Loose Leaf Notes

-The following was first published in the Floyd Times on October 25, 2025

Murder and Mayhem continue this weekend at the June Bug Center with The New River Theatre Guild’s performance of Arsenic and Old Lace, a perfect play for the Halloween season.  Weekend performances have been well received and continue for October 31 at 7pm, November 1 at 2 pm and 7pm and November 2 at 2 pm.

The classic dark comedy, directed by Theda McCutchan, features a cast of zany characters, Brooklyn accents, physical comedy and unpredictable plot twists. The elaborate set designs and period costumes, headed up by Mim Ukes, are outstanding.

“Step into a world of lace doilies, vintage tunes, and darkly funny secrets hidden in a sweet old Brooklyn home,” the NRTG social media page invites.

The home belongs to two sweet aunties, sisters Abby and Martha Brewster, played by Charisse Skinner and Elsie McCombs.

But there is something not quite right with the Brewster family. The aunts are eccentric. Young Teddy Brewster, played by Arrow Bowman, believes he is the 23rd President of the United States, Teddy Roosevelt. His brother Mortimer Brewster, played by Nico Anderson, says it best when he says, “Insanity runs in my family. It practically gallops.”

It’s not so much a ‘who done it?’ story as it is ‘who drank the poison? Be ready to laugh.

PHOTOS 1. Homemade elderberry wine is served by the Brewster sisters, Martha and Abby, to a potential boarder (far right), but not to nephew Mortimer Brewster.  2. Police have active roles in the production. 3. Left to right: Dr. Einstein (Hannah Hill), Teddy Brewster (Arrow Bowman), Aunt Abby Brewster (Charisse Skinner), Aunt Martha Brewster (Elsie McCombs) and Jonathan Brewster (Jovie Jeppson). 4. Nephew Jonathan Brewster has a dark history, and the aunts are not welcoming of his arrival. 5. Plot twists are unpredictable. 6. Mortimer Brewster (Nico Anderson) and his finance Elaine Harper (Brittany Back), get in on the mayhem. 7. A convincing and no-nonsense Lieutenant is played by Grace McCutchan (left). Happydale Sanitarium director (right) is played by Scott Haugh.   8. Cast takes a bow.

1. Over the weekend I went to cover an event undercover. That means I have no assignment or obligation to write about it, but I might.

2. And I did. In the last week, I have covered a No Kings protest, a cemetery tour, a ribbon cutting, a play and a rally with Virginia candidate for Governor Abigal Spanberger for our new independent and Floyd-centric news source, Floyd Times 

3. I saw a lot of skeletons this week.

4. I caught some of the Rosebud band playing at Outer Space.

5. Where kids made smores to the cover tunes of Grateful Dead.

6. I also went to a Tea with Rumi poetry event where we enjoyed original poetry by my friend Katherine Chantal and sipped tea.

7. Not to be confused with the sipping of the elderberry wine laced with arsenic that we saw a couple of days later at the New River Theatre Guild’s Arsenic and Lace play at the June Bug Center. Stories coming soon.

8. I read a couple of poems too… If you are quiet / be loud / If you are loud / be quiet / Don’t laugh / if you don’t get the joke / Don’t cheat / Wear red / -Read Remedy in its entirety HERE.

9. Katherine says: There is only one thing to do and I’m doing it now.

10. You’ve heard the saying ‘It’s written in stone.’ It might as well be at my son Josh’s mobile brick factory, happening at the Old Marshall Jail in Marshall NC. People are having their say on brick for a new monument project. Josh says: The format is simple! We invite participants to express their feelings, thoughts and sentiments in the moist clay. We provide all the bricks and tools for mark making. After we make all the bricks they will all get fired and we will build a sculptural folk monument at the Old Jail in the spring.

11. Next up? The Plum House. Barb, the Outer Space owner, is closing Outer Space (an outdoor venue) for the winter and will be opening The Plum House. It’s purple and will be featuring noodle dishes to warm us up for the winter.

12. Soon they will fade and crumble to dust / Some are skeletons already/ Some have been eaten like the red wool hat / that I left in my pantry all summer / Others I suspect have leapt to their death / the way people jump off the Brooklyn Bridge / They land like broken-hearted sunsets / that absent-minded people later walk on / Read Eulogy for Falling Leaves in its entirety HERE.  

13. Check out my author page at Floyd Times. HERE.  

________Thirteen Thursday 

The following was first published on at Floyd Times on October 21, 2025. 

Approximately 300 citizens gathered around the Floyd Courthouse on Saturday for the NO KINGS DAY 2.0 rally to protest the executive overreach of our country’s current administration and to stand up for democracy.

American flags were flying and participants held homemade signs that gave voice to their concerns and frustrations: No Kings No ICE, Dignity for All, Release the Epstein Files, Our Grandparents Fought Fascism Will You?

Pastor Wanda Childs of the Floyd-Willis Lutheran Parish marked the beginning of the peaceful protest with a benediction. One participant dressed as the Statue of Liberty.

Two Vietnam veterans held a large American flag. Another veteran held a sign that read “I’m a Veteran and I support the Constitution.”

Karen Baker, a former candidate for Congress and current Chair of the Floyd County Democratic Committee, introduced speaker Freeda Cathcart, the founder of Indivisible Roanoke, through a megaphone, saying, “Listen up patriots!

Speaking of Cathcart, Baker said, “She’s an elected official representing Roanoke County on the Blue Ridge Soil and Water Conservation Board. Her ancestors fought in the American Revolution to protect people’s rights against the tyranny of King George. Her grandmother was a suffragette. She has taken up her ancestors’ patriotic torch to peacefully defend our constitutional rights.”

Cathcart addressed the crowd, “I heard a rumor. Ya’ll might have heard it too. There’s supposed to be some hate America rallies out there happening today. I haven’t seen anything like that.”

She added, “We’re here together because we love our country,” before leading the crowd in a U.S.A. chant.

Baker, wearing an American Revolution hat, made her way through the crowd with her megaphone, asking protesters, ‘how do you resist?’ “With kindness, every way I can, by raising anti-fascist children and hell yes” were some of the responses. Several people answered by saying, “I vote.”

It was an upbeat 2-hour demonstration with live music and singing.  Many drivers of vehicles passing by showed their support by cheering, beeping their horns and waving.

In the following days, news outlets reported that an estimated 7 million people participated in 2,700 No Kings protests across the country and in all 50 states. Watch HERE.  _____Colleen Redman

The field lies fallow
Words are buried
like seed, I pray
Dreams are frayed
at their edges
This poem is late
like a loved one
passed on
A treasured habit
changing its form

I hold it like a memory
close to my chest
A lost locket
with a missing chain
I cross my fingers
and follow a thought
as if it was a nightingale
deep in a forest

It’s a ticket home
where my brothers are gone
and my sister waits
for a sign she can hear
I want to revisit a familiar path
But they say you can’t go back
I’m lovelorn and homesick
when I stop being a poet

When there’s no place to go
and no time to fill
I’m left to let go
of my own self-importance
to live in quiet presence
and meet the moment

The birds are my angels now
The sky is my comfort
with its slow-moving
ceaseless unfolding
where wholeness is manifest
and time is sunrise and sunset

One day my body
will fall like a star
I’ll burn like a poem on paper
I’ll radiate ember
and scatter like ash
Someone will make a wish

________Colleen Redman dVerse Poets Pub / Poets and Storytellers United

1. I fall for it every year.

2. Red roasted day / Breeze spreads like butter / Chimes celebrate / fall’s feast of color

3. “Stanford researchers just found that when “aligned” AIs compete for attention, sales, or votes, they start lying, exposing a fundamental flaw where models trained to win user approval trade truth and hard facts for performance. Researchers tested Qwen3-8B and Llama-3.1-8B open-source models in sales, elections, and social media simulations, training them to maximize success based on user feedback. Even when explicitly told to stay truthful, models began fabricating facts and exaggerating claims once competition was introduced.” The Rundown AI newsletter

4. Steeped in Indian / summer sun / shades of cinnamon / honey and pumpkin

5. Cardamom, cloves / nutmeg and ginger / turn up the flavor / of fall’s spicy simmer

6. “Attention is the purest form of generosity.” -French philosopher and mystic Simone Weil,

7. What is a Metaphor For? – Spy code / A Poet’s MO / to link and illuminate / to dream while awake / It’s an artful convergence / of description and truth / A superimposition / of almost and absolute

8. Metaphor as a concept is ancient, predating the specific word, which entered English in the 16th century from the Greek word metaphorá (“transference”). The use of metaphor in human language and thought is likely as old as language itself and is considered fundamental to how humans understand and describe the world.

9. “Perhaps grief can be seen as a kind of exalted state where the person who is grieving is the closest they will ever be to the fundamental essence of things. Because, in grief, you become deeply acquainted with the idea of human mortality. You go to a very dark place and experience the extremities of your own pain. As far as I can see, there is a transformative aspect to this place of suffering. We are essentially altered or remade by it. Now, this process is terrifying, but in time you return to the world with some kind of knowledge that has something to do with our vulnerability as participants in this human drama. Everything seems so fragile and precious and heightened, and the world and the people in it seem so endangered, and yet so beautiful… 

10. …Suffering is, by its nature, the primary mechanism of change… It somehow presents us with the opportunity to transform into something else, something different, hopefully something better… This change is not something we necessarily seek out; rather, change is often brought to bear upon us, through a shattering or annihilation of our former selves. Faith hope and carnage.”  Nick cave

11. Is this a metaphor?

12. Alexa, Change the President.  Seen on Facebook

13. “The fact that you can only do a little is no excuse for doing nothing.” – John LeCarre

___________Thirteen Thursday

The following first appeared in Floyd Times on October 15, 2025. Downtown Floyd was a hub of activity on Saturday for the sixth annual Floyd Americana Fest. Four stages – at Outer Space, Dogtown Roadhouse, Warren Lineberry Park and Cocoa Mia – hosted an ongoing roster of performances by local and regional musicians throughout the day.

Some attendees perched on the Dogtown porch to watch the park activities. Others browsed in and out of downtown stores. There were art and craft vendors in the park and a volunteer-staffed Kid Zone.  Cocoa Mia/ Pantoufle’s Bistro, Outer Space and Dogtown Roadhouse served food and refreshments all day.

Fest founder Alan Graf spoke of the idea behind the festival during his Cocoa Mia set with his band Rock While Rome Burns (listen HERE).  “I wanted to bring value and attention to Americana music,” he said. “Floyd is centered on a lot of Old Time and Bluegrass, which I love and moved here to do, but there is a whole Americana scene too.”

When asked how he would describe Americana music, Graf didn’t miss a beat, answering with the name of a Floyd County musician he’s a fan of, “Stella Trudell. She’s the ultimate princess of Americana, and one of the reasons I wanted to do a festival was to give Trudell a place to play.”

Trudell joined Graf during his band’s performance of covers and originals and played an early evening set of her own music at Cocoa Mia. Graf had high praise for Cocoa Mia’s owner, Grayson Rudd, for being one of the first enthusiastic supporters and funders of the Fest.

Floyd County High School senior Will Ellis sat in Cocoa Mia’s outdoor café listening the Rock While Rome Burns performance and spoke about liking the variety of music at the Fest. “It’s amazing. There are so many people, so much community and people coming from other places to see the Floyd community.”

His friend Robert (Dish) Disharoon added, “I think it’s a great opportunity to get local businesses out there. They deserve it. And to get people to really appreciate what Floyd has to offer.”

There was a strong contingency of out-of-town visitors for the Fest. When Lineberry Park Stage performer Barry Lenoir asked for a show of hands of people who came from out of town, he reported that about half the crowd raised their hands.

Newlyweds From Martinsville, Jessica and JoVan Millner, discovered the Fest while honeymooning in an Airbnb in Pilot and were pleasantly surprised to be part of the Floyd scene.

They reported that they enjoyed watching main stage dancers moving to the Grateful Dead tunes of the Rosebud Band, which included the Floyd Chrysler Dodge Jeep and Ram giant rubber duckie, Ms. Quacksalot.

When Graf and his wife Eleanor Ingram moved from their home in Floyd to Asheville by the 3rd annual Americana Fest, Jake Retting and Jake Rauer kept the Fest going.

This year Jake Retting and his family moved out of state, and so the organizing went to Rauer.  “It’s been good,” Rauer said. “I brought in little more help.”

At the Fest merchandise tent, Rauer gathered up some of his staff crew, which he refers to as “the dream team,” for a photo.  “Are they volunteers?” Rauer was asked. “They’re more like family,” he answered.  Colleen Redman

PHOTOS – 1. Paul Lemay and the Renegades play on the Lester Floyd Gillespe Stage at Outer Space. 2. Some Fest goers enjoyed the festivities from the Dogtown porch overlooking Lineberry Park. 3.Floyd Americana Fest founder Alan Graff performed with his band Rock while Rome Burns at the Cocoa Mia stage. 4. Musicians Stella Trudel and Ash Devine performed at the Fest. 5. Downtown was busy with visitors. 6. Will Ellis and Robert (Dish) Disharoon enjoyed a music performance at Cocoa Mia’s outdoor café stage. 7. Lineberry Park audience applauds for a performance.

8. The Rosebud band played Grateful Dead tunes that got some attendees up dancing. 9. Newlyweds From Martinsville, Jessica and JoVan Millner. 10.  Dancers take to the front of stage. 11. Floyd Chrysler Dodge Jeep and Ram’s Ms. Quacksalot was available for Meet and Greets. 12. Betse Dunham’s pottery was a popular vending draw. 13. Fest organizer Jake Rauer and some festival crew volunteers. Pictured left to right are Samantha Rauer, Jake Rauer, Jay Gardener, Carly Villegas and Crosby Piolatto. 14. Stillhouse Rounders play some Old Time tunes on the Dogtown stage. 15. Some in the audience sang along to Barry Lenoir’s cover of Bob Dylan’s Like a Rolling Stone (listen HERE).

Spy code
A Poet’s MO
to link and illuminate
to dream while awake
It’s an artful convergence
of description and truth
A superimposition
of almost and absolute

________Colleen Redman / Poets and Storytellers United

1. Here I am, a speck dancing near the stage with a giant rubber ducky at Saturday’s Floyd American Fest. Video HERE. Story coming soon…

2. My friend Alan (founder of the Americana Fest) performed an original song called “If God was a Spider and I was a Flea.” So now, whenever I see a spider, I say ‘if God was a spider…’

3. Duck Pond Pondering HERE.

4. Everything wasn’t so ducky a couple of weeks ago when I got a new computer, a new Window 11 operating system, a new Outlook email account and Adobe photoshop.  It’s been very disorientating.

5. Odd duck or lucky duck?

6. According to the Brittanica dictionary ‘that’s ducky’ means very pleasing and delightful but is often used ironically to describe something that is bad or unpleasant.

7. Happiness is what you make it / An easy fix that’s worth it / It’s a promise you can’t keep / that’s closer than you think.

8. Pope Leo recently quoted historian/philosopher Hannah Arendt: “The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction and the distinction between true and false no longer exist.”

9. Find My Phone: I didn’t want to give up my landline because I lose my iPhone so often and can call the number on my landline to find it. Today I found an app on my desktop computer that can find my iPhone by making it beep.

10. I haven’t written poetry in a while. I wish there was a “Find My Poem” app.

11. “Stanford Scientists Successfully Reverse Autism Symptoms in Mice: Researchers at Stanford Medicine studying the neurological basis of autism spectrum disorder have found that excessive activity in a particular brain region may be responsible for driving behaviors commonly linked to the condition. Overactivity in the reticular thalamic nucleus was shown to cause autism-like behaviors in mice. Drugs that reduce this activity reversed the symptoms.” – More HERE. 

12. I’ve been learning about the health benefits of Hydrogen tablets in non-plastic bottled water, mostly promoted via short videos by Dr. Gundry, but rather than learning more, I got lost in looking at Dr. Gundry’s eyeglasses. He wears a different (mostly flamboyant) pair in every video. HERE’S one.

13. Happiness: It’s a lucky bet / A moon and star / that rises and sets / It’s a genie’s wish / with the best intentions / A trade-off or pay-off / A wealth to spread.  Read The Enticement in its entirety HERE.

_____________Thirteen Thursday

-The following first appeared in Floyd Times on October 8, 2025.

The Annual Floyd Arts & Crafts Festival is one of the most well-attended events in the county. With approximately 180 vendors, Saturday’s festival filled two Floyd County High School gymnasiums and spread out onto the school grounds, making it a hub of activity and a shopper’s best chance for finding unique handmade items.

Susan Leonard, the festival’s vendor coordinator and Floyd County Woman’s Club member said the Arts & Crafts Festival started over 50 years ago. The Woman’s Club took over sponsorship in 1983 and has been running it ever since.

“This is our fundraising event for our club and all the money that’s made goes back into the county,” she said.

Fellow Woman’s Club member Joan Earman added that they have many different causes they donate to, such as scholarships for the high school, local fire departments and rescue squads, the library and other organizations that benefit the community.

Gladys Vaughn, a Floyd County baker, said she had a line of people waiting to buy her pies and cakes when she opened her booth at 9:00. She sold out of her fried apple pies by 11:00 but still had cakes.

Angela Thurston was a return customer for one of those cakes. “Last year I got one and had to get another one,” she said.

Vaughn’s daughter, Florence Williams, who was assisting her mother with booth duties, said they mostly sell Vaughn’s crafts and desserts by word of mouth. The business picks up with the Arts & Crafts festival and orders come in through Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Vaughn also makes tents that she originally created for Barbie dolls. Williams held one up and reported that they have also been used for kittens, puppies, GI Joes and even a ferret.

“A little boy was looking today, and he wants one for Christmas for his lizard,” Williams said.

A group of women from the Christmas for Children Program, a non-profit under the Floyd County Cares umbrella, was selling their handmade Christmas ornaments as a fundraiser. Along with organizing donations for Christmas gifts for children from low-income families, the group also sponsors The Dolly Parton Imagination Library for Floyd County.

“We register children to get a free book from Dolly every month. We’re raising funds to cover the postage,” said Christmas for Children volunteer Amy Helm.

Seven-year-old Gwayla Yard-Gralla, likely the youngest vendor in attendance, was selling her handmade woven potholders. “Do you like to cook?” That was her marketing line that drew in customers.

Yard-Gralla shared her booth with her sister Quinn Yard-Gralla, who displayed her original artwork, done in pastels, paint, watercolors, colored charcoal pencils. Friends Analiese and Alina Hess presented an arrangement of crocheted items for sale at the booth.

Food concessions were available in the high school cafeteria and on the school grounds. The fall weather was sunny and warm. Parking lots were generally full, and shuttle buses provided transportation from the Floyd County Courthouse and the Floyd Recreation Park to the popular October event.

Photos: 1. The early October Floyd Arts and Crafts Festival always draws shoppers. 2. Vendor coordinator and Floyd Woman’s Club member Susan Leonard (center) working for next year’s vending roster. Also pictured is Woman’s Club member Joan Earman.  3. Iva Bukkila shows off her rag rug and placemat creations. 4. A craft festival attendee purchases a bandana for his dog from Bailey Showalter. 5. Mother and daughter vendors Gladys Vaughn and Florence Williams. Williams holds up a handmade Barbie tent. 6. Angela Thurston purchases a cake made by Gladys Vaughn. 7. Vender Donna Campbell, from Independence VA, makes fabric wrapped cotton clothesline baskets. 8. Choosing a pottery mug as the potter, Sandra Horton looks on.  9. Christmas for Children volunteers pictured are (left to right) Karen Doyle, Lori Saltus and Amy Helm. 10. Young venders Alina and Analiese Hess, Quinn and Gwayla Yard-Gralla strike a pose. 11. Seven-year-old Gwayla Yard-Gralla engages with a shopper. 12. Twelve-year-old Quinn Yard-Gralla. 13. Shopper browses the Mountain Metal Welding and CNC Plasma Shop display.  14. Wade Orchard’s produce booth did a brisk business.

1. Monarch rhymes with hierarch, the high authority of sacred matters.

2.Treed-In: I once loved an apple tree / filled with red fruit / in a hidden orchard in Eden / But now the maple trees / have grown large / They block out the sun / There’s no room to stretch / Now the wind has downed limbs / I’ve gone porous and gray / Now the land around me / is not the same

3. New golden flowers / have bloomed and taken over / They’re pretty to look at / but have crowded out the rest / Only one monarch butterfly / came to the orchard this year / I took its picture / to prove it was there

4. “Words are events, they do things, change things. They transform both speaker and hearer; they feed energy back and forth and amplify it. They feed understanding or emotion back and forth and amplify it.” Ursula K. Le Guin on the magic of real human conversation

5.  Candle flame and songs for my brother John’s passing HERE.

6. On watching the documentary See Me in the Good Light (Sundance’s Festival Favorite Award) for the first time without (recently passed poet) Andrea Gibson by Megan Falley:    “Last week’s screening in NYC was the first time I saw the film without Andrea in the world. In the first few minutes, I could hardly
pick my head up. The scenes hadn’t changed, but I had—every moment refracted through the jagged lens of grief. My heart broke like a bowl thrown at a wall. I cried the whole way through. Like a widow who tries to dive into her lover’s casket, I wanted to plunge myself into the screen, into the past, into a version of our home where Andrea still wandered, still sat at our desk to type out some casual brilliance. My hand felt operated by a delusional marionette. For an hour and a half I suppressed what felt like the most natural urge: to reach toward the film and pluck Andrea out of it, back into this tangible reality, into the red velvet seat beside me…”

7. “…Sitting there with the projector’s soft whirr in the distance, the faint stick of soda beneath my shoes, my lap a receptacle for tattered Kleenex—I was reminded of the first movie that ever undid me in the dark: Titanic. It was the winter of 1997. I was nine. The movie was three hours and fifteen minutes long, but my attention never wavered. I wonder if I even blinked. What’s been classified as “an epic romantic disaster film” was an instant classic in my fourth-grade heart. At that age, I hadn’t yet loved. I hadn’t yet lost. But something in me needed those swells of human emotion, as if my body understood before my mind that they’d be important one day. (Maybe that’s what all storytelling is for. To let us practice being human before life requires it. We don’t just watch movies and plays, we don’t just read books; we try them on. And when reality finally arrives, we recognize the shape of it. Our hearts have already
practiced.)”

8. Ecstatic or erotic?

9. I’m preparing for a guest poetry reading at a friend’s Poetry with Rumi  (mystic estatic poet) event, and it occurred to me while looking for a couple of my poems to read that Rumi’s poetry is love poetry, whether about the beloved in the divine or the divine in the beloved.

10. Ecstasy itself originated in the phrase “ekhistanai”, which meant “to place, to make stand out”, or to determine. In Ancient Greek it had come to mean being apart from one’s Self. By the seventeenth century in Christian mysticism it had come to mean the erotic rapture experienced in contemplation of the divine.

11. I’m in love with…

12. Legend holds that Prince William of Orange (later King William III) was so adored by some early European settlers to North America that they bequeathed the name “Monarch” to our very orange and regal butterfly in his honor.

13: The butterfly effect: The idea that a small change, action, or event can cause much larger one elsewhere or in the future through a chain reaction. An allusion to chaos theory, popularized by the notion that a butterfly flapping its wings in one part of the world might cause a tornado many miles away.

__________Thirteen Thursday

-The following first appeared in The Floyd Press on August 28, 2025.

Katherine Chantal’s solo sojourn on the West Coast of Ireland produced an 87-page travel memoir of poetry, some of which she recently shared with an audience for an Irish Night of poetry and music at the Floyd Country Store.

Chantal’s readings followed three local poets who opened the evening’s program, Colleen Redman, Sarah Hastings and Jack Callan.  Her poems were complimented with music by Katherine Wiley on fiddle, David Scheim on harp and piano and Julian Pecoraro (Wiley’s son) on cello.

Chantal’s book, Irish Pilgrimage: Third Time is a Charm, chronicles her monthlong April writer’s retreat, living in a cottage on a sheep farm, where “each day unfolded anew with no plans.”  “From peat fires to warm me, driving on “the wrong side of the road” and walking by inner guidance, feeling my body on holy land…” she writes in the book’s introduction.

It was a writer’s retreat with solitude and excitement. Chantal weathered an orange level storm, discovered stone circles, met poets and musicians in pubs, reflected on Ireland’s painful history while driving on “Famine Road” and hiked Croagh Patrick, a holy mountain she compared to Floyd’s Buffalo Mountain in a poem titled “From Buffalo Mountain to Croagh Patrick.”

The music, which was curated by Wiley, a classically trained violinist, gave expressive voice to and set the mood for Chantal’s storytelling and poetic enchantments. The audience was attentive and enthusiastic as she read. They mingled during an intermission, cheered at the evenings conclusion and gathered at a table of books for a signing by Chantal.

Note: Irish Pilgrimage and Chantal’s other books are available for sale at The Floyd Country Store and online at Amazon.com.

-More on Irish Night at the Floyd Country Store HERE. 

1. In America we call girls chicks. In the UK they are birds.

2. On Sunday we put the garden to bed.

3. We let the chickens in the garden to scratch, which led me to say, ‘they’re scratching the lottery for bugs.”

4. Some hit the jackpot.

5. Some were ready for a close-up.

6. I’ve been told that my handwriting is like chicken scratch.

7. Some people sleepwalk. Joe sleeptalks. He speaks whole sentences of nonsense when he’s drifting off to sleep and even answers my quesions but his answers make no sense.

8. One chicken found a make-do nest for laying in the wild.

9. A hen is often refered to as an old hen or a mother hen who henpecks.

10. The line-up.

11. Product placement.

12. This is the hen house where we put our hens to bed.

13. This is my grandson who likes to catch chickens.

_____Thirteen Thursday