Daffodils

Although the calendar still says February, 

Mother Nature is telling a different story.

Our daffodils are blooming, trees are budding, grass is growing and March hasn't even arrived to the party yet.

The temperatures will be around 80 the next few days.  Osprey have already been sighted in the local rivers and creeks.  The song birds are singing.  The frogs are frolicking.

I'm not complaining, but it's unusual.

Welcome, Spring.  I know you're not really here yet, but it's good to know you're on the way.

Washed Up

This basket was washed up on Aarons Beach a few weeks ago.  These always remind me of picking daffodils as a child.  We'd go through the fields picking up the bunches and placing them in these baskets--which were then submerged in metal buckets of water in the dark, cool barn before the flowers were packed up and shipped off in large cardboard boxes to commercial markets.

Most people around here associate them with fresh seafood, too.

Unrelated to anything thus far, my surgery took longer than I anticipated to recover from. I was expecting to trot back in to work on Monday after a follow-up visit with the surgeon, but he actually wanted me out another whole week. I was lethargic and just generally weak.  No appetite, no strength, nothing.  Nada. Since this is the busy season at work, and we're already short-staffed as it is,  however, I chose to ignore the surgeon's advice compromise and have been going in to work half days.  I race home early and take two-hour naps.

But finally today I'm feeling a little stronger. And I'm eating a little bit.

If I can survive next week, which is our absolute busiest at work, the following week I'll be on a much-anticipated vacation.

I can't wait.

I hope all is well in your world.

Brrrrr

Although the calendar says Almost April, the temperatures this weekend said Almost Alaska.

In spite of the frigid temperatures, which made for brutally cold conditions for Saturday's 10K in Richmond with Baby Sis, these backyard daffodils have made themselves known, and they promised me when I spoke with them yesterday that warmer weather is on the way.

Still, just like the runners who couldn't feel hands, feet, toes or fingers Saturday morning, these daffodils have to put their heads down to brave the oncoming cold wind, push forward, and persevere.

Baby Sis and I managed to eke out a personal best in Saturday's 10K.  With no training other than last weekend's half marathon, we jogged a very frigid 10K in one hour and three minutes.  Could we have done better?  Of course.  Could we have done worse? Yep.

I need to sniff out another race for us to do this spring.

Until then, I'm going to sniff the backyard daffodils and hope for warmer temperatures this week.

Baby Sis and I at Saturday's 10K, cold and suffering in spite of outward appearances.
Thanks to Edward Anderson for this picture.

Signs

Over the weekend we enjoyed some of the warmest temperatures of the year and finally saw most of the snow disappear.

The ospreys are slowly returning from wherever they spend their winters, the red-winged blackbirds were singing their songs in the tree tops, and the frogs were even making themselves known.

The snow had been hiding one of the surest signs of spring.

The daffodils are slowly making their appearance.

Son has also made an appearance for his spring break.

I'm hoping that the cold, gray days of winter are well behind us.

Regardless, it's good to see these reminders that spring is on its way.

Controlled Burn

Here on Waverly Lane, you never know what you're going to see next, and one evening about two weeks ago, I happened to notice that my shoreline was ablaze.

While most people might be startled at such a sight, my worn-down nerves knew that this was not necessarily an emergency.

(Even though to most normal people this screams, "EMERGENCY!")

Daughter and I calmly sprinted walked out the back door to take a closer look at the situation.  

Daughter shared the joyous occasion with friends via iPhone, no doubt with a comment like, "Oh, nothing, just finished up some supper and am now watching the blazing inferno that is my back yard."

You can't get this type of entertainment in the city--that's the lesson here, Daughter.

My father intentionally sets the shoreline afire every so often, for reasons that used to make sense but which now escape me. He takes a rake and delicately lifts burning brush onto the dead marsh grass. The fire usually stops where the green foliage begins (due to the moisture).

Although he's in good shape for his age, he gets winded easily, and, let's face it. He's not as agile and spry as he used to be. So I always worry.  But this time, thankfully, he came out unscathed. The fire went out in a hurry on its own, and we quickly returned to normal, frazzled nerves and all.

Things were normal for only a little while though.  Late last week as I was approaching Waverly Lane on my way home from work, I came face to face with the inevitable:  the tilling of the daffodil field in preparation for the corn crop.

The daffodil field full of bulbs way older than I am (and I'm no spring chicken either) was being changed forever.

Goodbye, daffodils. I will miss you terribly. Hello corn.

Click here for a 2011 post referencing Royal Colony Farm, the daffodil business my grandfather operated.

Click here for the 2012 version of Let's Have Fun Intentionally Setting Fires in One's Yard.

Happy Monday.

Mother's Mother

These were taken one recent morning

when I happened to glance eastward as I was getting dressed for work.

The entire scene changed within what seemed like seconds.

This last one looks nothing like it did in real life.  One of these days I'll take that photography class I've been meaning to take.

But it's amazing how things work.  If I hadn't glanced for no reason at that particular moment, I'd have missed the few moments the sun was saying hello.

A similar event happened to me Thursday night.

It all started Wednesday night, actually, at Daughter Maria's soccer game against West Point.  I took my perch high in the stands as I always do to better absorb all the sights around me, including the game.  One person leaning against the fence on the sidelines caught my attention.  For the life of me I cannot explain why I was staring at him.  He looked like another Mathews parent except I knew it was someone different.

The whole first half of the soccer game passed by without event.

Then, for no particular reason at all, the pieces of the puzzle fell in place.  I recognized this individual from my years at UVA.  His name was P. Diggs, from West Point, and I met him at a fraternity party at UVA.  We clicked because in those days before internet and social media, it was unusual to randomly meet someone from a small town in your area.

So that mystery had been solved; staring could now cease.  There he was along the sidelines, all these years later, at Mathews High school of all places, cheering on his son who plays soccer for West Point.

Fast forward to Thursday evening. At the dinner table my son Sam announces that he needs three pictures of himself (baby, toddler and middle school) for the impending graduation ceremony in June.  "When do you need them by?" I asked.  Naturally, his response was, "Tomorrow."

Rifling through boxes and boxes of old photos buried away in my closet, I happened upon a letter my mother's mother--my favorite grandmother--wrote me when I was in college.

----------------------------------

October 1983

Mrs. Bernice Jones
PO Box 732
Gloucester, VA 23061

Dear Janice,

Saturday I walked to the Safeway store and got this tablet so I could write you a letter.  I could hardly get back as I was so stiff.  I don't know whether it's old age or a little bit of everything.

I hope you are eating well.  Don't eat too much spaghetti as you will get fat.

Did you see the West Point Diggs?  Be sure you don't go on any wild parties.

You will be home in four more weeks.

Middle Sis and Baby Sis have been playing basketball.  Winning games.

The weather has been bad this week.  I haven't been out very much, so I am waiting to see some sun.

Write and tell me what you have been doing this week as this is the only news I get.

Be  good to yourself.  

I love you,

Nanny

---------------------

There is one more piece of information I need to share before I attempt to tie all this seemingly random information together into one less-than-random package.

Thursday morning--after the soccer game where I saw "the West Point Diggs" mentioned to and by my grandmother more than 30 years earlier--I made a last-ditch effort to transplant one more batch of daffodils from a section of the field that my mother says came from this same grandmother in Gloucester.

So, let's recap.

Wednesday I randomly see someone from college, 30 years later at a soccer game at Mathews High School, where the chances of me running into someone from college are nigh on nonexistent.  I spend most of Thursday morning transplanting my favorite grandmother's daffodil bulbs to my yard.  Thursday night, my son drops a bomb at the supper table that he needs three photos of himself from childhood, and I race to the closet and start digging.  One of the first things I (randomly?) see is a letter from that same grandmother--who asks about the very same fellow I happened to see the night before at a soccer game.

When I read the letter, I burst into tears. The combination of having spent the morning moving bulbs originally from her property to finding a letter written in her own handwriting talking about the same person she and I chatted about all those years before just hit me like a tidal wave.

None of this may make sense to anyone else, but it makes some sense to me.  That grandmother and I always had a special connection.  Perhaps this sequence of events was all coincidence.  Perhaps it wasn't. Perhaps Chesapeake Bay Woman is finally losing it.  Perhaps she's fortunate enough to have made a connection, however briefly, with a grandmother she adored.

Either way, one of the greatest gifts I could receive this Mother's Day weekend is that of reading her words in her handwriting to me.

-----------------------

p.s. I love you too, Nanny. And I miss you very much. Also, I took your advice and don't eat a lot of spaghetti.  But I do eat too many chips with salsa.  Oh, and I did attend a few parties in college, only one or five of which could be categorized as wild.  The wildest thing I do now, you'd be happy to know, is jump up and down at basketball and soccer games cheering on your great-granddaughter. Now with a cowbell, which just arrived in the mail yesterday, much to your great-granddaughter's chagrin.

-------------------------


Happy Mother's Day to everyone--including and especially my own wonderful mother who is also called Nanny by my son and daughter.

Still Standing

These were taken a few weeks back just before the leaves started budding on the trees.  Winter is usually the best time to catch glimpses of some of the older abandoned structures that lurk in our many wooded areas, but this winter I didn't get out nearly enough to take pictures.

The poor daffodils sagging in the last few photos were only doing so because it was a cold, damp day.  They perk right up as soon as the sun arrives to warm them up.

(I can relate.)

I pass all of these hidden houses--and more--on my favorite jogging route in the county. That would be the very same jogging route I've visited far too infrequently this year, making me ill-prepared for anything resembling the half-marathon I'm signed up for on Saturday.

(But all will be fine.)

Baby Sis and I will walk a part of this half-marathon if we must, in spite of our inner competitive demons which despise the thought of surrender.  She claims her knees are "bone against bone" with no cartilage to speak of.  I respond with statements like, "The longest I've run recently was six miles one time the other week, but my memory's so bad it might have been the other month--and I've done nothing since then except sit at a desk or in a car. And eat.  I've done lots of eating."

It's almost like we're in a competition to see who is the least ready.

As I've said before though, we need no training to have a good time.

But that's all this weekend.

These next couple of days I'm off from work and will spend some time with Daughter and Son, who are on spring break.  Son will be working at Merroir most of the time, but we'll squeeze in an adventure or two that includes a trip "to town" as we say, also known as a trek "across the river."  Translation:  We're headed to Newport News to take care of things like haircuts and errands that we otherwise never have time for.

And we'll have fun.

Because that's what this family seems to do best.

Easter

Easter Sunday came knocking on the door before most in the Chesapeake Bay Family even knew what hit us.

At some point, we agreed to have a dinner at my house.  

Baby Sis drove in from Richmond to spend the day with us.  

She livens up every event.

She and I leave Friday for a trip to Nashville to see our friend Lauren.

We're also scheduled to run a 13.1 mile race that neither 

of us is prepared for.

Our training leaves something to be desired, but 

I feel confident we will achieve the main goal of having a good time.

I hope your weekend was a good one.