11 minute read
Katie’s Picks
Katie’s Winter Picks
AGGSKAL Heated Vest,USB
Charging Lightweight Heated
Jacket with Battery Pack
Included, Heating Clothing for Men Women
I am a very cold natured person so anything that can keep me warm is a winner in my book. This rechargeable heated vest is perfect to put on for an extra layer when the temperature dips down. Buy it at: a.co/d/6U0tKwH
Signature Soup Pot | Le
Creuset® Official Site
Any kind of homemade soup is my favorite dinner on a cold winter night. Le Creuset makes a fabulous soup pot that I love to use.
Veil Spark Half-Zip - Shop Modest Activewear and Apparel
Even in the cold months,
I still love to take a walk outside. The half zip top is so comfy. I can wear it for a workout or wear it to the grocery store. And I love the length of the top! It covers in all the right places.
Buy it: www.veilgarments. com/products/spark
Ladies Low top Snake Boot King Ranch® Edition - Lucchese
These fashionable boots are perfect for quail hunting. The brandy color and the detailed stitching are beautiful to look at but they will also keep me safe from no-shoulders when the temperatures start to warm up.
ROOBZE™ | Dog Drying Coat – Roobze
For those of you that know me, you know that I love my animals! So, when I saw roobze, I had to try it out immediately.
They are the perfect dog robe for my precious pups when they get out of the bath. They dry my dogs quickly and my fluffy friends don’t seem to mind having the roobze on.
Buy it: roobze.com/products/drying-coat
Katie’s Winter Picks
TheraICE Hot & Cold Therapy Head
Cap
The Thera ice cap is a wonderful new product that can be used cold or hot to help ease headaches caused from stress to migraines . I have only tried it as a cold head wrap, and it truly helps relieve a headache. The wrap fits right around my head and blocks out any light. Give it a try! Buy it: www.theraicerx.com
LAKE | Women | Pima Cotton Pajamas | Hydrangea Pima Long-Long Set
My sister introduced me to Lake Pajamas, and I have loved them for several years now. They make a lot of styles of the comfortable pajamas, but long sleeve/long pants are my favorite weight and length for winter. The pima cotton is very soft and helps me sleep at night! Buy it: lakepajamas.com/products/ hydrangea-long-long-set
Magic TPR Suede Brush Shoe Cleaning Brush
I hate it when my Uggs get dirty and this magic suede brush helps clean them. I simply brushed it along my boots, and they look almost new again. Buy it: a.co/d/04gdF6w
The Phoenix Starter Kit – PureWine
The Phoenix pure wine filter seems like it helps with a wine headache. I am very sensitive to red wines and this product claims that it removes histamines and sulfites. These are the things that cause headaches, stuffy nose, and skin flushing.
Mini Lolita Sequin Hooped Earrings Gold | Mignonne Gavigan
The mini Lolita Hoop earrings are the perfect accent to any outfit. I love a traditional gold hoop but this adds a little more jazz without being over the top.
Story by Marian Carcache
In the fi rst chapter of Janie Moore Greene’s fi rst book of photographs and refl ections, Dancing Feathers, she mentions that “the fragrance of gardenias from the vase beside [her] desk fi lls the room” as she admires the “plate-sized white magnolia blossoms nestled in the green leaves of the century-old trees” outside her window.
Whenever I think of Janie, I think of gardenias. Several times over the years, I’ve written her a note to announce and celebrate the fi rst gardenia bloom in my own yard, remembering a party she hosted when I was still a child, a memory of hundreds of gardenia blooms she decorated with, and their intoxicating scent that fi lled the night air in Jernigan that evening.
Janie is a Renaissance woman. In addition to being a writer, photographer, and naturalist, for much of her life she grew roses, hosted elegant parties, traveled the world, and brought joy in various ways to her friends and family. She also came to an understanding about life: that most of us are “afraid of stillness and quiet,” that “becoming one with a fl ower, a leaf, a bird, a butterfl y” gives way to beauty and truth, “to a symphony being played upon the inner regions of [the] soul.”
Born in Pineview, Georgia, she moved to Columbus when she was nine years old and lived there until she married Roy Greene, who practiced law in Phenix City, Alabama. It was my good fortune to meet the Greenes, and their children, when they moved to Jernigan to renovate “the Craig place,” the antebellum house that became their home in the late 1950s, when I was around fi ve years old. When that house was destroyed by fi re in the late 1960s, the family moved a few miles away to the historic Greek Revival BassPerry house in Seale.
Although a devoted wife and mother of four, Janie broke the mold and expanded the role of what young women might aspire to in the time and place she inhabited. In addition to being a wife and mother, she also wanted to write, to take photographs, to raise sheep.
One of my favorite stories from Dancing Feathers describes how, after returning from a photography trip to a Florida rookery to capture pictures of egrets and herons, she learned from now-famous artist, Butch Anthony, a young boy at the time, that those same birds visited an old pond right there
in Seale every year. When the time came for the birds to arrive in Seale, Janie, Butch, and Betty and Junior, a couple who worked on the Greene farm, packed up the camera equipment and waded through slippery swamp and tangled vines to view the beauty.
Janie ends Dancing Feathers with a piece of wisdom she gained from that outing: “One need not travel to distant places to find beauty. It is at our fingertips. The “dancing feathers” are right before our eyes.”
In her second collection of photos and reflections, Dancing Petals, Janie shifts her focus from the birds in the sky to the wildflowers beneath our feet. Still, as with the birds, she grounds herself in the natural world, in the simplicity of the miraculous ordinary, the humble wildflowers we take for granted and walk among daily. Like Thoreau, Janie realizes that “Heaven lies under our feet, as well as over our heads.”
There is more focus in this volume on personal experiences she treasures, starting with her childhood in Georgia and extending through her later years, as wife, mother, and grandmother.
Among the “bouquets of memory” she shares in Dancing Petals is an early recollection that took place on an April day in 1938, during the Depression, under a 100-year-old Magnolia tree when she was a six-year-old. Her mother is telling her and her friends where to find violets and Easter lilies, teaching her daughter to “delight in simple things,” a lesson the artist has always held dear.
In another chapter, Janie relates a dream she had while down in Florida on what she thought had been a disappointing trip. In the dream, she is picking up beautiful diamond and emerald jewelry from the sand. Within the hour after awakening from the dream, while photographing lilies that still had the morning dew clinging to them, she realized that the trip had not been that bad after all, and that the wildflowers she had captured on film in the early morning light were, indeed, “exquisite jewels from the earth … treasure waiting to be discovered.”
Dancing Petals concludes with a plea to end clear-cutting the forests: “The forests are not wildflowers,” Janie argues, “but they set the stage for many wildflowers to grow. … We should and could get back to the land,” she continues, “grab a handful of earth … and return to our blessed, sacred earth.”
Journey Into Africa (2001), Janie’s third book interweaves stories of a safari she, her daughter, Lynne, and her granddaughters went on to Africa with memories of an earlier trip there with her husband years before. Her photographs capture exquisite birds and animals – including elephants, giraffes, zebras, hippos, hyenas, jackals, and lions – living their beautiful lives in the wild. And her words share lessons she learned there about the sacredness of all life.
Janie told me once that when she was young she had a recurring dream of being in a wooded area, walking among “big cats.” That story thrilled and enchanted me, and it never left my mind as she related memories of actually being among lions, cougars, cheetahs, and caracals. In one of her many passages that describe Africa as “holding her enchantment and focused fascination,” she writes, “The wind began to wail through the tall trees, sounding like our winter winds at home, and I hoped that every time I heard those wailing winds again in Alabama, I would recall in my heart and mind this beautiful scene of dancing golden light … I knew I had lived in one of my heart’s most magical moments.”
Janie opens her last book of photographs, Dancing Wings (2010), with a memory from her childhood: watching the butterflies in her grandmother’s rose garden. Though this volume contains fewer of her own words, it features even more exquisite photographs, this time of winged beauty: moths, dragonflies, and butterflies, often among vivid flowers. She reveals that winged creatures have captured her attention all of her life, remembering her fascination as a child with Elnora Comstock, the heroine of The Girl of the Limberlost who searched for cocoons in the swamps to sell to pay her school tuition. As an adult, Janie even bought cocoons and raised some of her own butterflies.
Dancing Feathers
Dancing Petals
captions
Safari animals
Dancing Wings
Baby animals
Birds on a wire at sunset.
