here's a bit of a better idea of the glass:

In counterpoint to all that red:

Edward and I just happened to get each other green M&M's..."Green, the new color of LOVE"...and it happens to be Edward's favorite color too.

(When I searched for this picture, I found that there are websites still pondering the question of whether green M&M's are aphrodisiacs...just like we said in high school. ;-) )

Happy Belated V'day!

her heart was otherwhere:
She sigh’d for Agnes’ dreams, the sweetest of the year. from The Eve of St. Agnes by John Keats