I have a new home!

 I have moved my blog and gallery to fireflyevenings.com  . Please join me there to see my latest artwork and ponderings on living simply. Thanks, Suz  

painting by Suzanne Conner

A Great Turtle Day!

A couple of weeks ago I spent a few days in my hometown visiting my grandmother. My Aunt Sue started to recall stories that I had never heard before and me, being the frustrated family scribe, had to write it down..

Occasionally, after particularly rainy weather in Blountstown, my grandfather would declare to the children that that day was a good turtle day! They would all load up in the truck and go to some property that he owned, Aunt Sue said it was called Starvation Plantation. They would be in the back and would holler out to their daddy to stop so they could pick up the many box turtles that were in the ditches. Aunt Sue said it was so much fun and they would fill up the back with turtles. After the day of fun they would unload the turtles before they headed back home, muddy, cheeks bright and full of tales to tell their mama. Aunt Sue said that on this piece of property was a building that was called the Flying House. She said it was out in the middle of the pasture and had a exaggerated sloping roofline and from a distance it looked like the house was about to take off flying, like it had wings. She said that they had camped there one night and had hosted her twelth birthday party with a hayride and cook out. It was so much fun to watch her recall these precious memories of her childhood with her sweet daddy. I almost felt like I was there too, picking up box turtles, laughing the day away, and just glad to be alive on a good turtle day!     Suz



Eastern Box Turtle

 P.S. I was interested in finding more about this "Starvation Plantation"which I had never heard of before, but remembered my grandfather taking us to his property that was near some Indian mounds. The information that I found said that there was a Mrs.Jones in 1840, that befriended a group of Creek or Seminole Indians on a trip to Ecofina. She brought them to her home near Blountstown and fed them dinner. She served them some peppered eggs at this meal and the spicy food upset the Indians so much they thought she was trying to poison them. They returned ten days later and killed Mrs.Jones. It seems this area was the scene of much fighting between the Indians and the settlers.

Riches Upon Riches

My daughter. She is something else, she is her own person wrapped up in leopard skin, hippie beads and she always smells like mint and sweet soap. Where she got her spunk is beyond me, where she got her brilliant mind is even more beyond me. She was only two when I gathered up my courage to divorce and move back toTallahassee.  I was trying my best working full time and going to design school and little Lu was the most bright spot in my life. We were so poor and lived in a small apartment in Frenchtown, later when I would tell her I was sorry that we were so lacking she would tell me ," Mama,  I thought we were rich, we always had what we needed and we had each other". I love this girl, now woman and treasure her quick wit, naughty sense of humor and her warmth that radiates. We should all be so rich with the things that count......    Suz

Lindsey Anders Ortolano

Moonshine on the Apalachicola

the old bridge

   Growing  up in Liberty and Calhoun counties , there was never a dull moment for us three kids. We lived on Pea Ridge road in Bristol and what an adventure! My dad was continually getting into trouble as it was his stomping grounds and he knew what trouble to get into. One memorable event was when my dad and a group of men decided they would go down the river in a houseboat and gave some lame excuse of playing cards or something to that effect. Hours and hours went by, it got dark and all the wives started getting worried and calling each other. Hours and more hours went by, still no husbands...... now the law was called, missing husbands on a fast moving river on a houseboat.... didn't sound good. Next thing was talk of dragging the river, had they drowned, tumped over? All gathered at the landing in nightgowns with sleepy and crying children , wives were on the verge of hysteria...... then way off in the distant they heard singing, we're not talking going down to the river music, we're talking somebody got ahold of some moonshine and went houseboating music! Dad later said they were having a grand ole time when they noticed all the wives and families gathered at the river crying and the law looking not to happy to be called out of bed and waiting on them! Needless to say, that was the last houseboat ride he ever took. Dad did all kinds of crazy things on that river like jumping off the bridge into the fast moving current and skiing on the river. I'm not recommending any of this. its just an example of what happens in a small town, on a Saturday night, when nothing is going on but a boat and a jar of moonshine and a fast moving river.       Suz

houseboats or" shanty boats" on river much like the one in question

Planting In Faith

                                                      My world has always been full of flowers. I grew up with some of the best gardeners I have ever known, my grandmother Mary who turns 94 this week, my mother of course who was the constant gardener, Aunt Sue to name just a few. I learned so much from them and now I take great pleasure in my daughter Lindsey following in the same footsteps. After supper she'll ask to walk around the yard and we will talk plants, what they are, where they came from, things like that. The snowdrops planted by the back door are our February flowers, and they came from our family home in North Carolina where my grandmother took some bulbs and we all have taken from to plant in our own yards. The hydrangeas are from Mama planting them when we were growing up here and always reminded me of home. I have a mint bed that supplements our iced tea and mojitos if the occasion arises, and it does regularly! Most recently after taking care of Mama's yard for these past four years, before the house sold I made several trips to transplant things from her yard that she loved, therefore I loved. Shrimp plants, amaryllis she had grown from bulbs, iris, holly fern, society garlic.... all the plants I could have gotten locally , but the fact that she had planted them in love and faith made these .... priceless! So this is the legacy I leave Lindsey Lu, and I bet it will be the one she treasures the most. Go do some planting! Suz

"Flower Girls" by Suzanne Conner

My Tribe

                                                         When I start looking around me and take the time to notice the wonderful people that God has put in my life, I am overwhelmed..... to say the least. I guess when you are younger  you take things like that for granted, they'll always be there and time with them can wait. Not so. Some people I wonder why they are in my  life, they seem to test me to the limit and push every button on my control panel but I've come to realize they too have a reason to be connected with me and I with them. These relationships are as important as breathing, eating, shelter....... it is belonging..... to your tribe. My tribe has been made up of interesting characters. A grandfather who was an incredible influence on our lives and who taught us how to be childlike and how to enjoy the outdoors. A mother who showed us how to be a family even if we were a divorced one and taught us that idle hands are the devil's workshop ( evidenced when she found a bottle of liquor hidden behind the freezer and when no one fessed up, we were at church every time the doors opened and grass planting became our new hobby). A father who had a naughty sense of humor and who made so many life mistakes, but you had to love him. A husband who also has a wicked sense of humor but loves fiercely and deeply and though he seems gruff, children swarm over him like bees to honey. A daughter who brillant, smart, funny and so completely comfortable in her skin I have often wondered, where did she come from? In the odd assortment of brothers, grandmothers and friends and family, is where I find myself, nestled somewhere in between. Belonging.             Suz

Where He Came From

                                             My dad, Marvin, was quite a character that grew up on one side of the Appachicola River in Liberty Co. He came from scrappy folk from near Cantonement in a little area called Walnut Hill in Florida. When mentioning this to our friend Hunter, he knew exactly the dirt road Dad grew up on and declared it excellent hog huntin' there. To me, it was a place that time forgot in the sandy pines, dirt roads of backwoods Florida. I didn't really have to much to do with it until, at the age of 60, Dad died waiting for a lung transplant, and I found myself once again on those lonely roads. I was totally surprised by the awesome, deep primal feeling that I was home again and  so was Dad. The same church he went to as a child was the same church family that prepared our dazed family a spread of unpretentious food. Fried chicken, potato salad and cold, sweet tea to get us through the hell that was July in Florida in an un-airconditioned church. He was buried next to his mama and daddy and unbeknownst to us three children, we had each put a cigar in with him and a pocket knife, you know.... to make the journey easier. Recently I came across something in my family remembrances that I had totally forgotten that I had, it was the silver coin that was placed on dad's navel when he was born. I think they did this in the old days to sterilize. I am grateful that I got to go back and see where he started off and where he ended in this beautful little back roads place near the Perdido River.