Before Fake Flowers

Memorial Day Weekend and we'll be making the rounds of cemeteries. While choosing which fake flowers to put on which graves, I always think of how we used to decorate on what we then called Decoration Day.
The morning would begin by collecting a bunch of empty jars and a digger, also known as a garden trowel. Then we'd pump some water in a bucket and go around the yard collecting peonies, spirea, iris and any other flowers in bloom before heading down to Grandma Ridnour's where we gathered even more blossoms of iris and peonies and ferns.

Our bouquets would look something like this, only with many, many more blooms.
At the cemetery, I would dig a small hole to support a jar (otherwise the wind might blow it over), Mom would add water and then we made a floral and fern arrangement.

For my Dad's baby sister's grave, I would have made a delicate little bouquet like this.

I will admit that it is much easier the way we decorate now with the fake flowers, but it seems the old way of observing Decoration Day was more meaningful.
Or does it just seem that way because I was with my Mom and Grandma?

"Your silent tents of green
We deck with fragrant flowers
Yours has the suffering been,
The memory shall be ours."
(From Decoration Day by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)

You Can Tell Time By A Farm

"You can tell time by a farm, a day's worth of time, a year's worth. There's a particular kind of quiet on a farm in the morning, which isn't really morning the way other people think of it. It's still dark with just the smallest idea of black sky getting lighter around the edges, and unless there's a moon the only light comes from the bare bulb hanging like its own moon from the center of the barn ceiling. It's a place where it's just as easy to feel lost as it is to feel contented. I felt lost most of the time now, but I never said so, even to myself: in that same way I knew it was odd for a grown woman not to leave her own home, I knew it was odd for a teenage girl to feel like there was a big rattly empty space between her stomach and her heart. But it made me wonder whether other people felt the same way without showing it.

It was always warmer in the barn than it was outside because of all the cows crowding together, breathing and snorting and farting, making a fug that hung in the place like cigarette smoke over the poker game my father used to have once a month. Cows at dawn are different than cows at dusk. A farm in winter feels different than a farm in summer. The whole year passed in front of me on the farm. The cornstalks with yellow edges that meant summer was over and the classroom getting ready to close around you. The pumpkins of October that squatted where the yellow flowers sprouted on the vines in August. The mornings when you could hear the cattle complaining like a bunch of old men with tobacco throats and you knew, you just knew that it was February and their water through was frozen solid and you were going to have to go out there with an old shovel and beat a hole into the ice until it fell apart like a broken window."


I used this quote from Miller's Valley, by Anna Quindlen, a year ago. Maybe I had Dad on my mind then, too, even though the memory I was sharing in that post was more about Mom. 

It was forty years ago this evening that Dad died, only 18 days past his 61st birthday. Almost all my memories of him revolve around the farm. I never missed him as much as I have missed Mom.....

.....still......

Grandma For Half My Life

Thirty-seven years ago tonight, I became a grandmother at age thirty-seven.

If my son looks young in this picture of him holding his newborn son, it is because he was young - three months shy of his 19th birthday. I was the same three months shy of my 19th birthday when he was born.

I took this photo of Brock and his sister, Alyssa, in March. He is a father of three young boys now.

I didn't get to celebrate many birthdays with my grandson, but I, three of his great-grandparents and two great-great grandmothers were there for his first birthday celebration.

I'm not helping him celebrate his 37th in person, but I did finally get the planter he made for me two years ago installed and planted today.

Happy Birthday Number One Grandson. Love, G'ma R

Charge It To The Dust

It's a cool day and I actually felt like doing something. I've been promising myself to do some cleaning, straightening and throwing away in the garage, so that's where I spent a productive hour or so.

The pretty blue, single speed bike I bought nine years ago (and rode a half-dozen times) takes up a lot of room on "my" side of the garage. I've been thinking about selling it, so out it came. Then I rearranged the space where it had been, filled three bags of stuff to throw away and broke down a bunch of cardboard boxes to take to recycling.

When I swept out the garage. I thought about taking the dust up in a dustpan and putting it into the wastebasket which is when one of Mom's old sayings came to mind: "Charge it to the dust and let the rain settle it." Of course that saying didn't exactly fit the situation, but the forecast rain will settle the little bit of dust I swept into the street.

(Charge it to the dust and let the rain settle it, is an old saying used in friendly transactions where no payment is expected.) 

Prunus Virginiana

The prunus virginiana, also known as chokecherry, Virginia bird cherry, black chokecherry and, commonly, as bitter-berry, is blossoming.

Its white flowers open on dangling spikes called racemes. In late summer, the small red berries will darken to deep purple, almost black. Ripe for the picking to make my favorite jelly - if you can pick them before the birds get them!

"Our joy is joined with grievous groans,
     our triumph torn to tears;
The branch whose blossoms gladness brought,
     a bitter berry bears."
    (Thomas Churchyard)

Le Muguet

Au mois de mai, 
fais ce qu'il te plait.

In the month of May,
do what your heart fancies.





(Provencal proverb)

Perfectly Beautiful Day

It was a lovely morning to be outside, doing some watering, pulling some weeds, checking to see if the Cardinal Climber seeds have emerged. (They have.)

There was a volunteer tree coming up in between a couple of rocks. When I moved one to pull the unwanted plant, I noticed these little pebble like growths.

I'm almost certain it is some sort of fungi, but what? I've never seen anything like it before and can't find anything on the internet. Any ideas? Maybe after a few days growth they will change enough to be identified.

On the other side of the house, Johnny Jump Ups! How did I miss seeing them yesterday when I was photographing the ferns? These little flowers of my youth grow so profusely across the street that the neighbors pull them out, spray them, cover them with plastic and landscape rocks just to get rid of them. I have tried transplanting them over here several times but they have never survived. Now one comes up all on its own. I am happy. Just hope they thrive and spread.

Johnny Jump Ups, aka tricolor violas, are cousins of the yellow-orange violas I planted in pots on the deck this year. Love their little faces and cheerful colors.

The herbs have been planted in the old mailbox. This year they are, left to right, cilantro, rosemary and sweet basil. I may not use them much in cooking, but I love walking past and rubbing them for the inticing aroma.

The fountain is up and running. It may be my imagination, but adding the pebbles at the top has made the sound of the recirculating water more pleasing.

A short drive arount Lake McKinley resulted in only one photo of something different - this lone snow goose. It was hanging out near some Canada Geese.

Coming back, along Spillway Road, I spotted this honeysuckle, one of my favorite shrubs.

Not far away was a pink version. So pretty.

I brought home a sprig of white to add to the lilacs from yesterday.

It really has been a perfectly beautiful Spring day.