Category Archives: General Information

It’s hard to believe with the temperatures the last couple of days that spring will soon be upon us. Sunday’s snow showers were a reminder that winter isn’t quite done with us and that bringing out the summer wardrobe will have to wait a few more days. Or weeks! But there is that certain smell in the air that only comes when it starts to get warmer outside. Or when it is at least thinking about getting warmer outside.

But there are signs that something underground is waking up. There are buds on a few of our trees. And we have beautiful irises in the back yard along with another bulb flower that I can never remember the name. It looks a bit like a miniature hyacinth. (You can see both in the picture to the left.) Those two are some of the first to bloom, right behind the lenten roses. I wasn’t sure the hellebores would come out this year, but they finally did.  I’ve been buying them for a few years and am now up to four plants, a pale green, a light pink, and a yellow one. The latest one I planted is a deep burgundy color. I really love the flowers as they last so long, like orchids, and they seem to do very well in my side garden, with its odd mix of full shade then full sun, then full shade. By the way, if anyone has any plants that can take full shade mixed in with three hours of sun, please let me know; I am always looking for new plants!

I also saw that some of our daffodils have buds on them while there are little green wedges pushing up from the tulips I planted last fall. My grandfather always had daffodils, tulips, hyacinths, and peonies growing in his backyard. In spring, we’d always come home after visiting with a large bouquet of sweet-smelling flowers. He’d carefully cut them, wrapping the ends in wet newspaper covered in tinfoil for the trip home. The car smelled wonderful as did our house. Daffodils, in particular, remind me of my grandfather, especially the little white ones with the orange edges.

A few other plants that I’ve spotted coming up are some columbine and another plant that I can’t remember what it is without seeing the actual leaves. I think it might be an Indian pink, but who knows! One of these days, I will diagram my garden to remember what’s where. It would be more helpful than my “I’ll buy this and if it lives I should get more” attitude that I currently have which only goes so far when you can’t remember just what it was you planted that did so well… Pete says that the Jacob’s Latter is blooming (very early for that!) as well as seeing some flower buds on our wood poppies.

So, since it is springtime, I’d like to leave you with a poem by Robert Frost. I love reading poetry because it always amazes me how so few words can convey such feeling. Frost does rather well in capturing the process of winter retreating and spring arriving.

I’ve mentioned in the past that I live with four cats: Fionula, Seamus, Maeve and Ciara. (You’d think I was half Irish, wouldn’t you, with those names!) Seamus is mostly Pete’s boy, whilst Maeve and Ciara fight over my attention. Pete has told me numerous times that Maeve and Ciara get along fine until I come home. So the occasional hiss or growl by Ciara (Maevie is mostly blissfully ignorant of the trouble she creates) isn’t cause for too much alarm.

A few nights ago, the situation got a bit out of hand with Ciara’s growling. Normally, I tell her to hush, and she slinks away. This time, she just kept growling, so I went and picked her up to place her under the covers, a special treat. She just kept growling. I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with her, especially when she jumped up from under the covers and ran out into the hall. Again, more growling. After about an hour, I had had enough, what with it being 4am. I got up, turned on the hall light, intending to ask Ciara just what her problem was. I saw she had something white in her mouth and thought it was a cotton ball, a favorite toy of hers. Then I realized that the little cotton ball had a tail. And whiskers. And very wide, very frightened eyes. I yelled at Pete that Ciara HAD A MOUSE and he needed to come here RIGHT NOW!!! Or as Robert Burns would have put it, Ciara had a “wee, sleekit, cow’rin, tim’rous beastie.”

Grabbing Ciara by her scruff, the mouse was let free to run to the steps downstairs. I was tossing cats (not literally!) into bedrooms and bathrooms to keep them away from the poor creature. (Seamus and Fionula had no interest whatsoever in getting up from their warm beds; only Maeve and Ciara were running around.) Cats secured, I looked for a container to put the mouse. Found a shoe box, gave it to Pete, who managed to get the mouse into the box. Except it was one of those shoe boxes with a finger hole to grab it from the shelf. Mr. (or Mrs.) Mouse promptly found the hole and jumped out. New box found, without a hole. Mouse caught once again. Then what to do with the little cutie-pie? Of course, he/she needed some bedding to feel safe in his/her temporary home. That meant opening the lid and yes, you guessed it, the mouse jumped out. We’d managed to get it into a room with a screen and spent the next 45 minutes trying, in vain, to recapture one very soggy mouse. (Ciara seemed only interested in carrying the mouse around, thus the saliva-covered fur…)

This mouse lead us on a merry chase, jumping on the walls, on me, and finally, discovering a hole in between the flooring and wall (we only have lathe on the walls right now) and was gone like a shot. We want to think that the mouse has found his way back outside. But through all of this, I just thought how sweet that little mouse was, and, how relatively calm, considering!

Isn’t nature grand?

Until next time!

*”There’s a mouse loose about the house.” (Listen to Burns’ poem, “To a Mouse” and it will make more sense! Read the original and English translation here.)

This past week, both Pete and I have been sick. Pete’s got bronchitis and has had to teach even though he’s not felt his best. I’ve got some sort of viral infection and haven’t felt like I wanted someone to put me out of my misery, but I felt bad enough that I took most of the week off from work. I just would have felt awful if I gave what I had to someone I worked with.

I’ve found out a few things in the past week: my hair doesn’t really need to be washed every day; if you use a whole box of tissues in one day,  you’ve blown your nose once every 7.8 minutes; and Vick’s VaboRub smells as medicinal as I remember and still works so well in opening up blocked nasal passages. Overall, I was feeling pretty sorry for myself, at least until I read an email about a co-worker at Ohio State who lost her baby boy on Wednesday. All of a sudden, everything fell into a different perspective.

I just couldn’t stop thinking about my friend and that I have no idea how one gets through something like that. And that got me to thinking about what really matters. Pay it forward. Make a difference. Live each day like it might be your last, and treat everyone as you would like to be treated. Each day, do something good for yourself, for someone you love (and let them know you love them), and for this planet. Because in the end, all we have is each other and this place we call home. And that’s all that really matters.

Until next time.