Don’t forget the deviled eggs! If you aren’t have pimiento cheese sandwiches you can be fancy and have celery sticks stuffed with pimiento cheese, or cream cheese with chopped olives, or ants on a log. Finger food might also include brownies (we like ‘Gulf Ticket Brownies’ because mama wrote down the recipe on the back of a Gulf ticket. Or oatmeal raisin cookies
I love your picnic ideas. It sounds like a wonderful time. There is a picnic story that has come down in my family. When my parents were first married, they went on a picnic to celebrate one member of their friends group's birthday. One of the group was my father's cousin, Mary Louis, who was a great prankster. They had all kinds of lovely picnic food and Mary Louis had made a gorgeous sheet cake, beautifully decorated to the max. Your mention of making a cake for the picnic is what reminded me of the story. When it came time to sing Happy Birthday and cut the cake, Mary Louis handed the knife to the birthday boy and he began to cut the cake, and cut and saw and labor with great looks of embarrassment and sorrow and laughter and fun, but no joy. She had decorated a cardboard box. Fortunately, she had also made and decorated a real cake and all was well. My dad told that story all through my childhood and laughed and laughed.
I'm so excited to get my copy of Journey In Place and can't wait to participate in the Kickstarter for the new book! The picnic idea - and the reading suggestions - are great - thank you. I need to write about my peanut butter sandwich picnic with an eagle - thanks for making me remember it!
Janisse, This was just amazing, like you knew just what we all needed. I read it before bed last night and it was a balm, a reminder with instructions on how to still soak in all the good of the world. Thank you for this and the list of poems and for the opportunity to be a part of Journey in Place. You've created something wonderful here! Sending love out from my picnic to all the other picnics this weekend!
Thank you, Janisse! We have picnics often in our “backyard” which is about 20 acres of SE GA hardwoods and pines, wiregrass and gopher tortoises. We have a huge fire pit and lots of room and places for our grandson to climb and play. You should come visit!
There is something so utterly sweet and real and earthy about this post, the idea of a picnic. A sharing. A meal. A communion. I would invite you to mine. (And P.S. thank you for all those poetry refs. I'm working my way through them right now.)
I can't remember the last time I had a proper picnic. Eating while hiking: short break, sitting on a bulky backpack, pulling out a smooshed PBJ sandwich, a bruised apple or browned apples slices, and a granola bar slammed down with electrolyted water and then we are up and off again. Next week, I envision a picnic and poem reading in a beautiful spot. Thank you, Janisse
I love this! Thank you, Janisse. I threw myself a picnic birthday party on my sunset patio in the shade of my century-plus-old pear and apple trees. We sat out under the trees, occasionally picking up a pear or apple that fell and adding that to the feast, which was all food from the North Fork Valley where I live, including my deer-pork sausage bites from the sausage I make myself, each with a chunk of local goat-feta and half a local cherry tomato on top. We toasted with local gin-and-tonics and Clear Fork cider from the nearby orchards. It was the best birthday party ever!
Needed this reminder ✍️ thank you 🫶
Delightful!
This made me cry this morning! How lovely. I am trying to think up a picnic plan right now. Thank you.
Don’t forget the deviled eggs! If you aren’t have pimiento cheese sandwiches you can be fancy and have celery sticks stuffed with pimiento cheese, or cream cheese with chopped olives, or ants on a log. Finger food might also include brownies (we like ‘Gulf Ticket Brownies’ because mama wrote down the recipe on the back of a Gulf ticket. Or oatmeal raisin cookies
Beautiful! I'm adding these! And don't forget to invite me.
I love your picnic ideas. It sounds like a wonderful time. There is a picnic story that has come down in my family. When my parents were first married, they went on a picnic to celebrate one member of their friends group's birthday. One of the group was my father's cousin, Mary Louis, who was a great prankster. They had all kinds of lovely picnic food and Mary Louis had made a gorgeous sheet cake, beautifully decorated to the max. Your mention of making a cake for the picnic is what reminded me of the story. When it came time to sing Happy Birthday and cut the cake, Mary Louis handed the knife to the birthday boy and he began to cut the cake, and cut and saw and labor with great looks of embarrassment and sorrow and laughter and fun, but no joy. She had decorated a cardboard box. Fortunately, she had also made and decorated a real cake and all was well. My dad told that story all through my childhood and laughed and laughed.
I'm so excited to get my copy of Journey In Place and can't wait to participate in the Kickstarter for the new book! The picnic idea - and the reading suggestions - are great - thank you. I need to write about my peanut butter sandwich picnic with an eagle - thanks for making me remember it!
That sounds like a great story.
Janisse, This was just amazing, like you knew just what we all needed. I read it before bed last night and it was a balm, a reminder with instructions on how to still soak in all the good of the world. Thank you for this and the list of poems and for the opportunity to be a part of Journey in Place. You've created something wonderful here! Sending love out from my picnic to all the other picnics this weekend!
Thank you, Janisse! We have picnics often in our “backyard” which is about 20 acres of SE GA hardwoods and pines, wiregrass and gopher tortoises. We have a huge fire pit and lots of room and places for our grandson to climb and play. You should come visit!
There is something so utterly sweet and real and earthy about this post, the idea of a picnic. A sharing. A meal. A communion. I would invite you to mine. (And P.S. thank you for all those poetry refs. I'm working my way through them right now.)
Isn’t she just so good?
Let’s do a writing picnic with an invisible love line connecting us all the way to Georgia.✏️
Pay you later.
Yes yes!
A picnic! 🧺 What a delightful idea. Just thinking about it makes me smile. 😊
I can't remember the last time I had a proper picnic. Eating while hiking: short break, sitting on a bulky backpack, pulling out a smooshed PBJ sandwich, a bruised apple or browned apples slices, and a granola bar slammed down with electrolyted water and then we are up and off again. Next week, I envision a picnic and poem reading in a beautiful spot. Thank you, Janisse
Yes, just a little rest. You're doing so much, Sue.
Beautiful, Janisse! I would add Charles Wright’s “All Landscape Is Abstract, and Tends to Repeat Itself”
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/30933
I will definitely go add that poem!
I love this! Thank you, Janisse. I threw myself a picnic birthday party on my sunset patio in the shade of my century-plus-old pear and apple trees. We sat out under the trees, occasionally picking up a pear or apple that fell and adding that to the feast, which was all food from the North Fork Valley where I live, including my deer-pork sausage bites from the sausage I make myself, each with a chunk of local goat-feta and half a local cherry tomato on top. We toasted with local gin-and-tonics and Clear Fork cider from the nearby orchards. It was the best birthday party ever!
Wow, what a menu. I hope I get invited to one of your birthday picnics.
It's kind of a long commute.... :)
A fall picnic. Perfect. Thanks, Janisse.