Beth Carpenter Books

Image courtesy of NPS It’s windy today. Driving through downtown, I saw a dozen ravens surfing in the air above the buildings. I see them often, hanging out near bluffs or large buildings, playing in the surf of the wind. They’re not nesting, or feeding, or protecting their territories. They’re just playing in the wind for the sheer joy of it. Joy.  That’s really what it’s all about. I’m thankful for the big things in my life: for health and family, a loving husband, a comfortable home. But life is made up of moments, and it’s the moments of joy that make life the celebration it is. You’ve seen it. It’s the way a baby’s face lights up when he spots his mother. It’s in the way certain soccer players manipulate the ball, reveling in their athleticism.  It’s the perfect focus of a Labrador on the ball in your hand, waiting for the throw.   It’s the squeal of a child on a swing, pumping higher and higher until she almost flies. It’s that first taste of a perf...

I wrapped my first Christmas present today, and I've already baked and frozen three kinds of cookies. I know, I know. It’s not even Thanksgiving yet and I’m rushing the holiday, yadda, yadda, yadda. I sometimes say the same, but secretly inside, I’m a little kid who just can’t wait for Christmas.   So are some of the characters in my books. In  Family Planning   (which is on sale through Dec. 7th) ,  Donna has met the man of her dreams and moved to Flagstaff to start anew, only life gets in the way. The story starts and ends at Christmas. Here’s a little excerpt. “Christmas cookies?” Blake looked at her suspiciously. “You’re one of them, aren’t you?” “One of whom?”  “One of those Christmas people.” Donna started a pot of decaffeinated coffee. “You mean those annoying people who bake cookies and decorate everything in sight and wear ugly Christmas sweaters and go around singing carols for the whole month of December?” “Yes, those people.” “I’m ...

Ten Things I Love about Autumn Warm shades of red, gold, and brown Frosty mornings and crisp sunny days Baked apples More gourds than I know what to do with Cuddly mornings under the quilt The scent of wood smoke Plans for Thanksgiving Bringing nature inside Vees of geese flying over Hints that Christmas is coming

Halloween is behind us and November is here, which means Thanksgiving is just around the corner. For the first time in a very long time, neither of my kids will be with us. Instead, we plan to spend Thanksgiving with my husband’s mother. This takes me back to my first Thanksgiving with his family. We were in college and hadn’t been dating long. I was just starting to get to know his family and working hard to convince them I was good girlfriend material. His mother set a beautiful table and the food was wonderful. The next day, she suggested we try a recipe she'd cut from the newspaper for Turkey Frame Soup. We spent a good part of the day preparing the bones, chopping vegetables, and rolling out and cutting homemade noodles. When dinnertime came, we gathered the family together and served the soup. It tasted like dishwater. Everyone ate quietly, too polite to comment. Finally my future husband turned to me and said, “Thank you for making this for me. Please don’t e...

On the   100 Acre Personality Quiz  I discovered I'm a Kanga. It's not far from the truth, except that kids don't know not to misbehave around me. Just the opposite, really. I say, "Everyone gather around me here at the table," and three-fourths of the children ignore me. Where do you get one of those "I mean it" voices that successful teachers and coaches use?  It was the same with horses. I spent my childhood dreaming of owning a horse someday. Rather than an imaginary friend, I had an imaginary horse, Jerina. White, graceful, with the delicate face of an Arabian, the two of us galloped effortlessly across the farm. My parents finally got me a real horse when I was fourteen, and I discovered I have little talent for riding. I took good care of Lady and she was fond of me, but many of our rides turned out to be long arguments about where and how fast we should be going. She felt her opinion was at least as valid as mine. When my cousin or anyone who k...

We just returned from a visit to various relatives, including my husband’s grandmother, an amazing woman.  She thinks she was born in 1917, although there is some doubt because she was born at home and her parents didn’t get a birth certificate until a few years later.  Officially, though, she’s ninety-seven, living in an apartment of her own in a senior facility, and doing her own cooking and housekeeping. She still has sharp hearing, a sharp mind, and judging from her geraniums, a green thumb. I want to be her when I grow up. We did a little sightseeing on the trip. We saw Cave-in Rock, a notorious hideout for bandits including the James gang, and some beautiful cemeteries, and lots of corn. But mostly, we chatted. My husband’s grandmother is a walking history book. She was there during the depression, WWII, the moon landing, and everything since, working hard and raising a family. She grew up on a farm, married a farmer, and then after her husband died, went to work...

Our Grand Garden Experiment had an unexpected ending. In late May, my husband and I decided to plant a few vegetables in our garden in Arizona even though we were spending the summer in Alaska. We mulched the garden carefully and set automatic irrigation to provide water. The idea was to come back to okra, sunflowers, tomatoes, peppers, pumpkins, and gourds. The local deer population had other ideas. They found the tender shoots too yummy to resist. No pumpkin, no sunflowers, no okra, no peppers. They left enough of two Better Boy tomato plants that they regrew and bore fruit, but they’re not ripe yet. It will be a race to see if they ripen before frost. And they left the gourds. Boy did they leave the gourds. I only planted two hills of three seeds each, but the gourds have taken over the entire garden terrace, crawled up and down the steps to the next levels, and even climbed a tree. We have green and yellow striped gourds, green gourds that look as if they were dipped hal...