by jphilo | May 17, 2010 | Daily Life
Life has been worrisome lately, at least in the rhubarb department. Last year, the little bed we planted six springs ago was a wonder to behold. We had waited five years before harvesting more than a few stalks, to let the plants become established. By 2009, they were flourishing, and we harvested a bountiful crop.
But this year, the bed is struggling, even though I have been faithfully caring for my charges. Several times already, I’ve pulled away the promiscuous creepy charlie that wants to crawl into the bed and sleep with anyone it can find. Despite my attention, one rhubarb plant is so small, I don’t dare harvest even one stalk from it.
“Maybe they need fertilizer,” I told Hiram. So a few weeks ago, we bought a bag of manure and carefully followed Mom’s instructions about working it into the ground. I kept meaning to lug the hose out to the patch and water it down, but held out for promised rains which came in fits and starts for several days.
It was enough to make two of the plants perk up, and I harvested enough rhubarb for one pie. In the process, I noticed little orange specks on several lower, outer leaves. Something Mom mentioned during the manure tutorial resonated. “Were they hit with some of the weed killer Hiram used?” she had asked.
Hmmm.
The weekend we spread the manure, Hiram applied weed and feed as part of his Wedding Sanctuary Improvement Program. “Did some of it hit the rhubarb?” I asked after going inside and chopping up my rhubarb.
“I tried to miss it,” Yard Man sheepishly replied.
Sigh.
So I went back out and tried to limit the damage by pulling up all the speckled stalks and saying a prayer over what remained. Since then we’ve had a few more half-hearted showers and one day long deluge of the Noah variety. I spent a good portion of that day peering out the window willing the rhubarb make a flashy comeback, but it didn’t happen. Now, the clouds have cleared, and I’m hoping the sun will work its magic on the rhubarb patch. Strawberry season is almost here, and I’m so hungry for strawberry-rhubarb pie.
Grow little rhubarb patch, grow. Spring won’t be the same without you!
by jphilo | May 10, 2010 | Walking Down the Gravel Road
My sweet husband has been wrapped around his little girl’s finger since the day she was born. So when our daughter announced she wanted to get married in our yard on July 11, I knew my husband would move into high gear.
The minute spring sprang he was out in the yard, picking up sticks in “the sanctuary” as he now refers to our 1.3 acres of lawn and garden. “If there’s gonna be a wedding out there,” he declares about once a week, “it’s a sanctuary.” He’s been mowing and trimming and weeding and spraying with a vengeance. Last weekend, he grabbed his chainsaw and attacked the ugly old stump in the side yard. Hallelujah!
Like I said before, it was no surprise when our daughter’s doting dad started sprucing up the place. However, I never expected the city road crew to get into the act, too. But last Monday morning, the road grater roared by when I sat down to work. Pretty soon, a gravel truck rolled by. And another. And another. Before noon, they’d laid a thick layer of the prettiest white gravel you’ve ever seen down the center of our little road. Over the next few days, they grated the road and added more gravel every morning. They didn’t sprinkle one iota into the washout in front of our mailbox, but beggars can’t be choosers.
How did those city workers know that the first thing on my to do list last week was to call the city road department and complain about our road? Normally, I don’t do that, but the road was in such bad condition, I wasn’t sure people would make it to the wedding in July if something wasn’t done.
The road hasn’t been graveled in years and this spring, sections of it heaved and buckled, exposing road bed. No matter how well the road grater smoothed the surface, every time it rained, the road bed turned to mud. Vehicle immediately cut deep ruts in the mud, and the road was nearly impassable. But not anymore. Today the road looks as good as the sanctuary. The swath of white gravel looks like a white carpet for my daughter, the bride.
What are the odds of it staying like that until July 11?
Don’t press your luck, mother of the bride. Beggars can’t be choosers.
by jphilo | Apr 23, 2010 | Family
Playing dress-up was serious business when my kids were little. Since both of them active in drama, their love affair with costumes continued through high school. True, my son still goes gaga over cowboy boots and goofy hats and my daughter is a seamstress at her college’s theater department. But I thought they’d left their dress-up days behind like the rest of my adult family – mother, sister, brother, cousins, aunts, uncles, in-laws, out-laws – and become staid, respectable and a little bit stuffy.
The photo booth at my son’s wedding reception proved me wrong. The picture factory went into production after the ceremony ended, while the wedding party and immediate family went outside for pictures. By the time we entered the reception hall, the to the photo booth was populated by revelers wearing the hats, clown nose, pig and elephant noses, scarves, shawls, kazoos, do-rags, aprons, parasols, and old glasses I described in All Packed, one of last week’s posts.
I hadn’t expected the older generations to let their hair down with such enthusiasm. Seeing my uncle, the former high school world history teacher who gave killer essay tests, enter the booth wearing a blond wig and tiara far exceeded my wildest expectations of silliness. But he wasn’t the only one whose inhibitions bowed to the lure of playing dress-up. The party was awash in goofiness of the rib-tickling, nose-snorting variety. It transcended generations and genders, inflicting belly laughs indiscriminately.
Next time my son and new daughter visit, they have to bring their guest book which is full of photo booth pictures of the guests, along with their signatures and well wishes. I need a second look at one of the pictures. If my uncle’s neat and proper signature is beside the photo of the man in the blond wig and tiara, I’ll believe it really happened.
And if it did, I’m gonna rent a booth for my daughter and future son-in-law’s wedding in July. Apparently, this dress-up thing is in the blood, and I’m not gonna fight it. We’ll make it a family tradition instead.
To take a peek at the photos go to http://www.grandphotobooth.com/see-my-photos-login/. Here’s a handy index for some of the strips:
Strip 2 – my brother’s family
Strip 5 – my cousin and her husband
Strip 7 – another cousin and two of her girls
Strip 9 – my sister and her husband
Strip 10 – my husband’s twin and his wife
Strip 17 – the bride’s mom and her friend
Strip 18 – Hiram & me – notice who selected the same costume as his twin!
Strip 19 – my daughter and her fiance
Strip 23 – my daughter and her girl cousins spelling out the name of their one cousin who’s in Spain this semester
Strip 26 – the bride and groom
Strip 31 – my generation of cousins
Strip 33 – the groom and his grandma, my mom
Strip 34 – my mother with her sister and brother-in-law
by jphilo | Apr 19, 2010 | Daily Life
When I walked by my flower beds yesterday, the creeping Charlie had a stranglehold on a favorite clematis. The dandelions winked their yellow eyes. “Two more days, and we’ll blow seeds everywhere,” they taunted
My original plan had been to wait for a good, soaking rain and then attack the weeds. But the five day forecast sad no rain for a few more days, and my flowers didn’t look like they could hold on that long.
So yesterday afternoon, after a quick lunch and before talking myself into a nap, I pulled on the gardening gloves and got busy. Thankfully, Hiram grabbed the wheelbarrow and picked up the weeds as I grubbed them out of the dirt.
The weather was perfect. The ground, however, was uncooperative at best and iron hard at worst. Before long, my shoulders ached. From the protests my leg muscles made, they must have spent winter lounging on the beach in Florida while the rest of me exercised and walked outside in the cold.
The top of Hiram’s bald head got redder by the minute. Every muscle in my body whispered, “It’s Sunday afternoon. Time for a nap. You better quit. You’re too old for this. Give up and go inside.”
But we slaved away, motivated by the need to stay ahead of the gardening this spring and summer, at least until after Anne’s wedding in our yard on July 11.
When I rolled out of bed this morning, the aches and pains weren’t too bad, but they crept up on me during my morning walk. By the time I neared the house, I felt like an old, grouchy mother-in-law and a muttery mother of the bride.
Why did we say Anne could get married under our oak tree??How will we keep up with the yard work until July 11??Why are we such saps??What were we thinking?
What were we thinking?
What were we thinking?
Then the bleeding hearts came into view, one red and one white. Their transient loveliness, nestled in a corner flower bed, spoke blessing and family and home to me.
My shoulders still ached. My legs still screamed their insults.
But I could see my daughter in a white gown, walking on the lawn to meet her sweetheart under the oak tree we planted when she was a little girl. The shady spot spoke blessing and family and home to her and her new husband. That’s what we were thinking when we said yes.
The aches and pains are worth it.
by jphilo | Apr 14, 2010 | Family
Looking back on the past week is like peering into a kaleidoscope, one lovely image melting into another before I have time to process them.
A walk on a spring evening beside a West Virginia river is replaced by a conference room. The psychiatrists and therapists cry and blow their noses as they listen to the story of my infant son’s surgeries and the legacy of trauma it created. Those people fade away, and I am eating pizza with family gathered for my son and almost daughter-in-law’s wedding. The next few days are a blur of more family arriving, watching my sister arrange flowers, using her kitchen to fix meals for out-of-town guests, decorating the hall for the reception, and going out to supper after the rehearsal.
The pictures in the kaleidoscope of my mind tumble and dissolve. But one picture never changes. The love on the faces of my son and his bride during the wedding ceremony never wavers. His eyes are soft and wet with tears. She smiles at him with an unfaltering gaze.
I see their faces while I walk this spring morning – in every leaf full of the promise, in every flower bud plump with beauty. A glorious sunrise greets me at the top of our hill, and in its glow I see two lovely faces. The kaleidoscope stops tumbling. For a moment, I can not breathe for the joy pressing upon my heart. I am home.
And so, I know, are my son and his new wife.
