musings on a March morning

To this girl, born and raised in the Midwest, it didn't seem like much of a winter at all, but I guess it's over. This was absolutely the first winter I can ever remember that I didn't have to shovel any snow. All the way back to when we used to try - without much success - to shovel snow off the top of the gravel driveway on West 6th Street. Not that I'm complaining, you understand. I don't love snow the way I did when I was younger. Kind of like Lucie, who hasn't springbokked through the snow in several years now, I would prefer not to.

So is it spring, then? Well, not yet, and I don't want to make the same mistake I made last year - my first spring in Maryland. When the temperature rose above 60° last February, I started wondering why there was nothing blooming anywhere in my neighborhood. Didn't people around here plant spring flowers? What was wrong with them? Did they hate spring? And, further, why weren't there any spring flowers poking up through the soil in my own yard? I now know the answer to that question - nothing was planted here. Nothing beyond the ugly, overgrown, foundation plants in front of the house, and a strange, mixed-color crepe myrtle growing too close to the driveway, anyway.

That will not be the case this year, however, thanks to the dozens of bulbs that Ben and Julie and I (but mostly Ben) planted last fall. Already two yellow crocuses have bloomed, and daffodils and tulips are coming, as well. These harbingers of spring are mighty welcome here, and we check their progress daily. We also check the progress of the small trees and shrubs we had planted at great expense last year. I really hope they have successfully over-wintered. There is almost nothing more depressing than a forlorn dead tree in the spring when everything else is blooming and growing.

But, in keeping with the stated purpose of this blog, we will assume that everything is doing just fine, and will come along when it is supposed to. I just have to learn when that is, exactly.

making lemonade, metaphorically speaking

May has let me down this year. Perennially my favorite month, May usually abounds with bright, sunny days when the temperature hovers around 70 to 75° , which even my outdoor thermometer recognizes as "ideal". Not so this year. Cold, rainy day is followed by cold, windy, rainy day, and it's a good thing I kicked the sunbathing habit or I would be really pissed.

As we know, however, this blog features things that are nice, not naughty, so in that spirit, I offer a soup recipe for a rainy day. This is not just any soup recipe. It is for the best damn potato soup I have ever tasted, and I think you might agree with me if you try it. It all started a couple of months ago after one of my blog posts mentioned how I longed for a good potato soup recipe. Bryan (who turns 30 today - happy birthday, Bryan!) sent me his mom's recipe, which I promptly tried. And, I tell you, it was darn good. But I knew I could make it better - if less healthy - and this is the recipe I came up with.

8 slices of bacon, cut into small pieces
medium onion, diced
2-3 celery stalks, diced
3-4 cups cabbage, coarsely chopped (Ben thought 4 cups of cabbage was too much, but that begs the question, can there be too much cabbage?)
2-lb. bag Ore-Ida frozen cubed hash browns
6 cups homemade chicken stock
2 Tbsps butter or margarine
2 Tbsps Wondra flour
2 cups milk
salt
freshly ground pepper
1/2 cup shredded cheese (Whatever you like, really. I use a 4-cheese, reduced fat, Mexican blend.)

Fry the bacon until done in a large frying pan. Remove bacon pieces and drain. Sauté onions, celery and cabbage in bacon grease until cabbage is well-cooked.

In a large saucepan, cook potato cubes in chicken stock until potatoes are tender. Add about a teaspoon of salt. You may want to mash some of the potatoes at this point for a thicker soup.

Melt the butter or margarine in with the sautéed vegetables, whisk in flour to make roux. Remove from heat and whisk in 1 cup of the milk. Return to medium heat and bring to a gentle boil.

Slowly stir the vegetable and white sauce mixture into the potatoes. Add the second cup of milk. Let soup simmer, stirring frequently until thickened. When ready to serve, add bacon pieces and shredded cheese. Heat through until cheese melts. Season with freshly-ground pepper, and check to see if soup needs more salt. Serve in big bowls, because it's really good.

Bon appetit!

a little help here

Over the years, Ben and I have brought various and amazing things home in (and on) our little cars. Ben bought a dining room table and four chairs at Hartville over thirty years ago, and strapped the table on the roof of his Toyota and drove it home. The chairs were in the back seat and the trunk, I assume. We have brought home overstuffed second-hand chairs and old floor model radios. We bought an odd sofa-like piece of furniture one time that was really two long, narrow pieces of upholstered foam rubber with two similarly covered wedges for back rests. We roped that baby to the top of the car and got it safely home without it going airborne even once.

When Julie and I bought a tv several years ago, the box was way too huge to fit anywhere in my car. With the help of some skeptical stockboys, who laughed at my Swiss Army knife but in the end had to admire its efficacy, we got the television out of the box and into the back seat of the car. We have brought many Christmas trees home, sometimes on the roof of the car and other times protruding from the trunk.

It doesn't work 100% of the time, however. We made so many purchases at a nearby antique mall when we first moved here that we had to have the big pieces delivered. As it was, we chipped the large mirror we had wedged in the back seat. Our purchase today stymied us, as well. Ben and I decided that it was time to replace the glass-topped table and four chairs we had out on the deck. We bought the set along with the house when we moved in almost ten years ago now, and it was definitely showing its age. We had already replaced the cushions, but the chairs have been losing their bolts over the years and sometimes slip in an alarming way when one is seated in them. (I won't even go into the time the big umbrella blew over the roof of the house during a storm.)

Ben and I headed out to Home Depot with the gift certificate my brother gave us for Christmas, and almost immediately found the set we wanted. We were thrilled. We put everything on a dolly and wheeled it out to our car. The table top is 44" x 44", and there was no way that was going anywhere on or in our car. We wheeled our purchases back into the store, and asked to have them delivered. A man waiting for help at the service desk turned to us. "Where do you live? I'll put them in the back of my truck and drive them to your house." We didn't know what to say. He insisted. He was driving to Kent, anyway, he said, to his son's house.

Soon we were loading our table and chairs into the back of his pickup truck along with a big roll of pink insulation and four big window shutters. We told him where we lived, and drove home. Ben voiced the concern we both felt as we drove along. "I hope he's honest. I hope he doesn't rip us off." "I have to believe everything will be fine," I told him. "That's how I have to live my life."

The set looks great on the deck. I can't wait to eat out there.

signs of spring, version 2010

Rufus and I went for our first walk of the new year today. It was not Rufus's first walk - he has been out with Ben several times already this year. Come to think of it, so have I. So Rufus and I had our first walk together, then. Anyway. It was such a beautiful morning, I just couldn't stay indoors. Rufus is always ready to go for a walk, and he seemed to know as I was tying my shoes that we were headed out. He really didn't pull too badly, and I could tell Ben had begun the process of re-training him.

We took the longer walk today - the one that takes about twenty minutes. I don't usually do that on our first outing, but I just wanted to keep going. Although the snow has finally melted, the lawns haven't started to green up yet, and small branches, sticks, and leaves from last fall are still everywhere on the ground. I was hoping to see crocuses, my favorite harbingers of spring, but was disappointed to see so few. I guess the squirrels must have eaten everyone else's bulbs, as they did ours.

This afternoon, I started in on another, more onerous, odiferous spring tradition - the annual poo pick-up. Since the snow was so deep for so long, weeks and probably months went by when we didn't clean up the back yard at all. The dogs were still pooping there, however. Two dogs, twice or three times a day. You do the math. I picked up poop until my knees locked, and knew I had only scratched the surface. Such is the life of a dog owner.

Ben and I went out for ice cream a couple of nights ago. We went to the Dairy Queen on Water Street that we used to walk to with big groups of our friends when we lived in the dorms. It was such a treat to go out for ice cream. It still is. And you know, I still ordered a Peanut Buster Parfait, and Ben still had a banana split.

Although the thermometer has not made it to 50 today, I still have the windows cranked open a bit. I hear distant cars drive by and a dog several streets over begins to bark, which makes Rufus cock his head and Lucie growl softly. I expect an explosion of barking any minute. The real reason I have the windows open, though, is for the smell. The ineffable smell of spring. It's out there. And now it's in here, too. I love that.

outings

March is better already than the entire month of February was. Yesterday, Ben and I drove up to Mentor Headlands to see if the ice on Lake Erie was breaking up yet. It's not. It was a really cool trip, anyway, though. Even though we have both lived our lives so close to the lake, neither one of us had ever seen Lake Erie frozen over. The ice on the shoreline looked like frozen waves, and we clambered over them and walked out onto the lake. It was sunny and clear, but still bitter cold when the wind blew. And that was the only sound we heard, really. It is unbelievably quiet along the lake when no waves are crashing into the beach. We will wait a couple of weeks and try it again. I would love to see big ice chunks scattered along the beach.

We drove through Chardon on our way home, and stopped at a yarn shop, (naturally) a gallery with a bookstore in the basement, and a three-story antique shop before we had lunch in a newly-opened restaurant. I liked the yarn shop, and noticed some Neil Young music playing there as I browsed. The woman on her cell phone in the gallery never even looked up as we entered or left, and the guy in the basement bookstore was playing (I kid you not) a Celtic Woman CD. It was a long, narrow, damp basement, anyway, and that music pushed me right out the door, believe me.

I liked the antique shop a lot. Two storefronts next to each other had been joined together, and the basement was full of nooks and crannies with nifty things to look at. Ben and I found a room that was full of postcards (!) and y'all know how we feel about that. One small problem, though, the speaker above our heads was blasting "Doe, a deer" or whatever the hell that song is called from The Sound of Music soundtrack. Again, I felt poked right out of there. Play music I like or don't play music at all, for god's sake. The service was pretty bad in the restaurant where we had lunch, but Ben overheard one of the wait staff saying they had just opened. So, okay. The food was good, anyway.

Today we drove over to Fred Fuller Park, and hiked the Hike and Bike along the Cuyahoga River. Once we got past the water treatment plant, it was a pretty scenic walk. We saw so many birds! Ducks and Canada geese, cardinals and chickadees, red-bellied woodpeckers, with their bright-red heads, and for the first time ever, I saw a kingfisher. As much fun as seeing the birds was hearing them. I don't realize how much I have missed the birdcalls all winter long until I start hearing them again in the spring. That's right, I said it - spring. I just feel optimistic about that. And I never feel that way in February.

the merry month of may

We may have had a more beautiful spring than this one, but if so, I don't remember it. The weather has been the perfect blend of warm and sunny to make everything bloom, with cool and rainy to keep the flowers blossoming longer. Everything is so lush and green right now - I think this is what the Pacific Northwest must look like.

May has been my favorite month of the year for a long time. What's not to like? The whole world is green and blooming, the temperature is perfect ("ideal," the thermometer outside my kitchen window reads), there is no humidity when the sun is shining, and there are almost no bugs. Maybe I am noticing it more because I am at home every day to appreciate it. Whatever the reason, I am loving it.

Rufus wants to go outside now, and so do I. Hope you are enjoying this spring as much as I am.

May 4th

Later today, as I do every year, I will drive over to campus with four bunches of freshly-cut flowers. I will lay them at four temporary memorials marked out in the parking lot where I used to park when I worked at the university. It is the only way I know to leave a concrete symbol that I remember what happened there.

Thirty-eight years ago I was a junior in high school. The first knowledge we had of something gone horribly wrong at Kent State was a frantic phone call from my aunt. Shots had been fired, she told my mother, "I'm going up there to get David." Davey, my much-loved cousin, was a KSU student living on campus that spring. My aunt and my grandmother got in their car and drove from Canton to Kent to "rescue" my cousin. I learned later from countless news stories about the hell they drove into. We all learned about it. It was the only topic of conversation in all my classes in the days that followed.

You know what happened that day - or you should. Government troops had arrived and set up camp on the university commons. Armed soldiers patrolled the campus perimeter. When students protested the military presence on the campus where they lived and attended classes, the troops opened fire on the unarmed students. Thirteen of them were shot, four fatally. Two of the dead students were a part of the protest; two of them had been walking to class when they were gunned down.

So many thoughts swirl through my mind as I remember that day. The one that I come back to time and again, though, is how it feels when spring finally comes to Kent, Ohio. The winters are long here. The days are cold and snowy, the skies are gray for months on end. When the temperature finally climbs above 70 degrees and the sun shines and all the flowering trees on campus bloom, it is the most joyous time of the entire school year. Everyone is outside, playing frisbee, laying in the sun, checking out the opposite sex, for sure. Doing anything, really, just to be outdoors on a glorious spring day. I know if I had been on campus that day, I would certainly have been on Blanket Hill to see what was going on, and, yes, probably to protest an armed government presence on my campus.

Allison and Jeff, Bill and Sandy were older than me when they died - I was still in high school, after all, and they were college students. The years have passed, however, and now my own children are older than they lived to be. I think of their sunny, bright, young faces in all the photos I have ever seen of them, and I know I won't ever forget them or how they died in that sunlit parking lot - killed by agents of their own government. I hope you will always remember them, too.


Tin soldiers and Nixon coming,
We're finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drumming,
Four dead in Ohio.

Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are gunning us down
Should have been done long ago.
What if you knew her
And found her dead on the ground
How can you run when you know?

Tin soldiers and Nixon coming,
We're finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drumming,
Four dead in Ohio.

Ohio - Neil Young

and I don't eat 'em, either

This time of year, it's not unusual for me to see dandelions when I close my eyes at night. Robust, vigorous, brilliantly green-leafed, sunshine-yellow dandelions, growing up through the grass. I see them because I spend a part of each day pulling them out of the struggling grass in my back yard. I even have a special tool to pull dandelions. I hate dandelions. I cannot express that strongly enough.

In my earliest memory of dandelions, I don't hate them, actually. A neighborhood child (who it was is lost in the mists of time) and I have picked large bouquets of dandelions and I marvel at their intense color. The other child encourages me to present my bouquet to my mother, and although I sense that is a bad idea, I give them to her anyway. She quickly abuses me of the notions that they are a)beautiful b) flowers or c) an appropriate gift to give her. She tells me to throw them away and go wash my hands.

I have one other memory of my mother and dandelions. The only work I can ever remember her doing in our tiny back yard or our even tinier front yard was when she would go outside on a spring evening after dinner with an old kitchen paring knife, and cut dandelions out of the lawn. She must have hated them alot to do that.

I have been told that dandelions were introduced to the U.S. by the A. I. Root Company in Medina, Ohio for the benefit of their honeybees. The closest thing I could find to a verification of that is this: "They were even introduced into the Midwest from Europe to provide food for the imported honeybees in early spring. " I found that information, for what it's worth, at this website:
http://www.wildmanstevebrill.com/Plants.Folder/Dandelion.html Damn them to hell, if it is true. What a curse they brought upon our land.

None of us like to think that we have become - or are becoming - our parents, but when I do battle with my mortal enemies, the dandelions, I think of my mother, bent awkwardly at the waist, cutting dandelions out of the yard on a warm spring evening. It's not the worst trait I could have inherited from her.

it's a bloomin' miracle

Granted it's not the Tidal Basin, but the cherry blossoms on the trees that line our street are incredible this year. In fact every blooming thing looks incredible, especially compared to last year. The freezing rain that fell the first week in April last year as we left for Chicago wiped out the blossoms on just about every flowering tree and shrub in the area. I guess we were fortunate the plants themselves didn't die. It didn't feel fortunate, though.

This year it looks like the redbud and the wisteria - my favorites - will have a banner year. The lilac has more buds on it that it ever has before, and the forsythia outside my window gives my whole room a golden glow when the morning sun shines on it. The azaleas are blooming beautifully, nothing like the shrivelled black buds of last year. This has been the best year ever for our daffodils, and the tulips look promising, as well. Did I mention that I love spring?

spring cleaning, of a sort

My shoulders hurt most of all, and my arms ache when I lie in bed at night. I haven't hurt my lower back yet, however, and I think that must be because of the weight I lost. All this is by way of saying that spring has finally arrived in northeast Ohio, and I have been out working in the yard. The amount of work that needs to be done each spring can be overwhelming if one thinks about it too much, so each day I just go out and work on what bothers me the most.

Tuesday I raked our fenced-in back yard, and cleared the leaves from a couple of the flower beds. We have been cleaning up after the dogs on a daily basis, so I didn't have to do the massive poop pick-up we have done in past years. I dragged the patio furniture out into the yard and hosed it off. Then I got the cushions and rug from the shed. Voila! Our patio is ready for use.

Yesterday I raked in the front for a while, but only got half of the lawn finished. Each year it seems like more branches and sticks have fallen from the surrounding trees than in previous years, and this year is no exception. Today is a bright, sunny morning, and I am optimistic that I will at least get the rest of the front finished. I know rainy weather is in the forecast, and I would like to have the lawn freshly-raked when it arrives. I am counting on those April showers to green up the sad, yellow grass.

This is the first spring in many that I have been home and able to work outside when the weather beckons me, and it is a wonderful experience - even when my shoulders hurt.

signs of spring

The first flowers of spring are not like the showy displays of mid-summer. One has to know where to look to see them. In sunny corners, bunches of snowdrops spring up from under mats of last year's brown leaves, their snowy-white heads drooping shyly. Crocuses, those true harbingers of spring, appear suddenly in fallow beds or in the midst of slowly-greening lawns. Their bright yellow and purple and white flowers are the very colors of spring.

We have seen robins in the yard, and are delighted to hear their familiar song both mornings and evenings. The goldfinches on our feeder seem to have changed the color of their feathers overnight from dirty brown to a brilliant yellow. The male birds fight in ascending spirals with a great deal of flapping and chirping before flying off in opposite directions.

The Tribe won the home opener, and there wasn't even a hint of snow on the ground or in the forecast. This year for sure, eh? Spring has finally come to northeast Ohio, and it is more than welcome.