Cultivating

Arts & Photography

synopsis

Synopsis

We are always creating and cultivating, even if we are unaware. What do you believe you are busiest creating? What are you truly cultivating? As a Southern journalist and writer, Dianne Poston Owens has learned something about nature and humans. In her essays she often explores people and the things they create. Always busy cultivating, people are at their best when they are cultivating what matters. But what matters? As an observer and recorder of people, places, and things, Owens wants to assure others that significance is found in the trivial, and the mundane matters. Cultivating, Homespun Essays from Beech Tree Lane, is a collection of short essays and poems intended for inspiration, encouragement and insight. Owens poses questions and offers photographs that allow readers to reflect and pause before heading full speed into the world around them. Through her essays Owens explores what we say, do and choose, and how that impacts what we cultivate each day.

bio

Author Biography

Dianne Poston Owens is a former newspaper reporter, columnist and editor, serving rural communities in South Carolina for more than 30 years. Though she wandered from her roots, she now lives in the same neck of the woods that her family has lived and died on for more than 250 years ... Along with two goats, at least four chickens, two cats and whatever else lives in the woods!

website

Author Insight

Recipes for living

In Cultivating, Homespun Essays from Beech Tree Lane, I offer an essay entitled "Tips for Living." Cultivating is a companion piece to Gathering, Homespun Essays from Beech Tree Lane. I think you'd enjoy them both as a weekend read or a daily reflective meditation. At the end of the "Tips" essay I ask "Where do you get your recipes for living?" So, where do you? Do you follow the lead of an Instagram influencer? Do you go against the grain and think for yourself? Do you watch hours of TikTok videos? Listen to podcasts? Where do you get your recipes for life? Do you make it up as you go? I ask because I am interested in where you, and I, get our tips for living. I once found some, tips that is, in a rectangular thirteen by eleven by five inches locked carry case. I broke the lock and found some good old-fashioned wisdom. None of which did me any good until I put it use. What good are tips if we don't use them? Where do we get our recipes for living? How trust-worthy are they?

Book Excerpt

Cultivating

I received as a gift what I believe is a small silver overnight case. Inside are 1960-70s era recipes clipped from newspapers and magazines. From desserts to dinners, the typed instructions are often accompanied by hand-written notes.

“Stir more here.” The arrow points to the butter and shortening, just before adding the sugar, and is written on the December 25, 1961, recipe for chocolate pound cake.

“Try this,” is written on the Farm Journal Square Doughnuts recipe. I wonder if the baker in the family ever tried them, or were they left to be baked another day? I’ll give you the glaze recipe:

Blend 2 cups sifted confectioners’ sugar, 1/3 cup milk, and 1 teaspoon vanilla.

Dip the warm doughnuts in the glaze.

Drain on a rack over waxed paper.

You can reuse your glaze drippings, the food editor said.

Recipes provide tips for cooking, baking, stewing, and roasting. Some of us create concoctions and call them casseroles. Some of us follow recipes. Some of us may even reuse the drippings.

What “tips” do you pass on to others?

Where do you get your recipes for living?

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Dianne Poston Owens

Cultivating

Synopsis

Author Biography

Author Insight

Recipes for living

Book Excerpt

Cultivating

Comment on this Bubble