History Makes a Memoir

I recently had an opportunity which I turned down to learn about writing memoirs.  From rough draft to finished published tome.   Although at first it seemed exciting to me,  I suddenly had a moment of doubt,  oh heck, it was the phrase, " you can be my beta tester." that threw me back into reality.  What I wondered was a beta tester?  Now I could have researched and found out but instead I quietly walked away, step at a time.  Plus I was going to be pretty busy in the next few months and I am not sure that I would have the time to devote to it.   Those are my excuses and I am sticking to them.

Since I'm lax in keeping up with the the three blogs I do have, I thought I would begin the rough draft on this one as let my life story is hardly front page news, more the next to the last below the fold of a community weekly.   Nonetheless there is no time like the present to begin I guess,  so I will use this format to begin the Memoir which is actually just a history for my children and grandchildren should the latter ever come to be.  The title will come later.

So if anyone is following this.. feel free to abandon ship now or after the first draft of the early years of my oh so ( yawning here) exciting life.  Or you can hang in with me and offer any advice, as I will either gracefully take any or all comments on this new venture.

So the next time I'll be here it will be to start this blogging memoir of my 62plus years.  I am sure I will forget some things,   and have poetic freedom with others.  I have noted over the years that some folks in my life do not remember events as they occurred and I often wondered if we actually are focusing in on the same events.  But hey this is my blog and my memories.  I just hope I do it justice.
So for now I'll bid adieu.
Maybe next time I"ll have a title.

Hello Spring or We are planting a garden again?

Well spring has done sprung here in my little neck of the woods.  The noses are running from a major pollen outbreak and no rain to wash away the sneezes.  The cars are yellow from whatever tree decides to share it's bloom residue.  Even the pets have sneezes.

Spring, that wonderful time of the year when days can reach into the eighties, and we don't have our summer duds out yet, and the discussion is,  should we turn on the air or open the windows.  Well we open the windows, but now there is that pollen seeping in through the screens.

We rush to the garden supply store and to the farmers auction to buy flower and plants. It's warm, and look at the perennials pushing up after a particularly long cold winter.  If they survived, can summer be far behind.

We prepare the little garden, add some new soil, repair the fence, anticipate the fruits of our efforts, whether visual or by taste when it happens.  The dreaded frost warning.  Well it was brisk today.  The sky is clearing so any heat will dissipate and it could frost.  So luckily this year, so far at least, nothing was actually put into he ground yet. No tarps necessary, we can move them into the garage for the night.

I've learned living here that weather can be a fickle girl.  Mother Nature likes to toy with me, from the first fourth of July I lived here.  That fourth when we needed sweatshirts and a fire in the fireplace.  Now I always keep warm clothes close by in case they are needed.  Even in May, June or July.

So we patiently wait on the long term forecasts, as we debate the number of tomato plants to put into the ground.  We always plant too many.  The herbs are flourishing.  I know that by the end of May, I will have my plants in the ground and the flowering plants set in their pots.  Then comes the daily watering plan... not too early but never at night, supposedly that isn't good.  Because you know it never rains at night.  I guard my flowers and plants from the deer who have invited themselves as they do every year to the garden patches, a smorgasbord of goodies, deer food, don't you know.

If the garden gods look down on us.. we share our tomatoes, and our corn, and the summer is good.  The song is wrong though, the summer ain't ever easy here.

Politics, Local style

Politicians.  They deliver their spiels and promise the world and how things will be better if you just vote for them.  They lean left.  They lean right.  Some are wise in the ways of the political game.  Some are not as wise but hopeful and work hard to honestly give their all as they somehow are seen at every function, getting their name to match a face online.

Then there are the supporters behind the scenes.  Running the phone banks, putting out the signs, arranging the fund raisers and the meet and greets.  Small town politics are an entity like no other.  The letters to the editor, the sudden scandal, all add to the flavor of the spring primaries.  Ours are next week.  School boards, commissioners, township folks, even judges and recorders of wills.

While most of the country is making a recovery, slow and steady, and the attention is on the big boys and girls getting into the race early, hundreds of small counties like ours, will be casting the vote to make things better.  To bring living wages into an area by bringing in businesses that will offer more than a minimum wage.

Keeping the funding for the schools while lowering property taxes to free up money that will stimulate the local economy are issues are our minds.

I'll be voting to clean house.  The dust has been settling for too long and it's time for a change, time to let new faces tackle the status quo.  They have come to love this area, and I don't believe they will just settle.  Like the good ole boys in office now.

Come election morning I will go to the polls and cast my vote for change.  For the future.

Spring has sprung

After a particularly cruel, cold, snowy, and prolonged winter, spring has sprung in all it's glory.  Well, let me say it has arrived.  The grass is struggling to recover, the bare patches show how often the dog goes in the front yard, the flower bed is still empty and in need of prep but it looks like spring has returned.  I had doubts at times, and I like winter weather, but even I was getting weary.  I look good in turtlenecks and hats, but enough was enough.

With spring here in the Poconos,  comes awakening bears getting into the trash cans and strewing the carefully bagged garbage and sharing it with the neighbors.  The birds are returning, hoping to reap the benefits of the bugs making their way out for another season.  The bugs.  We have a variety and most at some point find their way into the house as most do.  They crawl, they fly, they creep up on a person when you least suspect them.   We have deer, still being lazy and eating anything they can reach, an occasional skunk, raccoon or possum.

Every spring though what amazes me is how we have nothing on the trees one day, and the next morning the trees are alive with blooms, and buds, and pollen.  The dreaded pollen.  The scourge of my home.  When you can do graffiti in the yellow that covers the car every morning, it's a lot of pollen.  So we take pills, spray anti pollen up our nostrils, and buy huge warehouse club size packages of tissues.

I relish spring for it's moderate temperatures in the day and the cool nights.  For the chance to bring out the short sleeved shirts, and smile when I realize that I really do not have to buy new sandals this year again.  Heck I may even shave my legs.  It is spring after all.