Last Sign of Spring

When you know that Spring is really here is when you spend at least one afternoon raking and trimming. We did that yesterday! All old piles of leaves, gone! Dead plants, gone! New growth trimmed back, weeds pulled, and dirt in the flower boxes loosened and ready. Holes to China filled in, bald spots reseeded and fresh straw strewn. And we were in before the rain, which is today nicely finishing up the job. Now we wait and watch the weather and Farmer's Almanac for planting times. This is the hardest part, though I have cultivated (ha ha) patience over the years.

Which brings me back to just thinking about what to plant. When looking through magazines on planting I came across a plant that looked like something I would be willing to try. Lantana is a drought hardy plant which comes in a variety of colors and which also takes little attention. My kind of plant! A bonus is that it is a perennial, though in my planting zone it may be treated like an annual. I may give it a try in the flower bed in front of the house.

The Third Sign of Spring

The third sign of Spring when you have animals, especially large dogs, is a muddy and torn up back yard. Sigh. With all of the rain it was inevitable that this would happen. Our neighbors also have dogs so that on either side of our fenced in yards they get going, with a lot of bouncing, barking and running like maniacs back and forth along the fence borders. So there are some cow (dog) paths newly formed . . . and then the crazed chipmunk gets them (the dogs, not the neighbors!) digging holes to China!

We have optimistically purchased some grass seed, filler dirt, and straw to see what we can do to repair the damage. But we wimped out today because it's still in the mid-thirties . . . maybe tomorrow?

Second Sign of Spring

The second sign that Spring is here, right after baseball practice starting, are the hints of all things blooming. Just this past week the crocuses (or is that croci?) popped up, followed by the daffodils and today the first bursts of bright yellow on the forsythia bushes were announcing that more greening is to come!

And the rain rain rain came down down down in rushing rolling rivulets . . . a quote from one of my very favorite childhood read-a-loud Winnie the Pooh also describes what has been happening here the last few days. Between the cloud bursts and sunshine my thoughts turn to sprucing up and planting. But you can rush ahead only to be disappointed . . . if you plant too early bad things could happen to those tender plants. Last year it was excruciatingly hard to wait until after Mother's Day to plant; but I did and was rewarded! What I will do to help bide my time is to plan what I'm going to plant.

In the fence boxes, I'll probably go with impatiens and hanging ivy; they look good together and are almost impossible to kill. For the ground boxes I'll go with rolling wave petunias. Along the fence we'll have morning glory, because they will be back from last year. I would love to have some black-eyed Susann's somewhere. I haven't figured out the front flower bed yet; last year I went with a variety of pinks, purples and white perennials; I'll have to wait and see if they made it.

The periwinkle is already blooming under several of the bushes out front and I love that as ground cover. I also have ivy and strawberries out back; plus a crazed chipmunk that the dogs are digging after back there. Argh!

I would love to hear of any other ideas for someone who has a brown thumb! Keep in mind that I am in post military housing, so any thoughts for things that demand time for long term results are not very appealing.

Baseball!

It's spring training time. The Beaver has begun his baseball practice and I get to watch Coach Curmudgeon turn a slap dash group of Bad News Bears into a well-honed pitching-hitting-fielding machine.

I call Beave's coach that because he has a gravelly voice, but he's great with the boys in a stern but humorous kind of way. The group this year is going to take some seasoning . . . one kid out there warming up needs to be signed up for remedial jumping jack lessons, I swear.

It doesn't help that the field the school uses is pretty rough. The ground hasn't been broken in, it needs some real sod-busting. It's all rocky! When a grounder comes your way it could hit a hard lump and take off in 50 gazillion directions, or straight up your nose. That keeps things lively!

I was watching the first batting/pitching practice tonight and we've already had a "cup incident." That's where one of these studly young men think they can wear the cup protection without the actual holder (you know just sliding it into their briefs) and then takes a direct hit which moves the cup and slams it directly into (or even worse between) the "fellas." Oh man! The whole team was feeling this guy's pain. And I was kinda sorry I was there to witness it.

With only a week and a half until the first game they've got a lot of work to do. I'll keep you posted.

International Night

We had International Night tonight here on post. All of the foreign students put together presentations on their respective countries, and that included some native foods. Jordan was the first country display we stopped at. They had a very nice presentation; it included a lot of native sweets, dates, pistachio pastries, sesame cookies and rosemary tea.

We stopped by the tables set up for Egypt, Tunisia, Chili, Africa, Romania, Canada, Oman, Saudi and Hungary. We missed the tables from Korea, Japan, Germany and Pakistan. Sigh. Not enough time!

We had a most interesting discussion with the Bahraini students; theirs is a relatively new kingdom. Until just a few years ago they were just a state. The young captain also got us laughing when he told us about why some men take multiple wives. He said that there must be a legitimate reason for doing so; as in the first wive was not able to conceive a son, etc. I'm thinking that is not so much a reason as an excuse. Of course, he said, there are those that abuse the system. Ha ha!

It was also interesting moving from the Middle Eastern countries where any drink offered was likely to be a good strong tea or coffee to the European countries where various and sundry alcoholic beverages were proffered. Hungary gave us a good strong plum brandy, woo hoo! It was very much like the Tshlivovitz from Yugoslavia that my relatives are known for . . . served warm with a plum in a shot glass. And of course our neighbor from Canada had a great assortment of beers, eh!

The best thing about International Night is meeting the students and listening to them tell us personally about their own countries. It makes you want to visit each of these countries. A bonus for me this evening was learning how to burn the frankincense Ward brought home! We've had that stuff for five years and I never new what the heck to do with it . . . tonight the mystery was solved!

Small Talk

We had another dinner party last night. This time the table was set for ten, and I forgot to put out name plates so it was a jockeying for position and it did not end well.

The number ten threw everything off. You couldn't do male/female seating, and you can't bunch all of the males at one end or one side of the table. It was haphazard. Trust me, eight is the perfect number for a dinner party and for conversation flow.

But ten was what we had, and there was no help for it. So everyone just grabbed a spot. But my dinner partner monopolized the conversation at our corner of the table . . . I felt like Emma in the scene at the party where she just can't get rid of Mr. Elton and misses all of the good stuff from fellow party goers. That happened to me last night, and I couldn't send Mr. Elton off to get me a glass of punch! I tried turning ever so slightly to the person on my right . . . to no avail. Mind you, I enjoyed this person very much, I just wanted to share in what the others were talking about as well.

Small talk! This type of social discourse is a lost art . . . and I desperately needed someone to come to my rescue. So if any of you have any ideas that would work for extricating oneself from a conversation (without the other person knowing) please tell me!

Bibliophile Bungling

Our book club met here yesterday for our monthly meeting. We had chosen a great read, The Wedding Officer, and because the setting of the novel was Italy we had a luncheon with a Neopolitan theme, soup, pasta, savory crusty bread, salad, even Tiramisu for dessert! All washed down with a Da Vinci wine (no kidding!). So the gastronomic part of our meeting was perfect and fun.

Here's the rub. We didn't discuss the book very much. That has been happening with our meetings and is especially true when we all enjoyed the book. But it should be the main focus of our get togethers. How do we get back on track? Point of view, character development, plot and setting . . . that's what I'm talkin' about! That's why I joined the club, to stretch myself literaryily (is that a word?) . . . so how do we get this book club back on track? Subtly. Any ideas?