Pike Nursery

The weather was so warm and sunny today that I just had to make the trip to Pike Nursery. As usual, my plans were expansive and included masses of colorful pansies and whatever other spring flowers sucked me in on the spur of the moment. I was surprised at how empty the place was! The drought has done in much of the landscaping here in Georgia, and has done in many of the landscapers at the same time. Pike, a decades old family business, was forced to declare bankruptcy several months ago, but even knowing that didn't prepare me for what I saw at Pike's. So little inventory - no pansies, no rows and rows of spring flowers to choose from. I did find some precious primroses and bought a flat of 18 little plants. Only four flats remained. The young lady at the checkout was so upbeat. After I commented on how sad their situation had become, she cheerfully shared how this location has now been bought "by another grower, not a corporation" and how she just knew it was all going to be ok. They were beginning to bring in more inventory and the spring planting season looked promising. After all, we are now allowed to handwater, with a single hose, for 25 minutes three days a week.

My primroses are all in their new homes in my yard now. All are a reminder of a bright promise for my spring and for Pike Nursery's future!

Family ties

The internet, even though some say just a phase, is a wonderful thing. So much information, so little time.

One nugget that caught my attention yesterday was this headline "Japan Crown Prince to try to visit parents more." (http://www.reuters.com/article/peopleNews/idUST287520080223?rpc=401) It just struck me as strange to have to publicly commit to visiting your parents.

Spring is in the air. My walk around the yard this morning revealed buds on the iris bushes and the hydrangea. The azalea bushes that have survived the drought are also full of buds. I can hardly wait for the explosion of color that spring in the Southeast brings. I remember when we lived in dry Las Vegas and we would watch the Masters Golf Tournament on television. I had never seen any landscaping so beautiful in my life. And now I get to live here among it all and see it all up close and personal. Spring in Georgia does not disappoint. My blooming yard has a tulip magnolia tree, a weeping cherry tree, both pink and white dogwood trees, azaleas bushes, a bradford pear tree, forsythia bushes, pink and red camellia bushes, several leatherleaf mahonia, in addition to the afrementioned iris bushes and both blue and oak-leaf hydrangea. There will be a true riot of color in about a month or so.

I just watched squirrels carrying mouthfuls of dried leaves into the owl house they have claimed as their own via squatters rights. I wonder if the soon-to-be baby squirrels will have to publicly commit to visiting their parents?

Happy Birthday, Chickie!

Today is my one and only favorite son's birthday.

28 years ago, Bob and I were living at George AFB, just outside Victorville, California. I had gone into labor Friday afternoon, just after my regularly scheduled OB visit earlier that morning. Bob and I had gone to Lamaze classes and thought we were prepared for the long haul. Just how long a haul it would be was a huge surprise to us both. Stephen finally made his entrance around 8am on Sunday morning, after over 40 hours of labor. Just a few months ago, while going through a box of Bob's papers, I came across a log book where Bob had noted all the times and durations of my contractions. Amazing.

Stephen was a long and thin jaundiced bundle of joy who spent the first week in an incubator under bright lights. His eyes were covered with gauze patches to protect them from the lights and he looked like a little orange fly. We called him our little Chiclet gumball and that soon became just Chickie.

He has continued growing tall and has, through a personal discipline reminiscent of his father's, maintained his thin physique. He eats well and takes good care of himself. He has already run one full marathon and will be running the Los Angeles Marathon on March 2.

He is determined, calm, compassionate, self-assured, content. And like his dad, he never lets me forget that I am loved.

His Daddy would be proud of him.

Shirley and Marty

Shirley Jones and Marty Ingalls were on a morning television program today (talking about love and a long marriage) and on a cruise ship with Bob and me in 1994. Dad had come to stay with Stephen while Bob and I flew to London to take a 16 day cruise back to New York, via Rouen, Brugges, Waterford, Rekyavik, Halifax, and Newport.

Shirley became our "close personal friend" the day the tour bus burned to the ground (yikes!) on the way to the Waterford crystal factory. We had been on separate buses, excitedly wending our way down the very skinny twisty turny road in Ireland. Our lilty red-haired very Irish tour guide was explaining why the roads were so twisty turny. "The roads are like this so that the evil spirits cannot follow us. Oh, look! There's a mockingbird! We Irish believe that lone mockingbirds are bad luck, so every time we see one, we..........." Suddenly there was no more microphone on our bus! From our mid-bus seat, Bob and I could see her and the bus driver trying to get the sound system to work again. Then he stopped the bus to give the problem a bit more attention. (I suppose he knew we had all paid very dearly for this cruise and all the tours, so we deserved his full attention.) The bus in front of us (with Shirley on board) stopped when we did, and our driver got out to go ahead to explain to the other driver what was going on. As he turned to walk back to us, his eyes widened and he began to race back onto our bus. "Out the back, out the back," he yelled. "Fire, move quickly!" We all sat like frozen fish, waiting for further instructions. All of us, except Bob. He leapt out of his seat and followed the driver to the back of the bus where both pushed open the emergency exit and jumped to the ground....all the while yelling, "Move to the back of the bus!" Slowly, the rest of us gathered our senses and began to roust ourselves out of our seats and turn toward the back of the bus.

I now know how people can die of smoke inhalation. Thick black smoke began to rise from the bus floor as we all shuffled to the back. "Jane! Jane!" I could hear Bob yelling from the back door. We were all moving so slowly. What I soon found out was that there was a six foot drop from the emergency exit to the ground outside, and the little ladies (the average age on our ship was probably 85) were sitting down on the high ledge, "scooching" forward and then being pulled out by Bob and the bus driver. That sitting down and inching forward took up a lot of time, but even I wasn't a fan of just jumping out. That ground was a long way down! Finally, we full bus load of tourists all emerged safely, all raced (hobbled) about 100 yards away and then all turned to watch our bus burn to the ground! Thank goodness we were on our way TO the Waterford factory and not FROM it. We could have lost all our crystal!

As it turns out, there was an electrical short that caused the microphone to cut out, that caused a small fire, that caused all the smoke, and that caused the bus to become a smoldering shell of its former self.

Plucky tourist we, we all boarded other tour buses - Bob and I onto Shirley's bus, sitting squashed, right next to her. We completed the tour as "close personal friends" together, bought crystal, and made it back to the ship in good order. I have to admit, we all drank a stiff hot toddy that night!

It seems that the lone mockingbird is indeed bad luck. And when you see one, you must whistle! That's what we had all failed to hear to do and what we had all failed to do. Now you know.

To get back to Marty and Shirley --- they were lovely, funny, chatty, real people. They were such different personalities -- he off his rocker hysterical, she calm and poised all the time. They made us all realize how laughter needs to invade every long-lasting relationship. I, your unlicensed, unprofessional marriage counselor, have decided that laughter, along with just being politely nice, will help sustain a good marriage. I'm so lucky to have experienced both the laughter and the love in my own life.

Tell everyone you love, every day, that you love them.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Super Tuesday

Five am comes very early in the morning for those of us who go to bed early and get up late, but that's what time the alarm went off Tuesday morning. Out I roll, to step into the clothes I had set out the before. There was just time to let the kitties outside with fresh water and their bowl of food. Into the little car and I was off. A short drive later and I was there, ready to begin......begin my day as a poll worker on Super Tuesday.

I have always found the political process interesting. Civics and government classes were my favorite in college and my degree is in Political Science (how convenient!). I read newspapers, I surf news web sites, I watch CNN and Fox, I read political blogs. The interesting thing, however, is that I seem to enjoy observing the process much more than I seem to be interested in who wins the election.

I continue to be amazed that, unlike many countries, we in the US luxuriate in a safe political process. There is constant debate, over issues public and private, over issues political and not. Anyone can say most anything about any candidate. Agree with it all or not, there is a wonderfully consistant normalcy to the set term limits, the transition from one president to another, from one party to another. We never worry that some army general will storm the White House and take over military junta style. And we are all allowed to freely wait in long, calm lines and freely stand in front of a screen to make our meaningful personal selections in private.

A super Tuesday was had by all.

Camaraderie

I stumbled upon some old audio cassette tapes Saturday morning. Bob had recorded several of his missions while flying out of Korat, Thailand in 1971/72,, and here they were, right in my hand. Each labeled with date and mission in his perfect printing. One was a Mayday call response (was the person saved?), one a Search and Rescue (SAR) mission, where he conveniently noted "SAR successful". Three others missions to places I can't pronounce. So the questions began - Do I listen? Can I listen? What should I do with them? Would information from the Mayday mission or the SAR mission fill in a blank for anyone?

Thanks to all the notations on the tapes, I was able to cross reference the dates with the "rest of the story" from his old Navigator log books from that time -- pilot in command, time spent in the air, take-off point, destination. A bit of "google-ing" later, and I had phone numbers and contact information for folks who may have in interest in the tapes. First I spoke to the FAC Association, tthe group to whom the Mayday call pilot belonged. Their president, was gracious, engaging, and so interested. We both wondered if the pilot in trouble had been rescued. After he said he wanted each of the tapes, he suggested that the Air Force Museum in Dayton, OH, might also be interested in them.

Yesterday I emailed the Red River Valley Fighter Pilots Association. Those fabulous Wild Weasels. They were so quick to respond, with kind words about Bob, and further contact points for me. Next thing I knew, I had an email from Bob's front-seater during the Mayday response mission. Such a nice email. He wanted that tape, and remembered "meeting the safely rescued pilot a day or two later" -- (hooray for the positive conclusion to that story!).

So today, I sat in the little Z car, and plunked in each of the cassettes. Voices - some clear, some garbled, lots of static and, mostly, unfamiliar noises. All of which, I'm sure, will be perfectly understandable to military pilots, but all of which sound to me like the garbled meal order playback through a bad McDonald's drive-thru speaker. I then took the tapes in to have them all transferred to CD. I'll keep the originals (and one CD for technological posterity) and send other CDs out to those to whom they seem important.

What continues to be so heartwarming to me is the incredible sense of comaraderie, still these many years later, that is embraced by the airmen who shared those harrowing, yet exhilarating times together. They, like Bob, all loved their airplanes and their flying.

Frrrr-eeeezing

What a bitterly cold day for Atlanta today. We are such softies here, complaining when it is 22 degrees outside! How do folks in North Dakota do it?

However, the little house does look so cute in the snow...

The ever-voracious squirrels are nibbling at the sunflower seeds....

My kitties still refuse to spend much time outside......

Lucy prefers to remain in her favorite position in her favorite place.....

Muffin remains, as usual, alert for any activity that may present itself....

I do need to get out to gather more firewood today. Even that will be an adventure! Time to go bundle up!

It's a Robert Frost-y day

A rare snowfall is blanketing my little part of the woods today. Soft, silent, beautiful.

All the local television stations are in 24/7 weather report mode, letting us all know that it's snowing outside.

The cats are unsure. Muffin ventured out, but Lucy remained firmly attached to the front door's Welcome mat!

I am toasty, warmly wrapped in my old-faithful soft gray cashmere cardigan, fireplace blazing, extra wood at the ready. They tell us the snow will continue falling much of the day, so it sounds like it would be a great day to finish reading Ken Follett's Pillars of the Earth!

They eat like birds

There is something about waking up to the lilt of songbirds.

The air was absolutely crisp and clear after the rain this morning. Just beautiful! I am watching the birds at the sunflower seed buffet I've set out for them. I go so far as to offer pre-shelled seeds for the very spoiled avian crew. I'm surprised any of these eating machines can get off the ground after devouring all the seeds. Whoever said "they eat like birds" obviously never visited with this crowd!

The variety of birds that come to my back deck easily makes up for any expense, though. Just today I've seen chickadees, titmice, a red-bellied woodpecker, goldfinches, and white-bellied and brown-head nuthatches. This past week I've seen a Cooper's hawk, blue birds (my favorite!), red finches, a downy woodpecker, dark-eyed junco, and Carolina wrens. Over the years, we've identified over 28 varieties of birds in our backyard. One Christmas Day, we even had a wild turkey strolling around back there! And all this in the middle of a residential subdivision!

Oh - the cookies are ready. Time for a glass of milk and warm sugar cookies!

The curtain falls....and time passes

There is something wonderful about having your children sleeping under your own roof, so matter how old they are. The joy of being around Steve for the past two weeks was huge. Of course I see him through very biased Mom eyes, but he is mostly usually terrific.

The wonderful holiday time with all my family came to a screeching halt as real life reared its ugly head late New Years Eve. My beloved old fat girl Siamese kitty, Kimmee, died suddenly around 1130pm. She had been on my bed, watching the New Year festivities with me and purring appreciatively as I'd pet her. She hopped off the bed, probably to get a snack. I followed her about 15 minutes later to get a glass of water and found her lifeless body in the hallway. Shocking to have her house-filling presence gone so quickly. I am so sad at her loss. I could wax poetic about handling the unexpected death of loved ones, loving pets and people, mourning Bobber all over again through this current loss, trying unsuccessfully to not wallow in the what-ifs.

If only life were like the movies - the curtain falls, time passes and the next scene is full of new resolve and promise. But real life insists you fill that void in between, so that's what I'm doing now.

Again I thank goodness for my family, friends, Muffin and Lucy, and the very compassionate folks at the Animal Emergency Hospital.

And it came to pass...it did not come to stay.