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March Madness Cinderella Team: Spring Nails Winter!

March Madness Cinderella Team: Spring Nails Winter!

daffodil

March Madness has revealed the first Cinderella team of the 2014 tournament. In a hard fought battle, underdog Spring beat Winter in several week-long overtimes. As you may know, Spring wasn’t a 15 or 16 seed. It wasn’t assigned a seed.

At. All.

Instead, the battered season was the recipient of several daffodil bulbs, so shriveled and ugly they were immediately buried underground and forgotten. Until yesterday, when the calendar proclaimed the arrival of spring, but everyone scoffed because what kind of Cinderella comes to the party wearing glass snow boots?

Spring does.

She comes, dressed wrong, and with Winter’s cruel, icy fingers gripping her neck, determined to strangle the life out of her. (Where are the refs when you need ’em?) But, spunky little Spring rallied valiantly, never letting her daffodil bulb status dampen her enthusiasm. Despite insurmountable odds, Spring believed in herself when everyone else believed this:

She could never manage a come back.

I confess, I didn’t think Spring would make it until a peek out our bedroom window proved me wrong. There sat Spring, in all her green glory, her daffodil foliage basking in the sun, her presence proclaiming what no one thought possible.

You can’t stop me, Winter. I am here!

And here she’ll stay. She’s the true Cinderella team of March Madness, 2014. She’s proof that sometimes impossible dreams do come true, that underdogs can win, and that new life hides in unexpected places. So take heart, winter-weary friends!

Spring is here. And the game is on.

March Madness at our House

March Madness at our House

For most of the country, March Madness 2012 ended with last weekend’s championship game. For many Iowans, like my husband, the madness ended in the second round when the Iowa State Cyclones, the team that beat the reigning champs in the first round, lost to Kentucky in the second.

But for other Iowans, like me, the March madness continues, not on the basketball court, but in our flowerbeds. This year’s mild weather was mentioned in a previous post, and afterwards spring marched through March like mad. In fact, so unbeleivable was spring’s onslaught that on the last day of the month, I used my camera to make a record of the mad, mad, mad, mad spring of 2012. Crazy stuff, unheard of in Central Iowa. Stuff like

bleeding hearts blooming in March,

along with tulips,

and more tulips,

and violets.

Not to mention buds on the clematis

and the lilacs, too,

rhubarb almost ready to be picked,

and the roses in full leaf.

Only the wild plum tree blossoms, usually the first of the spring flowers to bloom, waited until their usual time to appear.

Surrounded by the many evidences of this mad spring, the plum tree nearly escaped my notice, until the fragrance of the blossoms wafted on the breeze and tickled my nose. A lovely March Madness I pray will rule at our house until the end of May.

Launch of the Laundry Room

Launch of the Laundry Room

With the earthquake in Japan, the air strikes in Libya, and March Madness some topics of national interest have been overlooked by the media recently. To be specific, the completion of our new first floor laundry room. My January 20 blog post recorded the commencement of the project, and a mere two months later, the job is done.

Which must be a relief to those of you who’ve been waiting with bated breath to hear more about the earth shattering adventure. To be honest, I a little chagrined by the fact that this breathtaking ecological story (the new washer and dryer are energy efficient) hasn’t been all over Facebook, Twitter, and the greater blogosphere. I guess my natural humility and lack of self-absorption simply kept me from uploading daily photos of the progress. That and the fact that the new laundry/half bathroom is so small it’s really hard to take pictures. To get today’s shot, I had to stand on the toilet – lid down, of course. So, in the interest of full disclosure, I freely admit that my propensity for vertigo when perched on anything taller than roller skates has a great deal to do with the poor journalistic coverage of this major event.

To make up for my alarming lack of journalistic commitment, Hiram and I hereby invite you to the christening of the laundry room this Tuesday evening. We will break open a new bottle of detergent in honor of the event and read aloud from the instruction manuel in preparation for the the launch of our stackable washer and dryer. Refreshments will not be served, but you’re welcome to stay and chat until the laundry folding festival begins.

For those of you who aren’t afraid of heights, feel free to bring digital cameras and take pictures (in shifts since the laundry room only holds 2 or 3 people) of this breaking news story. You can even use my computer to upload them on Facebook, so the people who can’t attend don’t feel excluded. Consider it your journalistic duty to humanity.

This kind of breaking news can’t be squelched. It must reach the common man!