Excerpts from the novel HAVENWOOD TALES Beginnings
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In the meadows and pastures, lines of fat raindrops clung like jewels to the undersides of new branches too green to absorb them, backlit by a cautious sun. Yellow-budding tulip trees drank thirstily of the fresh, pooled rain. And redbuds and dogwoods bloomed pink and white in the patches of light and shadow cast by canopies of hardwood trees, greening to life in the fertile woodlands.
I soon returned to school to discover all manner of winged creature, lending song and sound and motion to the Spring outside our classroom . . .
Ruby-throated hummingbirds zoomed on invisible wings from flower to flower, sharing nectar with the honeybees in the gardens we’d planted. And as the apple orchards sprinkled their delicate blossoms onto the breezes, sweet brown wrens whistled duets with the chickadees and chirping sparrows to the counterpoint, drumming staccato of woodpeckers courting their mates . . .
SEE: “Spring in Heartland America“
A 3-Part Excerpt from the Novel HAVENWOOD TALES Beginnings
by Author D. J. Houston
Copyright©2008, 2014 D.J. Houston. All Rights Reserved.
Mystery Novel – Inspiring Stories – Life Lessons – Visionary Fiction – Heartland America
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Miss Greenlee’s class learned to make Art out of gingerbread men. And not just any old brown paper cut-outs of gingerbread men, but real-cookie keepsake ornaments you could dangle from a Christmas tree!
You can call it bribery if you want to, I don’t care. Other than the possibility of getting to see pickled brains in a jar, I was looking forward to going to school about as much as slopping hogs for the rest of my life . . .
When I wasn’t reading, I was doing chalk or pencil drawings and watercolor paintings of the birds and flowers and forests I knew.
I had the most godawful urge to stick my tongue out at spiteful, old Miss Hickey, the Latin teacher. 
Maybe my next big break in life would be on the stage. Maybe it wouldn’t. But it promised to be a hallmark moment for Havenwood . . .
Halloween was due on a Thursday . . .
Miss Greenlee wore lovely, smart blouses from sophisticated foreign lands, and skirts splashed with patterns of butterflies or colorful birds or bold, bright stripes running down them — or flowers you could almost smell like a flow of perfume from the quality fabrics . . .
We’d already spent the week swapping ghost stories on the playground, thinking we’d have some orange cookies and punch on Thursday and call it a Halloween. So you can imagine, on such short notice, how many straw-hatted farmers toting buckets and rakes and sheet-clad ghosts and high-heeled, beaded ladies stumbling over their mothers’ dresses were likely to show up for the “Extras” cast on Halloween morning.
When I guessed correctly that Katy’s cheeks were meant to look like big red cherries to compliment the plastic fruit piled on her head, you’d think she’d just won the lottery, the way she squealed and carried on to thank me. But I must say, for a shy, plain girl who sat in the back of the classroom and kept to herself, I had to admire her daring on that headdress.
Miss Lucinda Greenlee was utterly, completely beautiful from head to toe, and then some.
I’d been going to school for less than a week when I spied the old woman out in the schoolyard, planted stubbornly under a hickory tree with her hands on her bony hips, hurling disapproving scowls like javelins aimed at Miss Greenlee’s classroom.
Havenwood Tales 
Baseball Wisdom and Brotherly Love – American Tall Tales
Posted in Havenwood School, tagged American Family Life, American Tall Tales, Author D.J. Houston, Funny Stories, Havenwood School, Literary Fiction Books, Mystery Novel, Social Commentary, Wisdom on September 9, 2012| Leave a Comment »
A Fresh Peek at HAVENWOOD TALES Beginnings
by D.J. Houston
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Baseball Wisdom . . .
He was obviously suffering his own case of walloping doubts about my having to start going to school.
In the first place, it was his school. And the idea of his naïve, snot-nosed little sister attending that same school would never fit in with his master plan, even if he had one. But it was the only school around so he had no choice:
It was high time to lay some ground rules . . .
C L I C K H E R E for Questionable Advice 😉
D.J. Houston, Author
Copyright©2007, 2012 D.J. Houston. All Rights Reserved.
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