Spring Has Sprung!

The creeping myrtle that I pulled long ago from the bank behind my childhood home and transplanted here at our house is one of the first plants to flower right after the crocus appear.  It really is quite invasive and can be a challenge to keep it from taking over the landscape, but I planted it in the back corner which is fairly rocky and unusable without major effort and landscaping.  It reminds me of my growing up years, my mother aggressively pulling it out in the spring to keep it where she wanted it.  Sometimes in the summer I would take a blanket and my lunch and have a little picnic in the grass at the base of the bank between us and the neighbors on the hill behind us.  That bank also provided us with a place to sled in the winter and just run down in the summer.  The neighbor sometimes yelled at us to get off that hill, not sure if the top of it was her property or ours but it didn't stop us from playing there.  My brother Dan broke his arm running down that hill and tripping over a tree root. Good times--haha!  Poor Dan was the one who broke bones--arm, wrist, thumb--all while just being a kid and running around, riding his bike, and playing.  I guess out of four kids one of us had to be accident prone!

You know it's spring time when the forsythia blooms!  These also remind me of my childhood because we had a huge "fence" of forsythia between us and the side neighbor.  They are also invasive!  My mother, it seems, loved her invasive plants--ha!  It did make a really good privacy fence though.  We only have a few growing across the back of our yard, but of course they are spreading so.....

We had a few really warm, summer like days this week and one evening after dinner I spent a little time on the back deck and watched the moon rise through the trees. This picture doesn't do it justice, but it's funny how the moon rises before the sun is set.  It was pretty bright because it was nearly full on this day.  Soon the leaves will be out and I won't get to see it through the trees until the fall.

I don't remember how long ago I planted these hyacinths, but this one came up in spite of being covered by leaves and a pile of twigs my husband put there last fall.  I moved the sticks off of it when I saw it coming up through the leaves.  Soon we'll have to get busy with rakes to uncover everything.

My older daughter and I went to a paint and sip fundraiser for the pet adoption she went through for her new cat.  I was smiling, but the person who took the picture must have snapped this before that--probably I was saying something in the second before.  It's a fun memory now!  I followed the colors on the example picture and the instructor's direction, Anna made hers colored like two of her cats. 

The background of this picture is from our little Lake George at Schooley's Mountain Park nearby.

 

April Already!

Recently I visited a nearby park and walked to the start of the falls, where the little lake emptys out over what I assume is a dam.  It was lovely standing there watching the water and listening to it rushing away down over the rocks.

This is a view of the lake there. It is called Lake George, but is much smaller than the more famous Lake George, NY.

Another view of the lake, this one from just before the bridge over the falls.  You can see in the background the metal boardwalk across the lake and on the right a clubhouse with a lovely patio on the lake.  I plan to picnic there one day soon when my sister in law can join me (she's a teacher and has to wait for Spring break).

I can’t believe how quickly the months are flying by!  Here it is April already, and I could swear just last week it was Thanksgiving!  I know I keep writing about time passing fast, but boy it is true for me.  I guess I just get lost in the days and when I look up I’m turning another page on the calendar.  At least time isn’t hanging heavy on my hands.  This is a good thing. The first day of April is famous for being April Fool’s  Day, a day where people for some mysterious reason play pranks, tricks and jokes on each other; some harmless, some mean depending on who’s involved and what type of person they are.  I’ve seen everything from a single gal announcing she’s engaged on social media (when she’s not even got a boyfriend), to someone leaving the kitchen tap on the sprayer so that when someone turns it on to say, fill the teakettle, they get drenched, to giving someone cookies made with salt instead of sugar.  It’s supposed to be all in good fun.

               I’m not one to prank people, but I do remember one time when I was much younger and very silly that I played one on coworkers.  At the time, I worked in a donut shop baking the donuts.  On the opposite side of the kitchen was the finishing table where the donuts were filled, frosted, or coated before going into the display case for sale.  Under the table were 3 rolling bins, about the size of a bassinette, filled with powdered sugar, granulated sugar, and glaze.  They each held about 25 lbs. of ingredients, and my trick was to bury just under the surface of the sugar sheets of parchment paper so that when my coworkers tried to coat the donuts they would not be able to get enough sugar to do so.  As I remember, we all got a good laugh out of it.  That’s it, my whole April Fool’s Day story.  I never promised a hilarious story here, but I hope it gave you a chuckle.

               I do hope that April will feature some calmer weather than we’ve been having, but even with the extreme cold we had recently there are flowers emerging from their winter sleep and buds appearing on the trees in the warmth of the sun.  It is a good and hopeful sign of things to come.

Down Time

 

 

It’s nice to have a day given over to some down time, and rainy days present that to me, as long as it’s not a string of rainy days.  Today it’s raining at a gentle spring like pace, no wind, and just the twittering of birds and the plip plip of raindrops acting as the soundtrack for my afternoon. It’s a good time for reading, baking muffins, and writing a letter or two, as well as trying to work on a story (not getting very far!), writing a blog post, and sipping tea on the couch while making up poems in my head.  It’s a nice bit of respite from the hurrying that sunny warm days seem to spark in me.  I took the umbrella and walked up and down the driveway, just to hear the rain falling on the bonnet of the sunny yellow protective device. (There! I’ve described my umbrella without using the word!  Haha! Just a little challenge to myself.)  I grew up walking in the rain as my father had the car at work and we only had one car as most families did at that time.  We lived in town so the schools were in walking distance and umbrellas, rain boots or shoe coverings (rubbers, we called them), and good rain coats were part of our back to school gear every year. If we wanted to go to a friend’s house we walked, or if we needed something from the grocery store or post office we walked there too.  It was just part of life and we didn’t complain too much since there really wasn’t anything you could do about it besides stay home and that just wasn’t what we did.  I don’t really like walking in the rain too much anymore, but maybe I should try it this spring and summer.  I’ll think about it!   At any rate, I slipped out onto the deck and took a couple pictures of the raindrops clinging to my wisteria, which reminded me of little crystals hung there.  It’s hard to get a picture that does them justice, but I think the lighting was pretty cool anyway. It made me realize that even if the clouds are covering the sun today, it is still higher in the sky and so you need more clouds to make the rainy day as gloomy as it would have been even a month ago, and that’s a good thing!

TIME

 

Time has a way of getting away from us.  It’s hard to believe that:

February is gone,

It’s been 2 years since everything shut down,

2 years since I went to work,

Decades since I was born (my birthday was the end of February),

Nearly 4 decades (or 2 score) since I became a Mrs. (still am!),

 Over 3 decades since I became a mom for the first time,

 Have had some of the same friends for 40 to 50 years! 

Don’t even get me started on how quickly the weekends go, blink your eyes on Friday afternoon and suddenly Monday’s alarm clock is ringing.  It’s always shocking to me when I realize how much time goes by without realizing its happening.

               When we are young we think that we will always be so and we have all the time in the universe to do things that we like to do, until one day we wake up and realize we qualify for an AARP membership card and a discount on a meal at IHOP on Wednesday afternoons.  Seriously, did you ever go to an IHOP on the senior discount day?  My husband and I did that fairly regulary years ago when he first qualified for the discount.  We didn’t do it because of the discount, but rather because at the time we had a respite worker come to stay with our daughter for a few hours and that’s the time that she was available so we’d meet up when he got home from work around 4:00.  We were the youngest patrons there, and it reminded me of a dining room at a senior living community with men in their best shirts smelling of Old Spice aftershave walking around telling lame jokes, women with their hair freshly done twittering in response to their mate’s attempt at humor.  There’s even a special senior menu with lower prices and smaller portions.  I kid you not. We don’t do that any longer because it’s been years since we had the respite worker.  I miss regularly having a date day but don’t miss going to IHOP!

               This weekend we turn our clocks ahead an hour so we lose an hour’s sleep, of course when I was much younger and more foolish it was an hour of party time that we lost.  Haha! Those days are long gone!  I think it’s a hard thing to try and be mindful that time is going at jet speed when days can feel so endless sometimes.  We have so much to do and so little time; or so it seems.

I took a walk at the local park recently.  I can't wait until the grass is green, but it was nice to get outside on such a beautiful day.

These are the flowers my husband gave me for my birthday, a beautiful taste of spring!

My friend sent me this picture of us when my first born was only days old.  Who are those young people?

This is me at my little birthday party last month.  We had so much fun and a lot of laughs.  I think I was being a smart aleck about something in this picture. Haha!

Hello February!

 

               Here we are at the beginning of February again, still in the heart of winter.  Recent snow and now an impending ice event are pretty typical for the beginning of this month.  At least it’s a short month, and once we get through we are just weeks away from spring.  January felt really long, as it always does; I think because we were so busy from Thanksgiving in November until ringing in the New Year that January just feels like a huge let down.  When there is nothing really special going on and the weather decides that it means business the days just seem to drag.  Maybe that’s why Groundhog’s Day has become such a big thing around here—people need to focus on something outside of themselves and celebrating a rodent seeing or not seeing its shadow is a frivolous and lighthearted thing to do.  Of course football fans are now looking forward to the super bowl and the winter Olympics are starting so we have a bit of a break from nonstop virus coverage and controversy.  It’s a relief to think of something else for a little while!

               This is my birth month as well as my dear friend’s and so there are 2 celebrations that will be happening.  We will be celebrating each other from afar since we live about a 12 hours’ drive away.  Valentine’s Day is also this month so the stores are well stocked with red and pink things—candy, cards, stuffed toys, hearts, shirts, and all kinds of kitschy things to give your love.  Restaurants are advertising their V-Day specials, pizza places are asking for preorders of heart shaped pizzas that you can share with your loved one.  Let’s not forget Presidents’ Day and the fact that it is Black History Month as well as Heart Health month. Whew!  Lots of special things in February!  It’s another nice diversion from the wintry weather we get this month.

               Even though it’s a short month, and typically a cold and stormy one, I look forward to it.  Not just because of my birthday, but the sun is getting a little stronger and higher in the sky every day, and setting later as well.  Birds sing a little more even though the trees and ground may be covered in a blanket of snow and ice.  It’s a month filled with the promise of the coming spring.

The hydrangea keeps hold of the clusters of flowers and give a little shelter to small birds through the winter and a subtle color to the snowy landscape.

 

                                                    

I really like how the sun highlights the ice on the branch of this plant through the shadow of the deck railing.