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There are, of course, dozens of reasons why I’m thankful for Mom year-round.  On Mother’s Day, though, it’s usually because I’m reminded of her tenacity with the yard at home, which has resulted in a collection of prolific flower beds.  So prolific, in fact, that they’ve populated our own yard, almost 400 miles away, with beautiful and–thankfully–exceptionally hardy flowers.  Like these irises, which always bloom on Mother’s Day, rain or shine.

Happy Mother’s Day!

TGISat

I’ve been really good over the past six months or so about not doing house stuff or hobby stuff during the week, and saving it for the weekends.  It works pretty well in the winter months, but around this time of year the weekends get mighty full.  I think warm weather stimulates the “Projects!” area of my brain, so on top of the garden maintenance and planning and multiple shopping trips required for the gazillion wedding and/or baby events that inevitably come up in early summer, I’m scheming on a gazillion home and yard improvement ventures.  And, this year, training for a 10k.  I’m not complaining, exactly, because one of the things I love most about summer is dropping into bed at the end of the day completely exhausted.

So here’s what’s on the docket for today:

  1. Forget about being sick and unable to run this week.  Run 5k, take ‘er easy.
  2. Dig up remaining dandelions in the yard, and weed flower beds.
  3. Start dividing and moving phlox, sedum, and daylilies into the Awesome New Garden Design.
  4. Tend to the out-of-towners’ cats.
  5. Go out to Jo-Ann and get all necessary bridesmaid dress-making supplies. Cut out pattern, maybe start sewing.
  6. Maybe swing by the Farmers Market for a couple more plants for the Awesome New Garden Design.
  7. Wash bedspread and hang outside to dry.
  8. Tinker with small bedroom window to estimate trouble of putting in new sash cords in other windows.
  9. Have a beer, watch an episode of The Wire, fall into bed exhausted.

(Click each for large versions)

The plant I’m referring to is mixed in with a violet, so disregard the smoother heart-shaped violet leaves on the bottom and left of the picture.  This looks like some kind of squash to me–the leaves are the right shape, and they have that fuzzy/prickly texture that squash has.  We planted zucchini in this spot two years ago.  If it’s a weed, it’s a weed the likes of which I’ve never seen before.  Surely it’s not possible for squash to be perennial?

This is what I referred to earlier as strawberry runners, because they initially grew alongside the strawberry plants I put in a couple years ago, and then the strawberries didn’t come back but these did.  First of all, what’s up with that? And second, what the hell are these?  The bees love them.

Bzzt

I was stung in the armpit by a bumblebee once when I was a kid.  It’s taken me until now to forgive the entire species.

There are some more God-awful pictures of me somewhere that show exactly how hapless I was in every way imaginable until I blossomed into the erudite, accomplished, and altogether classy lady I am today.  But they’re over in the corner of the room, and I’ve already settled into my chair.  So you’re going to have to make do with plain old imagination for this set of stories.  I call them my Dead Animal Stories, and I usually whip them out as party tricks.  The last time I told a series of them, I believe we said our goodbyes and thank-you’s to hosts whose jaws still hadn’t quite hinged closed, hours later.  They’re just that good.  Or that disturbing, take your pick.  I suggest you don’t read if you’re squeamish about dead animals.

First, some context.  Most of you know I grew up on a farm.  Beasley used to say I grew up on a “play farm,” not a “real farm,” I suppose because I showed up at college with a nose ring instead of overalls.  But on the eighty-odd acres where I grew up, there were horses, pigs, sheep, chickens, the occasional goat, cow, duck, and guinea, not to mention fields of tobacco, corn, soybeans, and hay.  I figure if your summers are spent perfecting a farmer’s tan tending tobacco during the day and canning an endless supply of tomatoes, green beans, or whatever else your mom has decided must be preserved in the evening, and there are more than three different kinds of animals pooping in your backyard, and your dad has to go to the top of the hill and whistle to call you back to the house when you’ve gone out to play, you get to say you grew up on a farm.  

Now, about those animals.  I wouldn’t even try to count how many of what kind we had.  Besides most of the horses, they generally had pretty short life spans.  Most of the time that was intentional.  You’d get a couple feeder pigs, feed them until they reached a certain weight, then load them up in the truck for a scenic trip to the McLean County Meat Locker, where you’d coax the pigs down the chute and go in to the wood-paneled office to give instructions as to processing and retrieve a handwritten receipt from the woman with a wispy bouffant, blue-tinted glasses, a good coat of iridescent makeup, and surrounded by a cloud of powdery rose perfume.  She’d give you a pick-up date, on which you’d return with coolers and ice to retrieve what remained of your pigs, which was a collection of packages with labels that must have been designed to give only the appearance of stickiness, so dinner planning for the rest of the year was basically a crap shoot.  Circle of life.

Sometimes the circle gets interrupted.  

Like when you finally invest some money in your own bred sows, so you can raise and sell feeder pigs to someone else.  And the piglets are born when it’s pretty cold out, so you put a heat lamp in the corner of the pig house to keep them from freezing.  And it’s certainly not warm enough to ignite the straw or anything else, but in spite of your attention to detail, there’s a short somewhere in the wiring.  And, well, things burn.  The whole pig house burns down, with both sows and all the piglets.  And it happens when you’re at school, so when you round the last curve on the highway home, you see a wisp of smoke emanating from somewhere north of your house.  And there’s a smell in the air…of delicious barbecue.  It’s tremendously sad, and disappointing when you discover the source of the smoke, of course.  But I challenge you to concentrate on the sadness and disappointment when you’re simultaneously seized with a sudden and urgent hunger for pork barbecue.

And then sometimes, those long-lived horses I mentioned aren’t so long-lived.  Like when you get a horse that hasn’t been quite broken yet.  It’s a project you’ve decided to take on, because this is what people do when they’ve had horses for a while and want to take the next step.  But there’s something a little off about this horse that can’t be chalked up to youth and ill temper.  You don’t get a chance to figure out exactly what it is, because one day she bolts from the top of the hill and heads straight for the fence at the bottom.  Maybe she doesn’t see the fence, and maybe she tries to jump it but doesn’t clear it; either way, she ends up flipping over the fence, breaks her neck, and dies on the spot.  This, too, is a tragic tale, but consider for a moment: how on earth do you deal with a thousand pounds of dead horse?  A goldfish or a cat, you can bury in the backyard with little fuss.  A dead horse, on the other hand, requires making phone calls to people who might have a front end loader and/or a backhoe you can borrow, and trying to figure out the least troublesome place to dispose of the thing; and in the meantime, discovering the particulars of decomposition you usually only glimpse on the side of the road as you zoom by at 60 miles per hour.  This is when you find out that the part of the circle of life that’s usually hidden from view is pretty spectacular, in the literal sense.

And then there are the stories that are no less absurd, but are thankfully heavier on the freude than the schaden.  I give you the horse that lived a long life, and met a one-in-a-million sort of end.  Although I suppose it’s not terribly uncommon for horses and other pasture animals to get struck by lightning.  I guess there’s no need to tell that story, since it begins and ends in a fraction of a second.  The aftermath, again, was tricky, but having gone through it once gives you the sort of experience that makes a repeat performance that much easier.  Implements were procured, a hole was dug, and the horse gently lowered into the hole.  Until she slipped off the bucket and landed on her hindquarters, with her head poking up above ground.  There was some talk of having Sugar’s head preserved and the hole filled in around it so perambulators through the pasture might say hello and scratch between her ears now and again, but that idea got shot down.  But only after a good fit of hysterical giggling.

It’s not that I/we’ve been insensitive to animals’ death.  It’s that perspective means everything.  Growing up, I’m sure I cried over the death of various animals, especially the dogs that were there just to be there.  But death was a regular enough feature in our lives that routine, and getting on with it, was never really disrupted. Now, the only life cycles I have to deal with are those of the plants in the yard, and I’m severely out of practice.  The one time I’ve had to deal with a dying animal in the past several years, it wasn’t pretty. I guarantee I never cried for any animal the way I did for Leonard.  I absolutely wailed over that cat.  

Until, of course, the vet sent back a ceramic disk containing an impression of his dead little cat paw.  At which point the hysterical giggling commenced again.  I mean, come on.

 

I swear, between the time I went out to snap some pics of the columbine, and noon, the rhododendron buds started popping.  It will bloom this year!

 

Indiana was closer than I, and many people whose job it is to predict these sorts of things, thought it would be.  Turnout was exceptionally high not only for a primary, but for any election.  At my polling place, it looked like any regular election–a steady stream of voters, but no waiting.  In Gary, the mayor estimated that turnout was as high as 95%, which is just about the awesomest thing I’ve heard in weeks.  Rather than add my voice to the bazillions jabbering away about what it all means, and how soon we can expect a certain candidate to make her exit, and whether she’ll cry again, and whether her coming up short means that women in general are or are not up to the job, I give you flowers.  Lovely columbine flowers.  

 

These are the only two columbine flowers we get this year, but two is better than none.

Go, Indiana, go!

I forgot to tell y’all about my recent canvassing experience.  The Obama and Clinton people have been swarming the city lately, and I was lucky enough to have a Clinton campaign worker knock on my door last Thursday.  I was perfectly polite; I may be greatly disappointed at the fact that Clinton persists in this race in spite of there being no mathematical possibility she could pull out a win, and does so in a style that says “I’ll do anything to win,” but I’m not a jerk.  Or at least I wasn’t a jerk that afternoon.

It was an older woman decked out in Hillary gear, literally head to toe.

Are you voting for Hillary?  No, I’m sorry, it was a tough decision, but we’ve decided for Obama.  

Why?  I don’t like her politics, and I don’t like her style.

Quizzical look, and an expression that says, “Why did you just kick me in the stomach?”  But, but, but Obama and all the Obama people on all the blogs are saying awful things about Hillary, like saying how they’d like to shut her in a closet and beat her.  Have you read all the blogs? Have you?  Well, I read many, many blogs, and I haven’t seen anything like that.  In any case, I find the sexist and racist attacks against each candidate equally disturbing.

But the sexism is worse than the racism!  (Exasperated look from me)  This isn’t the oppression olympics. Listen, I identify strongly as a feminist, it’s an important part of my being, and I gave a lot of thought as to how that affects my responsibilities in this election.  In the end, I decided for Obama.

But all these old feminists like Gloria Steinem are saying they should stay neutral, while all the black people are voting for Obama!! Women need to vote for Hillary!!  (My turn to be quizzical)  Be that as it may, we’re voting for Obama in the primary.  We’ll be happy to vote in November for whomever gets the nomination.

Well, if Obama gets the nomination, I’m going to have to vote for McCain.  Well, that doesn’t make much sense, but thanks for stopping by.

I wish you’d change your mind.  I’ll give it some thought. 

Of course campaigns can’t be held responsible for every brain perched atop every pair of feet they send out into neighborhoods, and I’m pretty sure their strategy is not “Berate the Obama voters!” and “Question the Obama voters’ motives!” and “Portray Obama and his supporters as woman-abusers!”

I was out of the house when the Obama people came by, and Tony said they were perfectly lovely.  I guess it’s easier to be perfectly lovely when you’re confronting your own kind, but I love when canvassers come by and you get to say, “I’m voting for your guy!  You can count on me!”  It just makes everyone feel better.

So today I’m off to vote in a primary that matters, and for a black presidential candidate, both for the first time in my life.  It’s all very exciting.

99,999

It’s the little things…

I had to run out to Lowe’s on Saturday, and was delighted to find that the odometer would flip over the 100,000 mark during my trip.  I don’t drive that often, so when I say I was delighted, sadly, this is true.  I snapped a picture with my phone at 99,999 in case I forgot to snap it at 100,000 (I was in stop-and-go traffic, and I am nothing if not scatterbrained).  It was 99,999 when I rolled into the parking lot, and getting out of there was such a hassle that I completely forgot about it until a few miles later when I was filling up the tank.  Sometimes my foresight comes in handy.

 

We haven’t had such a busy weekend since I don’t know when.  After cleaning, running, shopping, cooking, cleaning, cooking, cleaning, and sitting for a moment or two to enjoy guests’ company before cleaning again, Saturday sort of disappeared.  I’m pretty sure our Derby get-together was a success, since most of the food disappeared (the Derby and chess pies faster than I anticipated) and a general cacophony persisted until the crowd dispersed a little after midnight.  It helps when you send a few guests home with fabulous gifts and prizes; or, in this case, a stack of $1 bills.

I think we’re going to have to open up some sort of beer bank to get rid of the excess.  We could just keep it, though, and not have to buy beer again until football season.

Sunday morning one of us woke up a little worse for wear, but we’d made a commitment to the O’Zees to help paint a few rooms in their new house, so off we went.  Several hours later, two rooms (walls, trim, and one ceiling) were completely finished, the baby’s room nearly so, holes patched, filled, and touched up in the dining/living room, and the kitchen stripped of wallpaper.  It’s taken me literally months, start to finish, to paint two rooms in our house, but now I’ve learned my lesson.  Our friends will work for sandwiches and Indian food.  Next time I’m putting in some calls and readying as many takeout menus as it requires to get them here to finish out the remaining three downstairs rooms.

So now it’s Monday again, and I’m back to writing.  And course planning.  And writing.  And experiencing mild freakouts from time to time.  And writing.  I feel like I need a nap already.

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