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April 8, 1999 |
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deadheading the hydrangeas |
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National Poetry Month Poet of the Day: Featured Site of the Day: The Poetry Bug - Three Volkswagen® New Beetles® covered with Magnetic Poetry touring schools, parks, libraries and hospitals in the U.S. and Canada. Happy Birthday to famous people who share my birthday: Betty Ford, 81 On this day in history: On April 8, 1974, Hank Aaron hit homer number 715 to break Babe Ruth's record. April 8, 1513, Ponce de Leon claimed Florida for Spain. April 8, 1935, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) was approved by Congress. (This is the act that brought you, among other things, the Federal Writers Project - creators of the American Guide Series books of which I am so fond.)
Copyright © 1999, Janet I. Egan |
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For my 48th birthday, Mom took me out to lunch at Life & Lite, a small vegetarian restaurant in West Newton. It's a hole-in-the-wall place with four or five tables, but the food is excellent. They do that style of vegan cuisine that uses textured vegetable protein and tofu to imitate classic meat dishes. I had Kung Pao "Chicken" and a small bowl of miso soup. Mom had Emerald Tofu. Both entrees came with white rice and the most delicious spring roll I've ever tasted. Our only complaint was that the tea wasn't hot enough, so we went back to Mom's after lunch and brewed some green tea. As we were chatting over our green tea, served in IFOR coffee mugs, the mailman arrived with a package. Much to my surprise, it was for me! From BiB! Now, how did he know I would be sitting in Mom's kitchen drinking from an IFOR mug on my birthday? It was a model "New Beetle", bright yellow. The card said "I thought I'd Bug you on your birthday." This Bug is incredibly detailed. The hood and hatchback open. The doors open. The steering wheel actually controls the front wheels. The shifter even moves! We played with the car for awhile and then decided we should finish our chat outdoors because the thermometer read 87 degrees. We didn't sit on the deck for long though, because the hydrangeas were sort of overwhelming the deck. The dead flowers from last season were still on the branches, so we started picking them off. This turned into a full blown gardening project with Mom clearing out leaves and dead weeds while I deadheaded the hydrangeas. The garden entered spring in the fast lane. On Sunday, the crocuses were just opening, and nothing else was up. Today the crocuses were all fully open, some of them even gone by, and the daffodils were all in bloom. Even the miniature ones. Such a profusion of yellow. The forsythia is in bloom too. It's that overnight appearance of yellow again. While other colors emerge gradually over the course of spring, yellow bursts out overnight all over the place. The crocuses are purple and white, so the yellow is a nice complement. The little blue things I don't know the name of are all in bloom too, poking up through the dead weeds and hydrangea detritus. Once we cleared the dead stuff away, the blues looked really good. Two of the tulips are showing buds too. I remember one really cold spring when all we had was one lone tulip that finally appeared on Mother's Day. Mom says the day I was born was warm like today. This year is one of those warm, flower-filled springs I guess. Maybe the weather runs in 48-year cycles. Mom is always trying to get us to take our college books and stuff from the attic. Andrea was asking her on Sunday whether she could take anything she wanted from the attic and Mom told her that the the owners of the stuff had first claim on it. I can't imagine what Andrea would want with any of her aunt's or uncles' old college books, but you never know. So this time when the attic question came up, I figured I'd better at least see what was up there. The only thing I know that I want from my college books is How Does a Poem Mean? by John Ciardi. We commenced the search for How Does a Poem Mean? on the attic stairs and progressed upward. I took one side of the attic and Mom took the other. Culinary Arts? Definitely Thomas. Principles of Accounting? That would be Donald. Sanitation Management? Thomas. 201 Spanish Verbs? Must be yours Mom, none of us took Spanish. Ethan Frome? I had to do a book report on that junior year in high school. Wow, look at the price - only $1.25. On through Penrod, Canterbury Tales, Norton's Anthology of English Literature, L'Actualite Francaise, More Spanish Verbs, as I move deeper into the attic. The bookcase against the wall looks more promising, some of these books are definitely mine but none are from college. Nancy Drew. The Hardy Boys. Ellery Queen, Jr. No Bobbsey Twins though. A 19th century book on gardening (1896) starts crumbling in my hands. Whose could that possibly be? No clue. A whole shelf of children's books belonging to a 1956 series called "First Book of ..." I read out the titles to Mom: First Book of Horses, First Book of Presidents, First Book of the Antarctic... Oh wow, I must have gotten the Antarctica bug from this book - 1956, by a navy captain named Icenhower, what a great Antarctic name! He was a member of the 1946-1947 US Navy Antarctic expedition. The illustrations show all these W.W.II vintage airplanes: P 2 V's and RF 4 D's... OK, I'm taking this one home. "Ethan Frome" calls Mom from the other side of the attic. Another one? Whose is that? What household needs two copies of Ethan Frome? The dust is starting to get to me, and it looks like Speck the Altar Boy is covered with mouse droppings or something. I'd like to spend some time leafing through The Boy Allies, but I'm sneezing and coughing. We'll have to continue this another day... in a more systematic way. We never did find How Does a Poem Mean? I came how to two animated electronic birthday cards from Charla and a non-animated Three Stooges one from BiB. And the Red Sox beat the Royals so they're three for three this season. April is great - when else can the Red Sox have a 1.000 winning percentage? |
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