As I sit down to the computer today the month of May is winding down. The weather is already hot and humidity hangs in the air so thick that it feels that your are wrapped in a warm, wet blanket. The children are out of school and dreaming of all the things that they will do on their 121 day break.

I remember the days of childhood and how special the month of May was. It started with a special holiday, May Day. Here in Indiana May Day isn't celebrated much. There is a parade in a county near here where the labor unions share their message to anyone who will listen (in that county it feels more like a political day than a holiday) and at the local school they have a May Day program with singing songs and the wrapping of the May Pole to celebrate their German heritage. But in my small town in Nebraska we celebrated May day with the delivery of May baskets. We made small baskets using paper cups and pipe cleaners or by rolling construction paper into a cone shape and adding pipe cleaners or ribbon. Next we filled the baskets with a little bit of candy or flowers, depending who would receive it. Then the game began. You would deliver your basket to a neighbor or friend by placing it on their door step, ringing the doorbell and running away. If the person could answer the door quickly enough to catch you before you left their yard they could kiss you. I have no idea who invented the game or why, but we loved to play it. In all honestly I don't recall ever being kissed. I don't think anyone ever tried very hard but it was fun just the same.

Mid-May was the time for the May Crowning at church. All the children of the church dressed up is their Easter best and processed in, they went to the statue of the Blessed Virgin at the front of the church and one of the eighth grade girls would place a crown of flowers on the statue, symbolizing that Mary, the Mother of Jesus was our heavenly mother and the Queen of Heaven. I remember hoping that when I got to eighth grade that I would be chosen to crown Mary. I really can't remember if I did or didn't.

As the month came to a close the schools would close their doors releasing all of us for the summer and we would dream of all the things we would do during the summer, forgetting how much we missed seeing our friends last summer and how bored we got after only a month off.

But I am no longer in Nebraska and today is the 30th of May in Southern Indiana. There were no May Baskets this year only a birthday cake for my husband, who shares May Day with the world as his birthday. My oldest daughter was sworn in as a lawyer in the state of Missouri and her son, my youngest grandson, turned one this month and celebrated with an Elvis birthday party. My oldest grandson, here in Indiana just finished school on Friday and already he is alternating between, "I'm bored." and "I know what we can do." May is Strawberry season here so you can go to the strawberry farms and pick your own strawberries or just buy them from the roadside markets. I remember our first summer in Indiana the girls and I were so impressed with the pick-your-own strawberry farms that we picked enough berries to last 10families two years. Every morning for about a week we would venture over to the farm which was just across the highway from our home and pick berries for about an hour.

Of course anyone in Indiana knows that Memorial Day weekend is the Indy 500. I've heard people in my extended family say, "Oh, I wouldn't be interested in that, I'm not in to car races." but the Indy 500 is not just a car race. It is the largest sporting event in the WORLD. Around half a million people attend the race and the festivities and preliminaries go on for almost a month. There are concerts, I know ZZTop appeared this year and special activities all around Indy. My girls were never race fans but ever since they were college age they have found the 500 to be an awesome weekend and one they look forward to. They meet a group of friends form across the state and nearby states and camp out for the weekend and watch the festivities and the race. For my youngest, who lives in Indianapolis, it is a week long event. I will admit that I have never seen the 500 in person but I am the only one in my family who hasn't attended. I hope that I will be able to in the next year or two. I have been to the Brickyard (the track where it takes place and the Indy 500 Museum that is located in the brickyard. I don't know if you can visualize it but the race track is a 2.5mile lap and I must admit even though I had no interest in car racing at the time, I couldn't help but be impressed. It really is something to see. And when you see the cares going over 200mph it really does take your breath away. I watched as they did time trials and was absolutely mesmerized.

So as May comes to an end, I will take a quick look back at what the month held and prepare to start the new month with it's sweltering heat, the farmer's markets, the fresh produce from my garden, and fresh salsa from my kitchen. I look forward to swimming at the lake and cooking out in the evenings. And of course I will continue my battle the rabbits, because once again there was yet another new litter born in the yard nextdoor.

Easter memories

Before you read this entry I think I need to post a warning of sorts. Many people tell me that I don’t remember things accurately or that I exaggerate or fabricate events and details of events. To this I respond, everyone experiences their world in a unique way. What you feel, see and believe is in fact your reality. So if you version of the past doesn’t match mine exactly maybe it may be because I choose to remember mine in a different way. Or maybe even while I was living it as the present I perceived it in a different manner. But this is my blog so I will present things as I recall them and hopefully if you were there it will remind you of things from your past even if you memories don’t match mine.
I can remember as a little girl how excited I was at Easter time. We would have spent the past “thirty some” days preparing for Easter through our Lenten sacrifices. I usually gave up candy or something similar, even though in reality we didn't eat candy very often at my house. It probably would have been more of a sacrifice to give up carrots or something that we ate regularly as snacks. When Holy Week finally arrived I would attend the Holy Thursday Mass with my family, followed by Good Friday services and then finally Saturday. I know that the Holy Week services were suppose to mean more to me than Saturday but remember I was just a kid. Saturday meant there were eggs to dye and the town's Easter egg hunt to attend. The egg hunt wasn't anything elaborate but you always got a small bag of candy at the end and to me that was really special. Oh and I usually, conveniently forgot that I had given up candy for lent or maybe I just thought it was close enough to Easter that it didn't matter. When we returned from the hunt it was time to color Easter eggs. This was always a big production at my house. Well, first of all you have to remember that there were usually 9-11 children involved in coloring the eggs. That in itself made it a major undertaking. We each got a certain number of eggs and each tried to create the best egg. We didn't just dye them; first you would decorate it with crayons or rubber bands and then dip it in one dye after the other trying to make yours the prettiest one on the table. I have never lost the fascination with this process and I have never celebrated an Easter without dying eggs. When Saturday night finally arrived there were Easter clothes to get ready for church in the morning. We usually had a new dress, even if Mama had to stay up all night finishing sewing them. I just knew that when you woke up there laid out on the couch would be 5 Easter dresses with bonnets and sometimes white shoes and gloves. My oldest sister didn't have her clothes laid out because she was 5years older than I was and too mature for this ritual. I always loved the way it looked with the pastel colors next to the white bonnets, shoes and gloves. The Easter bunny would visit in the night and leave each of us an Easter basket on the table but we couldn't touch it until after we attended Mass. When we finally returned from mass we would take turns hiding the colored eggs and finding them, while we nibbled at (or gulped down) our candy. If the weather was warm we would hide the eggs outside but living in the Nebraska panhandle meant that many Easters it was still coat weather or it might even snow. My senior year of High School we moved to Casper WY and we would joke about our Easter blizzard (which many years turn out not to be a joke) and usually eggs had to be hidden inside. I continued many of these traditions with my girls, the clothes laid out on the couch with bonnets, gloves and white shoes and the Easter baskets on the tables but the Easter bunny started hiding plastic eggs filled with candy or coins that were hunted before going to church. I think he realized that real eggs can be chewed up or smashed by a cat that finds them in the night and eggs that go unnoticed in the house start to stink after a couple of days. My girls are all grown now and are starting traditions of their own but we still come together on Saturday afternoon with the grandchildren and color eggs and we still vote on which is the prettiest, the most creative and the funniest. We still hide Easter eggs over and over again with my grandson that is old enough to understand how the game is played and we all take turns hiding and hunting. In fact he enjoys this game so much that we play egg hunt multiple time during the year whenever he is in the mood. It is our own version of hide-n-seek. This year we will dye the eggs and have our hunt on Saturday since that is when all three girls can be home. We will celebrate our oldest daughter’s 30th birthday on the same day, but that is another story all together. We hope to welcome a new baby to the family that weekend also, but babies don't always cooperate with your plans when it comes to their arrival. I know that when the weekend is over and we all return to work or school we will take with us the memory of another Easter spent as a family passing on memories and traditions to the next generation. Thanks God for the little things that make life so sweet. Easter Blessing to you and yours.

Rabbits in the grass

I have a neighbor that loves animals. I love animals too but we love them in different ways. I love them indoors. Hers are outside pets. I love them neutered or spade she doesn’t feel that is necessary. So when she got three beagles to breed and put them in what looked like a rabbit hutch to me. It wasn’t long until she had eight puppies. The puppies were left in the hutch with the mother until the puppies were over running the place. My yard smelled like a barnyard and I couldn’t walk out the back door without the dogs barking and carrying on as if I were invading their space. So you can imagine my joy when the puppies went to new homes and she sent two of the dogs to live with her father. I still felt sorry for the one in the hutch but at least there was less stink and noise. Next my animal loving neighbor decided she wanted a rabbit. She put it into a hutch much like the one the beagle is in but at least it wasn’t as close to the property line. The problems started again when she decided to breed the rabbit. It had 5 darling little bunnies and I prayed that she would find good homes for them but this neighbor loves animals so she couldn’t bear to part with them. I was imagining a back yard full of rabbit hutches but that would have been too easy. Instead she decided to turn the bunnies loose in her yard and just let them run around and sleep under her shed. Now you may be thinking, “Well it is her yard and her rabbits so let her do whatever she wants.” but there is just one problem. Our yards are not divided by a fence or even a shrub. The only division is the invisible property line and for some reason the rabbits don’t seem to be aware of it or else they just ignore it. Also when she decided to let the rabbits run free I don’t think she considered why there are sayings about being as fertile as a rabbit. First one of the bunnies had bunnies and then another bunny had bunnies and well you can see my problem. I think I mentioned earlier that I love to garden, well spring is almost here and I have a yard full of rabbits of all ages and sizes and all of them are hungry. My daughter suggested I contact animal control but sadly there is no animal control in our town. Now don’t get me wrong I really do like my neighbor. We get along well and I don’t want to start a neighborhood war just because we love animals in different ways but I will have to figure out a way to let her love her bunnies freely without them devouring my gardens. So if you know anyone that wants an Easter bunny for their children, I know where you can find one...or five.

Dreaming of Spring

I woke up this morning to the sound of my grandson begging his Papa to get up so he could help him with a new computer game. It must be the weekend. This is how our weekend usually begins. As I slowly opened my eyes I realized that something was different. The sun was shinning in through the bedroom window. I had to check to be sure I wasn't dreaming. It has been such a long gloomy winter and now here I was waking up to sunshine. I hurried out of bed, went to the window and opened the shades just to be sure. A smile swept across my face as I stared at the almost blue sky. Every year I anxiously await spring. In Wyoming it was because it seemed that winters drug on for 9 months but winter in Indiana is pretty short (about 3months by my estimation) but for those three months it seems the sun never wants to shine. I think it takes a holiday in Florida and doesn't return until the forsythias bloom. But today the sun was shining. I ran downstairs just to be sure and was greeted by a series of rainbows painted on my floor by the prisms hanging in the windows. It was true here was my proof. It was going to be a rainbow day. I stepped out the door and realized that not only didn't I need my gloves, I didn't even need a jacket. Yes, today was surely the promise of things to come. It is only early March and I know that spring doesn't really arrive in March here in southern Indiana but that's okay because when I looked over into the neighbors yard a thousand lilac crocuses were dancing in the breeze and even though they may get their little heads frozen off tonight, today they were like me, celebrating the sun. Singing and dancing in praise of spring.

Wyoming Winters

Winters in Indiana are very different from winters in Wyoming. Wyoming winters are very long, cold, and windy while Indiana’s are only about 3months long at the most, they have very little snow and the temperatures seldom dip down to single digits or zero. So everyone would think that a person would prefer to winter in Indiana but I find that for me the opposite is true. It isn’t that I love to be cold, I don’t, that I love deep snow, most days that isn’t true either and the winter winds of Wyoming can cut straight through to your bones. So why do I prefer the Wyoming winters? Because of the sun! I have seen the temperatures in Wyoming dip to 20-30 below zero and the sun was still shinning. The snow can be three foot deep on the level and the sun will make it look like three foot piles of diamonds. The sky is blue and the sun shines and somehow you forget that you are freezing and you just look at the magic of the picture that nature has painted for you. And it is even better if you don’t have to go out to work that day. I have friends that tease me about my comments about the blue skies of Wyoming and they swear the sky is just as blue in Indiana but unless you have spent a winter in Wyoming you really can’t compare the beauty of it to other places. Indiana has many great seasons. Its spring and fall are breath taking. The forsythias and crocuses welcome the season long before Wyoming can even consider spring and they are followed by the unmatchable show put on by the dogwoods and redbuds. As much as I love the spring in Indiana, I have never been able to decide whether I like the spring better or the fall. Because in the fall the trees and bushes put on an unbelievable show of color and texture that makes you want to just sit outside and admire the beautiful of God’s creation. And the great thing is many of the bugs have died or left so you are able to. So I am not trying to insult the great state of Indiana by any means. I have lived here for over twenty years and in many ways this place is my home but in the winter I long for my Wyoming home and the blue skies and sunshine that paints an unforgettable picture even though it is set against a backdrop so frigid that you think will die from the cold. Then again in summer I long for Wyoming not because of its beauty because much of the state is dry by summer and more brown than green but I have never been a fan of humidity and Indiana summers has lots of it while Wyoming has none. You would think that as a gardener I would want to stay in the long hot summers of Indiana but my asthma makes breathing much more desirable than gardening when the humidity rises and contrary to what many believe you can grow a pretty great garden in Indiana in the spring and early summer, one in Wyoming in mid summer and then another in Indiana in the late summer. So it really could work for me. Un fortunately, I’m not a rich or retired person so I will live my year in one place except for the occasional trip to visit another so Indiana will be my home of choice, after all anyone that knows me knows that I would never consider leaving my grandchildren to travel half away across the continent from them. So during the winter months I will close my eyes and dream of the Wyoming winters while sitting under a full spectrum lamp to keep the winter blues away.

Learning to dream again

I was reading a little book yesterday that I found at a used book store. It is titled, Living Out Loud by Keri Smith. It is a book about how to “fuel a creative life” It talked about living the life you always wanted by thinking about what you played as a child to discover what brings you true joy and passion and then reconnect to that energy. It was filled with games and activities to help get you in touch with your creative side.

I thought about that and I wondered when it is that we decide to quit playing. Does our life get too busy or do we just decide it is a waste of time or too juvenile to be important. I’m sure some people would say I never quit playing. I still love to color, paint and draw with chalk on the sidewalk. I sing and dance and blow bubbles on my front porch and hang prisms in my windows that face south so they will paint rainbows on the walls. But somewhere along the way I stopped dreaming. I became “realistic” in my thinking. I started listening to the people that told me that life is serious and we need to be responsible and dependable so there isn’t time for foolishness and unrealistic hopes.

I first realized this when I read an article about writing a bucket list and again when I read The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch. I suddenly realized that I couldn’t think of my dreams or what I was passionate about. Dreaming just seemed empty and unfamiliar to me and as I wrote things down on my bucket list I felt that I was simply making them up to have something to write. I mean there are things that I like to do or I might even go so far as to say I love them; singing, gardening, cooking, dancing and playing with my grandsons. But to come up with what I wanted to do before I died I felt at a loss. I heard once the St. Francis of Assisi was asked while he was playing ball, “What would you do if you knew you were going to die this week?” And he responded, “I would keep on playing ball.” When the story was told to me it was to emphasize the need to be prepared to meet your maker but if someone asked me that today I would have to say I would keep doing what I’m doing because I can’t think of anything else to do. Oh, I might tell them I would quit my job and spend more time with my family and more time in my garden but I don’t feel a great need to accomplish things that I’ve neglected. Maybe that is okay. Maybe it says that I am happy with my life, content with the place I’m in. So for today at least, I will keep on doing what I’m doing and I will try to be more aware of how blessed I am to have a life that makes me happy, a family that truly loves me and a job that brings me fulfillment. But I’m still going to do the games and activities to try Living Out Loud.

rainbows and bubbles

Ever since I first saw the movie Pollyanna I've wanted to take the prisms off of a chandelier and hang them in a window to paint rainbows on the wall. So finally at the age of 50 I asked my husband to put cup hooks in the south facing windows of my house and I hung inexpensive prisms or all different shapes and sizes off the hooks. I started the project with my oldest grandson when he was 4 and we would count to see how many rainbows we could paint on the walls of the living room and dining room at one time. I loved to watch the rainbows dance across the wall when I ran my hand down the row of prisms. And when I’d wake up and see the sun shining I’d tell my grandson, “It is going to be a rainbow day.” My mother-in-law also loved the rainbow game and although she only had a few prisms in her living window my daughters still remember fondly the rainbows they painted on her wall. I’m not sure what the infatuation is, maybe it is the dreams of the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow or maybe it is merely the blending of the beautiful colors but whatever it is I will continue to paint the rainbows on my wall with as many prisms as I can find.

I have a similar fascination with bubbles. I keep a bucket on my front porch filled with a variety of bubble blowers and bubble soap. My grandson and I often spend our summer afternoons out on the porch blowing bubbles or taking turns blowing bubbles while the other one pops them using a water gun. It is a wonderful way to spend a lazy afternoon and it is great stress relief. How can you not smile as you watch bubbles float gently up and up until they are out of sight.

My grandson is nine now and he has less time for bubbles and rainbows because he is busy with sports and computer games. But every now and then he will come into the house and say, “Hey Grandma, it is a rainbow day.” Or he will suggest why don’t we go outside and blow some bubbles for Henry, his younger brother. And then I know he hasn't forgotten the games or the hours of fun.

I know that the day will come, all too soon I fear, when all my grandsons will think they are too old for bubble blowing and rainbow making and then I will have to play my rainbow, bubble games alone but for now I will enjoy their shining smiles, their dancing eyes and their infectious laughter. I’ll remind them of the magic that can be found in simple items like a cheap prism or some soap bubbles.