Everything I wanted to do this afternoon was on the computer, and a summer thunderstorm hit with lightning and thunder.
Reminded me of many childhood days when I was working on the sewing machine to make my 4-H project. The lightning would start and my 4-H leader, Margaret Lewis, and I would stop production for the day.
I ran home, skipping through the mud puddles, and my family would sit on the porch, dazzled by the much-needed rain. As soon as it quit raining, we would pile into the pickup and go out to the ranch, checking each rain gauge my Dad and Granddad had put up on fence post. The gauge–an Alka Seltzer bottle.
We would go from gauge to gauge, dumping out the rain water and Dad would make a mental note of the amount and then record it when we got home.
Ritual–yes! The dry plains of southeastern Colorado needed every drop of water it got.
So today took me back. I breathed a sigh and did other things, enjoying the sound that only rain can make. Our garden needs the rain; local ranchers and farmers do too–and my spirit does too!
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Published by Larada Horner-Miller
Larada Horner-Miller is a poet, essayist and accomplished multi-genre author who holds a bachelor’s degree in English, with a minor in Spanish and a master of education degree in Integrating Technology into the Classroom. She is the accomplished author of six award-winning biographies, historical fiction, memoir, and poetry works plus three self-published cookbooks.
Her sixth book, Coronavirus Reflections: Bitter or Better?, is available in paperback and four e-book formats. Larada offers the reader the opportunity to look back at 2020 and the global pandemic through her prose and poetry through reading, then reflecting and responding. She addresses all the emotions she felt during this overwhelming time and leads the reader through to a self-access: bitter or better?
Her fifth book is the authorized memoir and biography of world-renown square dance caller Marshall “Flip” Flippo. Just Another Square Dance Caller: Authorized Biography of Marshall Flippo is available now in hardback, paperback and four e-book formats. Recently Just Another Square Dance Caller won two awards: Book Excellence Awards Finalist and Silver award for eLit. Book Awards.
Another recent book of hers, A Time to Grow Up: A Daughter's Grief Memoir has won many awards including being a 2018 Book Excellence Awards Finalist in the Memoir category at the New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards and a 2018 Independent Press Distinguished Favorites Award in the Memoir category. Horner-Miller has also been a past national presenter at the Women Writing the West Conference and is currently the creator of Memoir Workshops for others who want to share their family’s legacies through words.
Larada and her husband, Lin, enjoy being nestled in the mountains above Albuquerque, New Mexico, near the village of Tijeras. When not writing books, this passionate, energetic, and enthusiastic woman loves to spend time kicking up her heels at square dancing gatherings, traveling, knitting, and reading.
As co-manager of her family’s southeastern Colorado ranch, she enjoys spending time exploring her family’s historic ranch and reminiscing with her brother and his children about their mom, dad, and granddad.
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