The Mint Patch Monologue

Contributions Dedicated to

Preserving the Timeless Writing

of Gladys Bagg Taber for

Future Generations

The Mint Patch Monologue is meant to welcome any reader to enter a quiet space, to celebrate life’s simple pleasures, and to find encouragement. Inspired by the late Gladys Bagg Taber (1899-1980) my writing is dedicated to preserving her legacy. She was the author of 59 books, including the Stillmeadow books, and columnist for Ladies’ Home Journal and Family Circle. Her warm and friendly spirit lives on in her every page, this blog is a bridge to that comfort, may we all still experience it. I choose to follow her lead in life- to regard community and neighborliness, to have an earnest relationship with the natural world, to remain full-hearted in the face of grief, to give any curious recipe the chance for success but the acceptance of defeat, and to sit under the stars at the end of a long summer day with a grateful sincerity.

  • Inner Eve

    this one’s about craving the bite

    Last year I wrote about apples…growing apple trees, trading with neighbors. I got curious about Johnny Appleseed, and about different varieties.

    This year, I’m thinking about apples again but in a different way. I’m thinking about that apple Eve bit into in the garden of Eden. More specifically, what drove her to do it. A woman blamed for the first sin, the one that invited sin, made us all sinners. What would life look like had Eve had obeyed, what would the stories be then? Would someone else have plucked the forbidden fruit? I don’t know. I do know that deep down something inside of me is craving to make a bold move.

    Maybe I am looking for wisdom, waiting for the serpent to appear to encourage me. Or perhaps I don’t need a snake at all. How else could we know what things are on the other side if we do not take risks and question things we think we know. What is waiting for us on the other side of the bite.

    After all, it’s just one simple bite. It’s not ascending a mountain or traversing the Serengeti. It’s not a hero’s journey, it’s not asking your boss for a raise, it’s not giving up sugar or crawling on your knees scrubbing away the wrong turns you’ve made. What is more in our nature than to seek nourishment, to reach for something ripe. To rebel. To question. To experiment. Eve may have been our very first scientist, a woman who wanted to know more. If we are all truly descendants of Eve, then I believe she has passed down that extra longing. A desire for more, a defiance against what we’ve been told.

    Others would argue that Eve was a fool, easily tempted, and weak. I would argue she was radical; I want to be radical.

    So, what do our “forbidden” apples look like. What are our bold moves to make in order to see what’s on the other side. Leave the job, cut the ties, be completely honest with yourself for once. Abandon bad habits, submit your poem, release your fear of change. Ask for help. Seek out your own knowledge and RUN with it. I come to you today in the form of the serpent and say take that bite. And I say it so daringly, and with sass. If you don’t see an apple, go into your life’s garden and open your eyes wider than they have ever been before. Eve only wound up living in sin like the rest of us, and someone else would have tasted it had it not been her. Shame isn’t new, we all live with it anyways so take the bite. Let someone else blame you for it, no one is innocent. Give something a taste you aren’t familiar with and see what happens. Break rules you have been taught and let the juice run down your arm. Maybe Eve just took one for the team and left in us the urge for taking risks.

    If we re-learn the story about the tree of good and evil, I believe we can choose to live as our true selves, to question what we’ve been told. The apple I’m holding stands between me and what the universe might have in store for me, and today I’m feeling hungry.

    As always please reach out, I do love to chat!

    justicesarah67@yahoo.com

    PS. Tell me about your apple, let’s fool around and find out together.

  • 30 Summers

    The end of June has me thinking about time…

    My work of 40 hours a week comes in quick, and early on Monday mornings. The daily routine begins with coffee, answering phone calls, answering questions, lots of standing, lots of listening to folks unload their woes. I collect my pay in exchange and go on about my day until another morning ferries me onto the next calendar square. We count the hours, my coworker and I, and bargain with the clock to move quickly…we beg for 5 o clock. How bad our days must be to “wish our lives away” in some sort of ignorance, ignoring our aging bodies while climbing up the trellis of mortality. Yes, the days are long, but the years are getting shorter.

    If I live to be 70, I’ll get another 30 summers.

    Another 30 gardens

    30 pool seasons

    30 more years of perfectly ripe cantaloupes.

    This, of course, is the plan… but what if I only get 5 or 10 more summers, 1 or 2 more?

    If this be my last then let me swim, and sweat, and be wild. Let my skin turn golden brown, my arms and legs go limber in the heat, my hair turn light around my face. 30 more times I’d want to see mist coming up from the lake after a steamy midday thunderstorm makes way for the sun’s return. I’d want to watch the yellow finch perch atop my sunflowers and pluck with delight its seeds, the bumblebees bounce from one bright bloom to another.

    To turn the garden hose against myself and dry off in the afternoon sun, to pour salt on ripe watermelon and spit seeds across the yard. I’d stay drunk on “still-hot-from-the-sun-tomatoes” eating them like apples, one after another. I’d go swimming every, single, day.

    But oh, to think about having 30 more summers leaves me in a state of bliss today. 30 more winters may fade the barn wood of my bones but 30 more springs would trickle a rosy pink back into my cheeks, just as the frozen creeks thaw. 30 more times I could watch the leaves turn from luscious green to bronze, fall onto the dark reflection of the water’s surface and glide away down the river.

    Maybe I am in this time reflection because of a sad conversation I had this week with a patient. A young, 74 years old fellow who had a biopsy on a lung spot came to me with the report. “It’s cancer, and not the kind that’s curable.” He went on to explain that the treatment would be a kind of cruel torture that didn’t interest him, and so he has been acquainted with the hospice program. These are low moments at work, words come slow and sometimes the truth just has to have its own silence in order to exist. He smiled, said thanks, and then him and his wife went on about their day. This must be his last summer, I thought to myself.

    Because I’m thinking of Michael this weekend, I will not let these short years go by without some reverence. I will not let my Monday morning cancel joy this week, and I will not sit back and let another summer fade casually by.

    For a Monday

    Monday mornings start with the wicked alarm
    Threatening you out of bed, filled with dread
    But falsely.
    Because, the world is sweet on Mondays
    Full of beginner’s charm
    My dear you must disarm
    And sip hot coffee against the cool dawn
    Like fresh steps of a summer fawn
    Go out into the day, and find a way
    To love the world.

    -Sarah Justice 2026

    Thank you for reading, and reach out because I DO love to chat!

    justicesarah67@yahoo.com