Time for work to begin!

May and June.  Soft syllables, gentle names for the two best months in the garden year: cool, misty mornings gently burned away with a warming spring sun, followed by breezy afternoons and chilly nights.  The discussion of philosophy is over; it's time for work to begin.  

          ~Peter Loewer

It is hard to believe that it is the end of May already. The year is almost half over... After a long, cold, snowy winter, spring was most welcome. And it has finally come! I am a novice gardener, and with three acres of land to do with as I please and a willing, helpful husband, I have been busy...

This weekend is not only Memorial Day Weekend and the start of the summer season, but it is Race Weekend in the Indianapolis area. Above all other things, Indy is known for it's five hundred mile race. And for us, it also means that Matt and his family will be coming for a visit. So... with the goal of having the yard look great for their arrival in mind, Lanny and I set to work on the yard. Lanny started the season early with fertilizer and weed killer applications on the lawn. He is the tree, shrub and lawn expert... I focused on getting the weeds out of the flower beds. For the first time in my life I mixed up and applied Round Up, and got that done about 2 weeks ago. I also uncovered the roses and applied their first fertilizer. But the yard still looked a bit shabby... and we decided we needed to edge the flower beds and put a layer of fresh mulch on them. In the past we'd paid a professional to do this, but since we're retired we thought we had the time and could do it ourselves...

So three days ago Lanny rented the edger. A large, gasoline powered garden device that required a great deal of arm muscle to control... Lanny edged all the beds in about half a day. His arms took a beating too. He was miserable! My job was to rake up the little hill the edger makes as it does it's work, and even that over time caused my arms and shoulder to ache. I was miserable too! However, we both wanted to get it done, so the next day off Lanny went with his truck and little trailer to get the mulch. He came home with 2 yards of beautiful black mulch... and he and I shoveled and raked and spread that mulch over one of the beds. Well, almost one of them. Off Lanny went for load #2. We finished the first flower beds, put in a total new one by the new garage and covered it too. And did half of a third one. Then off Lanny went for load #3. This time we completed the beds by the front entry. It was 5:30 in the afternoon and we were exhausted, sore, hungry and a little grouchy...

Then yesterday morning Lanny got up again and headed back to the mulch place for load #4. With it he was able to do one side of the house and around the rose garden by the back deck. It looked wonderful. The most visible of our garden spaces were done and looked almost professionally landscaped-- we were both pleased. Lanny added an exclamation point to it all by mowing the lawn-- the grass had grown in lush and green despite last year's draught.

There is still a lot more to do... but for now we are kicking back and enjoying the long weekend with our family. The grandsons are here now, and we're hoping the coldish spring weather that has descended on us will warm up enough that they can play in the yard. I have a sense of great accomplishment every time I go outside and see our work. I also have aching arm, shoulder and back muscles to prove I had done the work. Lanny doesn't complain like I do, but I know he is still pretty sore... but also just as pleased as I am.

Here are some photos of the spring flowers that were in bloom this afternoon in our yard:

This is Indigo-- the plant known for making blue dye

This is a corn flower... one of several native prairie flowers I have in one of the beds

Mock orange blossoms adorn both sides of the garage

Miniature carnations - yes, they really are that vivid a pink!

I can't remember the name of this flower-- it has lovely lime green foliage and purple flowers. A perennial that I transplanted this year. It still bloomed!

One of Lanny's favorites-- a Kousa dogwood.

No Indiana garden is complete without a peony bush-- I have two in this lovely vivid pink color and love them!

And of course, there are the roses... all of which came back this spring after a long, cold winter. They are just starting to bloom and I can't wait to see them all!

Princess Diana... just lovely!

My personal favorite-- a rose named Peace, named on the day Japan surrendered during World War II. 

These are Knock Out roses-- they have grown into huge, colorful and beautiful shrubs. Lovely!

This is a sundial Lanny gave me as a birthday gift. It reads, "Come, grow old along with me... the best is yet to be!"

Forgive me for showing off a little, but it really has been an exceptional year for the garden. Now if I can just get the vegetables to bloom and produce like the flowers, we'll be in good shape!!

Patsy Ann

We say that a girl with her doll anticipates the mother. It is more true, perhaps, that most mothers are still but children with playthings.

          ~F. H. Bradley

Yesterday was Mother's Day and I was so blessed to have my mother and my sister here in my home to celebrate. I also invited my son Mike and his daughter Addie, and my step-daughter Krissy to join us. We had a fun afternoon together. Addie has just turned 5 years old, and has impressed me with how grown up she is. She has wonderful manners, can sit at the table without wiggling (too much...) and always asks permission before she gets out the toys I keep here.

What she didn't know until now was that I have been waiting to share some very special toys with her. Waiting until she reached a little more maturity and could understand how special and fragile they are. Waiting to share Patsy Ann with her...

Patsy Ann was my mother's childhood doll. She is about 18 inches tall, the same size as an American Girl doll. She is made of a synthetic material that reminds me of plaster-- and because she is about 80 years old, she is fairly brittle. She has already been taken to a doll hospital, years ago when my own grandmother got her ready for me to play with. She has a scarred broken arm I worry about, lost most of her eyelashes and has cataracts... but she is beautiful to me. 

My mother did not have a sister, but she had 2 girl cousins who were about the same age as she was. They lived close enough that they played together often. Their mothers were sisters, and got together often. It was during the Great Depression, so doll clothes were a luxury. Doll clothes became the mothers' responsibility... so when the mother of one of the cousins made a doll outfit, she made three of them. Each of these girl cousins had a trunk full of doll clothes made by her mother or one of her aunts. Our Patsy Ann still has these clothes... so many they don't all fit in the trunk. And all styled from the early 1930's. A snapshot of that time, for sure!

I have vivid memories of playing with Patsy Ann when I visited my grandparents. Hours spent changing her clothes. As a young mother-to-be I dreamed of sharing her with a daughter... but then, I had two boys. I learned to parent boys, who played sports and cars and "Transformers"... and forgot about Patsy Ann. And then one day I became the grandmother of a little girl...

So yesterday, with her original owner here, we introduced Addie to Patsy Ann. I helped her change the doll's clothes over and over. We rocked her to sleep. Addie found the little toy kitchen set I have here and cooked and fed Patsy Ann. My mother told her the story of Patsy Ann. And Addie listened. She was very careful with the doll. She hugged us and told us, "I LOVE her!" And my mother and I smiled and remembered how we had loved Patsy Ann too...

Great Grandma Do, Grandma Barb and Addie help Patsy Ann change her dress. A very special moment for us!

A milestone birthday for Addie!

Hunting Easter eggs at Grandma's house!

The prime purpose of being four is to enjoy being four - of secondary importance is to prepare for being five.  

          ~Jim Trelease, The Read-Aloud Handbook, 1985

Today is my granddaughter Addison's fifth birthday! Five is a very important age. Pre-school days are coming to an end-- she will start kindergarten in the fall. Going to school will change her. She will be exposed to The Real World to a certain extent. Out of reach sometimes for those of us who love her to protect her from that world.

On the other hand, she will be exposed to so much new learning. The wonderful world of reading and books... the wonders of science... the joy of music and art and of being a part of a team. She will develop friendships. The World will be hers for the taking!

So, while I remember the times we have shared with her this year and wish I could freeze time sometimes, I look forward to watching her learn and grow in this important time in her life!

Sipping milk through a silly straw shaped like glasses... love this!

Happy Birthday, Addie! Grandma Barb loves you!!

Princess Addison at Halloween

Modeling her apron at Christmas-- she wears it whenever she helps me in the kitchen

A mixed blessing?

Technology... is a queer thing. It brings you great gifts with one hand, and it stabs you in the back with the other.

          ~Carrie P. Snow

As I have indicated in a previous blog, my computer died about a week ago. Panicked, I yelled for Lanny. He tried his best, but all he could get it to do was display a weird plaid screen with an error message. He went straight to his computer to look up the symptoms and came back with the bad news... we'd have to take the machine somewhere to see if they could retrieve the information off it, but most likely it was dead.

Fortunately, the machine was not quite five years old and Apple would work on it, replacing anything that needed to be replaced, for a "minimal" fee. Compared to buying a new one, this was a good deal. We had also located a guy who fixed Apples and he was able to retrieve the data off the old hard drive and would reinstall it once the machine was fixed. So, off to the local Apple store we went.

There is only one Apple store in our area, and it is quite a drive. It is located in the "high rent" area of town, at a mall known as The Fashion Mall. This is where all the higher end retailers are-- Sax Fifth Avenue, Lord & Taylor, and Tiffany's come to mind. I certainly don't mind shopping there, though rarely do I buy anything. I have found outlet shopping online (especially when deals come with free shipping...) is a much easier way to get any clothing items I need. And since retirement, I haven't needed much. So it had been a long time since I'd walked the corridors of The Fashion Mall. I was looking forward to it!

We arrived on a Tuesday morning, close to lunch time. We found a parking space very close to the entrance-- that was unusual. We walked into the mall and I couldn't believe my eyes... there were so few people inside that we could hear our voices echo off the marble floors and walls. The place was empty. Creepy empty... 

The Fashion Mall mid day... empty!! 

Lanny knew where the Apple Store was, so he led me around the corner and down the main mall corridor. When we arrived, we walked into... chaos.

...except in the Apple Store!

I couldn't believe what I saw. There were several people seated along one wall attending a class on how to use their new computer. There were customers everywhere playing with all the gadgets. There were dozens of young, trendy people wearing blue shirts who were there to greet and help all who came through the doors. And way in the back was something called The Genius Bar. 

The Genius Bar in the back of the store... where nerds rule!

I am not kidding... The Genius Bar was where we had to pick up the newly fixed computer. Manned by three or four computer nerds, the line to be waited on there was three deep in front of each of them. Fortunately, the nice young woman in orange dreadlocks and huge horn-rimmed glasses who greeted us at the front of the store had entered us in her hand-held device that notified some other nerd "in the back" to retrieve our computer. We only had to wait a minute or two for him to come out with our machine. I signed some papers, gave him my credit card and we were off with a working machine. 

Back out into the empty mall... We did stop at the Williams Sonoma store to window shop kitchen gadgets (the most heavenly smell was coming from there as someone was making chocolate chip waffles...). We didn't buy anything. 

It struck me that the world is changing in ways that could never have been foreseen. The Mall, a way of life that started back when I was a kid, won't last forever. Apparently I am not the only one who shops online often enough that the traffic at the mall is drastically reduced. Even our consumerism has become lazy... we can buy our stuff online rather than go shopping. I am not sure whether to be troubled by this or not. It certainly becomes an issue for the little local "mom and pop" shops... but then I remember that my own little local yarn shop, run by a couple in their twenties, has an online business that is thriving. My best friend in Florida is as good a customer there as I am... So perhaps it is, as in all things, both good and bad. Or as my best friend says, "it is what it is..." But I find it most ironic that the one store that required physical presence in order to use it was the one that represented the technology that may be a cause for the rest of the mall being empty!! 

          

Got Fender Jewels?

Lanny and his Stude, with his brother Chuck and his Fairlane... at a car show last fall.
Chuck's car won an award! We enjoyed the day outside spent with people we love.

 It's not about doing the things you love, it's about doing things with the one you love. 

          ~Unknown

Yesterday, my husband and I took a day-long road trip up to Southbend, Indiana. As a Studebaker car enthusiast and collector, my husband wanted to attend a Studebaker Driver's Club regional swap meet.

When Lanny and I met, I had no knowledge of Studebakers, and really little interest in it. I remembered the cars as inexpensive, rather boring automobiles from the distant past. Lanny began to educate me, and his enthusiasm for the cars was catching. Next thing I knew, I'd married him and the pile of old car parts in the garage was off to be reassembled into something driveable.

It took a lot of headaches and 6 years, including an almost disastrous first restorer, who botched the restoration and who we had to threaten with legal action before we got the car back. The second restorer was a gem-- a wonderful guy who loved the car almost as much as Lanny did, and who took his time and "did it right". What he sent back to us was a completely restored 1963 Studebaker Lark, with a powerful, supercharged engine in it. Lanny was awestruck... and I have learned to love it too.

What I love is spending time in the car with him, when he is relaxed and happy. Whether just cruising around or sitting at a car show, we have so much fun together with this car!

So much fun that last year we bought another one... this time it was me who fell for the car first. We bought an unrestored 1950 Champion convertible-- the one famous for the bullet nose. (Think: Muppet car!) I named her Ruby. She is 2 years older than me and while she also has a few scratches in her paint and a bit of a sag in her bumper, I think she is lovely. 

Here is Ruby, getting ready to participate in the Veterans' Day Parade last November.

So this spring, after tinkering on both cars all winter, we headed up to Southbend to the swap meet. It's about a 2 hour drive through a lot of flat Indiana farm country. I can knit while Lanny drives. We listen to music and talk. Yesterday we could open the windows and I could sing along to the radio... we had fun. 

The swap meet is huge in Southbend. That is where Studebakers were originally made, and it is where a lot of them still live. Their owners tinker with them as much as Lanny does, and so are constantly looking for parts. We were looking for a very small piece of plastic trim on the chrome decorations on Ruby's front fenders (called fender spears...) Our fender spears had missing "jewels"... 

Behold the fender spears... one with and one without a "jewel". 

We looked at the cars on display. We dug through boxes of car parts. We ran into other Indy area Studebaker enthusiasts. We shopped. We bargained. We came home with an old Stude pickup truck's tailgate (to be repurposed as a fold down shelf  out in Lanny's shop...) but we learned fender spear jewels were not available anywhere in Southbend. After we got home, Lanny looked up "the guy" we'd been told had them and ordered them. 

As I think about it, the whole purpose of the day was to get those fender jewels and we could have gotten them by making a simple phone call. But what would we have missed?  We had fun together doing something I never in my life imagined I'd ever do... with someone I have come appreciate in so many new ways... the breadth of Lanny's knowledge of old cars, his patience in looking and finding just the right thing, his ability to explain car stuff to me so I understand it, his love of traveling together too -- all of that helped give us a great day.