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Gladys Tabor’s Wry Yankee Wit

10.10.09 | Ilona Erwin | 3 Comments

Gladys Tabor was a beloved writer of my mother’s generation. She had a homely, yet penetrating way of observing her small world filled with common daily chores. That is one of the things we can love about her writing… and some things are quite true in any generation it seems… which is what makes for good writing. People still love her books Stillmeadow Road and Stillmeadow and Sugarbridge.

enjoy:

In our part of the country, nobody is ever quite sure where the boundaries of the land are. Old fences, long since gone, or gray rocks, or a certain dead chestnut tree, or a brook which may have changed its course, these mark the edge of one’s property. Now and then a surveyor may scramble around a day or so and deliver an expensive piece of paper, but the farm folk go right back on using the woodland or picking the grapes where they always have, and this is as it should be. We do not own the land, the land owns us. The survey we had when we wanted to turn over land to George for his house was like a Christmas present, for it turned out we had considerably more than forty acres, enough to let William,George’s brother, have a house too.

Once in a while I try to picture what life in the country might have been if George and William had not lived right across the road, and then I know the main thing in buying an old house in the country is to settle near good neighbors. The natives on our valley are not the quaint folk so many writers talk about; the only quaint folk around here are the few city week-enders, and some of them are quaint enough for any fiction.


The color for October is pink due to Breast Cancer awareness. I think Tabor found just the insight for pink:

“Almost all words do have color and nothing is more pleasant than to utter a pink word and see someone’s eyes light up and know it is a pink word for him or her too” ~Gladys Taber

When someone reviewed her book, ‘Stillmeadow and Sugarbridge‘, they described it this way:
“The two women writing to each other here are great friends, share a deep love of country (call themselves ‘countrywomen’) and aren’t embarrassed to savor the smallest available joys.” Made me feel that that is something like Joanne and I …only I am very poor at dependably writing hard copy letters. but we are “countrywomen” for sure… in the best sense of being in touch with the earth and rejoicing in its gifts to us.

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About Ilona Erwin

I was a garden blog pioneer, and began writing on this blog in 2003. Before that I had begun a garden website that has been at its own domain since 2006, Ilona's Garden.

I still love writing, gardening, and art after all these years, although travel and grandchildren have become a big part of my life, now.

DISCLOSURE: I may be an affiliate for products that I recommend. If you purchase those items through my links I will earn a commission. You will not pay more when buying a product through my link. Thank you, in advance for your support! Privacy Policy

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. flowrgirl1 says

    October 11, 2009 at 2:01 am

    I love her words. I will have to hunt down her books. thanks for sharing.

  2. T Opdycke says

    October 11, 2009 at 2:07 pm

    I’ve heard of Gladys Tabor, but never read her books. She sounds like a kindred spirit. It’s time to search for her books and writings. Thank you for sharing her words through your wonderful post.

  3. johanna_lea says

    October 12, 2009 at 11:48 am

    my back property line is a
    very old rusty fenceline on the
    bank of a small creek and
    the path cleared along it through
    the ancient poplars and oaks.
    i suspect the oldest surveys
    describe it thus….
    her writing rings so true!

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I was a garden blog pioneer, and began writing on this blog in 2003. Before that I had begun a garden website that has been at its own domain since 2006, Ilona's Garden.

I still love writing, gardening, and art after all these years, although travel and grandchildren have become a big part of my life, now.

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