WHERE IS SPRING

 

Icicle lights have hung on the front of my porch since the beginning of Advent. Now they are gone back into hiding for several months. Christmas was four months ago, but the cold weather has remained. The question everyone in the Northeast is asking: When will Spring finally arrive?

My daffodils are up and in blossom, so I feel lucky. On a pleasant day a few weeks ago, I cut and pulled away the dead leaves from last year’s plants. The perennials in my small garden are sending up sprouts and tentative new growth, but they too are longing for warm weather to do their stuff.

The only plants that seem to have no problem are the grass and wild garlic. Of course, I don’t want them where they’ve chosen to grow.

The sky is gray. Where is the sun and warmth we seek?

Know this! It will get hot this summer and we will be moaning about it. It is always safe to complain about the weather. Wait a minute, day, or week—it will change.

 

 

 

 

A BIRTHDAY CALL

April 9 is my childhood friend’s birthday. The date is like a holiday in my mind.

How long we’ve been friends? I don’t know. We lived in farm country. We probably went to the Sanford Methodist Church Sunday school together before we started first grade in the Sanford country school. Neither building exists today. Now we live hundreds of miles from one another with but a few annual contacts.

Yesterday I called to wish her “Happy Birthday.” We laughed about the stuff we did as kids.

She remembered the float we’d built on my dad’s pickup truck. We were 4-H members with my mother as our leader. We couldn’t remember what we did although she thought it had to do with cream cheese and sandwiches. This morning my 4-H Achievement book, I’ve kept from those years, yielded pictures of us in white uniforms and caps.

Somehow it must have demonstrated the 1946 Labor Day Parade theme Food for Europe. Our float placed third.

 

 

The pictures were taken in front of my house. The float was done totally in green and white.