Bluebird Success

Finally and at long last… after five or more years of attempting, there are five sweet little open mouths inside this birdhouse, waiting for that plump juicy dinner.

Allergy Fog

Like much of the country, we’ve had a slow start to spring.  No snow in May or anything drastic like that, just lots of rain and cool cloudy weather prohibitive of getting a garden in early.  At this time last year, I was reaping the benefits of 80 degree March days in the way of lettuce, radishes, beets and other herbs that had an early start.  This year, we’ve had asparagus and rhubarb… the only things that willingly come up on their own every spring.

But weather isn’t the only thing deterring my gardening this year. For the first time ever in my life, spring allergies have knocked me flat.  A trip to Lowe’s brings on a coughing attack.  The mower in the back yard leaves me without air in my lungs.  I have been far too unsympathetic to allergy sufferers in the past… out of sheer ignorance of the effects.

The allergy fog has lifted.  I’m feeling better so this afternoon I turned off my panicked sensors and stepped into the big back yard, with seemingly no symptoms. Two weeks of neglect in the garden beds were very obvious.

I’m still hopeful that this attack was a fluke… a one-time event brought on by a massive overload of allergens when I opened the pool cover at the beginning of the month and took a bath in the stagnant water on top. Hopeful that there won’t be a next year of Benadryl and throat spray and cough drops  and honey lemon tea and nights spent wheezing for every breath.  And hopeful, that after weeding and digging and planting and raking all afternoon and into the evening, I haven’t just undone two weeks of healing.  

Pink Dogwood

Another that has bloomed and gone already… after three years of drought, and now an incredibly wet spring, I think this tree has claimed it’s home in the yard.

Awakening Gold

This image is a couple of weeks old already… I’m taking photos again, just haven’t posted any. Happy May!

Navy PIR

I’ve been a. sick, b. busy, c. overwhelmed, d. lazy, e. all of the above.

I’ll hopefully do a catch up post soon but for now, here’s a capture from Friday’s boot camp graduation that commemorates the day. Not my son, but a young recruit who resolutely stood at attention for at least three hours straight. This was a brief change of pose to salute. In awe…

April’s Smile

I’ll apologize already for the strange mishmash of photos in this post. But they all represent today.

Daffodils from my garden.  They finally bloomed… not bad since just two weeks ago today they shivered under ten inches of snow.

Eggs… a week after Easter, colorful and beautiful as if I had purposely dyed them so.

I boiled these fresh today. Nine dozen are in my fridge after bringing them home from my parents last week. Every time I open a carton, I feel rich all over again.  What is it about farm fresh eggs that has that effect?

The lake on this 70 degree afternoon.  The girl said yes to a walk so off we went.

Molly came along… she tallied up the running shoes, the keys, the camera, a plastic bag, and the leash and could hardly contain herself, hyperventilating all the way there.  You’ll just have to believe my mental picture of her, splashing around in the murky water, wading up to her shoulders and shaking off her winter stupor. She’s been waiting for this day since last fall.

And now I’m waiting… my guys are on their way home from another out of state biking adventure and I’m passing the time by starting a new project, for me.  Too often I spend the weekend hours working on a custom order… I mean to save those days for my own and keep the customers to the weekdays.  It’s a new promise to myself.

Taking call from my recruit this afternoon for the first time since he left only made this day better. We talked for twenty minutes that flew so fast it seemed like they were five and ended abruptly with an order from the background that time was up. Boot camp is easy, Mom. How loud do you want to say that, son? BOOT CAMP IS EASY! said loudly with his own ready smile recognizable in his voice. He spent a lot of time preparing and knew what to expect… He’s happy and enjoying his time. That’s all this mama really needs to know.

Hope your April is smiling on you!

Forward, March!

I guess the big news is, I’m a Navy mom.  He left last Thursday on his first commercial flight for boot camp in Great Lakes, IL.  I’m still waiting for the “kid in a box”, that official delivery of everything he had in his possession when he walked through their doors.

I keep thinking I’m going to do a better job of blogging but this month hasn’t shown any improvement.

Our March so far in photos…

Time is marching on. With it, we’ve marched through (in order from the camera dates)… scholarship wins and a college signing, the need for reading glasses, the need for more attractive reading glasses since my family is not a fan of my $3 Walmart rack choice, Navy haircuts which may or may not have involved an interim hipster cut by friends, last minute piano improvs, last car rides all together, last dinners out on the town, official induction ceremony and brave goodbyes, girlfriends with helmets, eighteen candles, sibling love, and more than a few thankful smiles and wistful tears about everything combined and nothing in particular.

In like a lamb, out like a lion?  Our March has been a strange one.  More like a sleeping hungry bear fighting those crazy last dreams before lumbering dizzily out of hibernation.  Today involves some snow showers and no weekly temperatures over 40 degrees.  The first day of spring is calling for a low of 14.  By this time last year, I had early garden plants poking out of the ground.  This year, only the daffodils have raised their heads but even they are confused.

I don’t know about you, but I’m ready for sunshine to March on in and stick around a while.

********************************

The morning after I watched my oldest slip away through that last door into new experiences that I’ve never known so couldn’t possibly prepare him for, I awakened with the thought of our senses, the normal ones, seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, smelling, and how much they play a part in our learning about new surroundings. And then those special ones that develop came to mind, along with a prayer that he wouldn’t lose them in the process of gaining new ones:

Sense of Wonder, Sense of Humor, Sense of Direction, Sense of Purpose and then, just the general hard-won, Common Sense.  Keep these my son… they’ll steady you as you march.

Along with all my love.

The Calm of Yesteryear

I used that phrase in a recent post regarding my (new) 1937 sewing machine. Shortly after I made that comment, graphic reminders were displayed like billboards in my mind of what that decade was actually like for people in the Midwest .

The Great Depression still blanketed the country. Land values were down, unemployment was edging its way down from its highest point ever only to spike again the following year. A polio epidemic held grip on whole communities. Indiana was one of four states devastated by the flood of the Ohio River that year, causing millions of dollars in damage. And abroad, Hitler’s aggressive regime was in place, with appalling momentum.

Those were the dust bowl years. Billowing clouds of dirt swarmed homes and land , pushing into cracks of houses, pushing families out and away, burying dreams (and sewing machines) as they went.

From my own grandmother’s writings, “Lest We Forget”…

It is hard to describe the full horror of those years, but I will try to give you a little detail… we would watch the sky for the sign of a storm cloud… we would think we were going to get a rain but when it arrived it would nearly always be a dust storm… We breathed it, we ate it… there was no keeping it out… We had to plant our crop four times because it had blown out… (the wind) would start on the edge of a field like that and just keep eating away at it. Men would get out on their tractors … and go down the rows of their crops with cultivators… to help preserve the crop but the storm usually outlasted them.

1937 offered none of the calm of which this machine would seek to remind me.

Nevertheless, I will continue to find peace here. Nothing like a little straight stitching to keep things uncomplicated.

Gift from the Sea

Another book… and this one, I’m actually reading. My sister-in-law picked it off the shelf in the library bookstore and said, “You’ve read this, right?” My blank look answered her question.

“You should read this… It’s you.”

So, since our company left on Valentine’s Day, I’ve opened the short chapters over cups of tea and special heart shaped treats and consumed with pleasure a labor of wisdom and peaceful solitude written over fifty years ago.

My other sister-in-law says, “There is a book in your writing somewhere.”  After reading this one, I’d have to say it’s already been written.

To read this book is to sit in the presence of Anne Morrow Lindbergh and feel the waves lap over bare toes in the sand as her timeless words one knows to be true are carried on fresh sea breezes and seep effortlessly into every pore.  Time is irrelevant and fifty years might have been last summer and the reader could very well be the sister she shares the moments with on her beach. As I learn more about the book and how it was received at the time it was written and how many copies have been sold that are floating around the world today, I can’t believe I hadn’t read it before. But then, I’ve only just come back from my first real vacation by the shore.

It’s a book that will call me back again and again.

It’s me… and it is a gift I will cherish.

February Rumi-nations

With life as short as a half taken breath, Don’t plant anything but Love.
Rumi

When all your desires are distilled
You will cast just two votes:
To love more, And be happy.
Hafiz

Look as long as you can at the friend you love,
no matter whether that friend is moving away from you
or coming back to you.
Rumi