It’s here! Our first annual Farmgirl Jubilee. Farmgirls are celebrating far and wide by gathering together (in person or online); we’re going glamping; making Jubilee banners; and in some instances, spending a reverent day alone in the garden, in a hammock, or on a mountaintop.
Dream it! Make it! Bake it! Shake it! I’m sure more photos will be rolling in …
Here’s a sampling of the many banners:
ceejay
Sara
Here’s a sampling of the many aprons:
RedTractorGirl
marilyn
Hope you’re enjoying your Jubilee weekend thus far. I know I am.
Welcome New Sisters! (click for current roster)
Merit Badge Awardees (click for latest awards)
My featured Merit Badge Awardee of the Week is … Linda Van Ausdell!!!
Linda Van Ausdell (Vanavista , #4347) has received a certificate of achievement in Outpost for earning a Beginner Level Speak for the Trees Merit Badge!
“I went to the Sandy Historical Museum and found an old tree book, then found a newer copy at the library. My husband and I own a tree farm, and by that I don’t mean Christmas trees. I can identify many different types of trees. My favorite trees are Cedars. They grow by streams and rivers. They consume up to 30 gallons of water a day. We also have Douglas Firs and Hemlocks.
I enjoy walking through our forests and looking at our trees, so this was a very enjoyable merit badge.”
It was fun to hear someone use the term “higgledy-piggledy” the other day.
Say what?
You know, higgledy–piggledy, hodge-podge, hurly-burly. These words have more in common than their shared meaning: confusion or disorder. They’re formally called “reduplicative compounds,” meaning paired words that usually differ only in a vowel or consonant. Commonly, they’re called “ricochet words.” Think nitty-gritty, lovey-dovey, tick-tock. Just saying them seems to make the sound ricochet around the room.
Or how about exact reduplications, like bye-bye, boo-boo, or twenty-twenty? Or comparative reduplications like “It’s getting hotter and hotter” or “My cow is getting gentler and gentler.”
One interesting thing about reduplications is that they seem to enter the language at times in history when people are feeling lighthearted and playful. For example, the 1920s (immediately following World War I) spawned reduplicative terms like the bee’s knees, heebie-jeebies, and boogie-woogie.
Louisiana Five Jazz Band, 1919, Courtesy of Nunez family collection via Wikimedia Commons
My favorite reduplication?
Shilly-shally.
While its first meaning, when introduced way back in 1703 in Sir Richard Steele’s The Tender Husband, or The Accomplish’d Fools, a Comedy, was to be indecisive,
“I’m for marrying her at once. Why should I stand shilly-shally, like a country bumpkin?”
It’s come to mean, for me at least, an all-purpose piece of cloth for glamping adventures … and you can see how it all started with a bit of indecision. Here’s the explanation from my Ideabook:
“What’s a ShillyShally? I came up with this name for a three-foot-square piece of pure cotton fabric when I once tried to describe my attachment to this versatile piece of cloth. ‘Shill I be a bandanna? Shall I be a bath towel? Shill I be a tablecloth? Shall I be a boa? Shill I be a bathing suit top? Shall I be a hankie? Shill I be a dishtowel?’ It’s all those things and more, and when I’m camping, it becomes my faithful companion as well. Dishtowel fabric, maybe colored, works best, and I prefer one with a bit of embroidery; it just seems more special that way. It has to be thin so it dries out fast and knots easily. Sometimes, I choose pure white, especially when I’m camping in the desert—white just seems to speak ‘reflect’ better. When I’m backpacking, it becomes my ‘blankie’ of sorts, a source of comfort and security.”
MaryJane Butters was milking her cow
When Megan cried, “Hurry, Mom, follow me NOW.”
Together, they ran to the garden to see …
A beanstalk (heirloom) as big as a tree.
Photo by Tim Sackton via Flickr
That, my friends, was a clerihew.
Cleri-WHO?
No—like this:
KLER-i-hyoo.
More than mere willy-nilly rhyming verse, this type of half-pint poem has rather distinct rules. A true clerihew must contain …
But, wait—there’s more …
According to Edmund Clerihew Bentley (1875-1956), originator of the form (at age 16!), a true clerihew will either a) position the subject’s name at the end of the first line, or b) use only the name as the first line. Why? Because the whole point of the poem, he declared, is to rhyme with awkward names.
Maybe I need to take another stab at it? Perhaps something more along these lines:
MaryJane Butters
Was stymied by stutters
When she spied a strange cat
Wearing THIS as a hat.
Buy props used in MaryJane’s books and magazine!
5% of profits will benefit www.firstbook.org, a non-profit that provides new books to children from low-income families throughout the U.S. and Canada.
Here’s how:
MaryJane will post a photo and a description of a prop and its cost along with a few details as to its condition here: https://shop.maryjanesfarm.org/MaryJanesCurations. It’s a playful way to be the new owner of a little bit of farm herstory.
