Today I did not linger after the Chamber of Commerce meeting. I left quickly so that I could make one stop picking up supplies before meeting Don Welch at my shop, Sugary Creations. This was very exciting for me as Don has quite a reputation in our area!
Don wanted to interview me about my great-grandmother, Mama Bobo. Of course, to most of the world, she is known as Miss Mary Bobo.
My great-grandmother, Miss Mary Bobo, standing in front of The Hotel in Lynchburg, TN.
Frankly, the interview was a ton of fun! Don has done several pieces on the distillery & the boarding house so he is very familiar with the area. It’s very easy to talk to Don, which I’m sure, is a lot of the reason he is so good at his job. Not sure which I enjoyed more, picking out old pictures to share with him or showing the pictures to him. Thanks to my cousin, Sherrie Moore, it was easy to find some pictures Don would like. (Sherrie has taken on the role of family historian & has diligently been scanning & uploading old family pictures for all of us to be able to access.)
We went through several pictures of Mama Bobo & her sister, Ophelia Motlow. It was delightful looking at the pictures of the two of them when they were young.
A picture of the very young Miss Mary Bobo & Ophelia Motlow. Taken way before Ophelia married the famous Lem Motlow or Miss Mary Bobo had become famous.
My guess is that Mama (Miss Mary Bobo) was probably 15 or 16 years old at the time. This guess is based on the fact that she is still not in an ankle-length dress, the attire for a young woman of the time.
As happens, the two young ladies grew up, married & had children. Unfortunately, it’s also pretty common for such ladies to end up widows eventually as happened to these sisters. But they remained close & talked on the telephone frequently.
Ophelia Motlow on the left & her sister, Miss Mary Bobo on the right, visiting with a friend.
Mama was a delight to know & a huge inspiration. She never outgrew her love of children as can be seen in the photo below.
I look at this photo & I can hear Mama saying "gimme some sugar" right before she leaned over to get a kiss from her great great grandson.
Tags: food, Lynchburg TN, Mama Bobo, Miss Mary Bobo, Ophelia Motlow, Sugary Creations
As important as it is to feed our bodies, we also need to feed our souls. What feeds your soul?
A collection of the blooming daffodils from our yard.
Flowers feed my soul. The beauty of them calms & centers me. The scent brightens my mood & brings a smile to my face.
My roses are blooming their heads off.
Knowing the importance of flowers to me, I have always filled my yard with them. With a fairly new house & yard, there are lots of nooks begging for flowers to be planted in them. Last year, I was too overcome with grief to add more than a handful to the yard. But this year, I have felt Jim nudging me to plant. He has been reminding me that one of the reasons we bought the house was all the places it had that I could plant flowers. It has seemed that the plants themselves are echoing Jim.
Even though it was a 3 year old plant tuber, I got ONE bloom all of last year from this peony plant.
I planted lily bulbs last year in pots. A mixture of Oriental lilies & Asiatic lilies caught my eye last year & I brought them home. Carefully planted them in pots & watched & waited. Nothing! Most of them didn’t even sprout any greenery! The ones that did only grew about 4-5 inches tall & refused to do anything else. The pots were as barren as my soul. But this year — all those barren pots have grown lily plants! They vary in size but all of the pots are full of lush green stalks. They are also loaded with flower bulbs. I no longer remember which bulbs were planted in which pots so it will be delightful surprise after surprise as they bloom.
THIS is one of pots of lilies that didn't even sprout last year!
Having watched all of this and knowing my feelings about flowers, Sarah bought me plants for Mother’s Day. While we were having our enjoyable day together yesterday, we went round to several places & I picked out flowers. There is a strip between the ditch at the bottom of the hilly front yard and the road that is a pain to mow or weedeat. My plan is to eliminate that strip of weeds with a little grass. Slowly I’m replacing the unruly weeds with daylilies.
The lily bulbs had multipled so much, one of the bulbs was forced up in the air. So it grew sideways & produced this lovely flower.
I’m not planting your common orange daylilies. I’m planting glorious reds, yellow, fragile pinks & bi-colors. I picked out 2 different colors of daylilies. Kept eyeballing some Knockout Roses. Everybody keeps telling me they need very little care. I’m about to find out! I picked out 2 of them & they are going to join the daylilies in transforming that ugly weedy strip into a thing of beauty.
Tags: daylilies, food, food for the soul, Jim, lilies, roses, Sarah