I love that I live in a walkable city. I love that May is Curb Your Car Month in Ann Arbor. This morning I joined other Curb Your Car Month Ambassadors at City Hall to kick off the month’s activities. How nice to meet up with like minded spirits and celebrate walking to work!
Jointly with the mother of the bride, I hosted a bridal shower for a friend this Saturday. The bride’s mom called me from New York and said she wanted to throw a party, but needed “support on the ground”. So, I agreed to pull together a guest list and host.
I had a lot of fun picking out and picking up the party food. I stopped at 4 stores, 3 of which were in walking distance of my home. Technically the 4th (Busch’s on South Main Street) was also in walking distance, but I didn’t leave enough time for the trip. Here’s the menu:
What fun to spend a beautiful spring day walking through the neighborhood to gather treats for the party!
I like plants. I was a plant ecology graduate student. I memorized their names, collected their seeds, learn how botanists classify their variety, and I grew and planted some in field experiments. I have worked as a volunteer to rid a nature preserve of invasive weeds (ongoing, neverending work), and I enjoy playing in my tiny city lot garden. I have friends with amazing gardens. I visit gardens on vacation with my family. I am a member of the Matthaei Botanical Gardens here in Ann Arbor. I like plants and soil and working outdoors.
(Georgia vs. the rest of the world, originally uploaded by romanlily.)
What a joy to discover a gardener hidden inside my almost-5-year-old nephew. It’s not entirely a surprise. He lived within a stone’s toss of the wonderful Atlanta Botanical Garden for his first years, and we strolled his infant and toddler self through the gardens there many times.
Last weekend, I had a great visit to my sister’s in Atlanta. They’re in a nice house on a wooded lot north of Atlanta. They’ve been there a few years now, and it’s time to make the lot their own. The four of us went to the local landscape nursery to pick out a few plants. My nephew had a great time directing us through the covered yard of flats and pots of plants. Here’s what we got:
We got everything home right before dinner, and my nephew was crushed that we’d have to wait a whole night until we planted in the morning. My sister looked at him, looked at me, and said she remembered what it was like to be a kid, how hard it was to wait, maybe he and I could plant a few while she fed my niece?
So, we put the gloves on, got out some ceramic pots and the potting soil and we picked out a few herbs to put in the deck planter. The next morning, we got up early and planted the hostas in the front yard before 9AM so that we could water them fully before the watering ban started up. Digging into the red clay soil was really different for me! Wow. My nephew enjoyed seeing the worms we dug up, and loved helping move the dirt.
I had to fly home before we could plant the last few marigolds, the coneflower, and the other one I’ve already forgotten. My sister phoned and said that my nephew demanded they plant the last few, and this evening he held the pots tenderly while he supervised his father preparing the ground for them.
Planting memories, planting growth. Fun to see my nephew connect to the plants, to the yard, and to one of my favorite pastimes. How nice I was able to be useful and add to their environment in my visit there.
The absolute highlight of our visit to Indianapolis was spending time with Dave’s aunt Barbara. She is funny, insightful, and a joy to be around. She’s also an accomplished musician, and she just let me know she’s got some concert footage on YouTube.
This is my favorite clip from the set: “Tip the Canoe”.
I’ve been noticing the birds. Maybe they’re returning from the woods (robins) or returning from the south (hawks). Or maybe I’m just more tuned into the sky.
Sandhill Crane Sense of Motion, originally uploaded by Fort Photo.
We drove to Indianapolis Friday evening, and then back on Sunday. On Friday evening there were thunderstorms forecast, and the sky was dramatic with towering cloud formations and ominous contrasts.
We went to visit Dave’s grandparents. A quick visit, and I wasn’t sure what we’d find. Things are changing there. Things are changing closer to home as well – loved family are slipping away into forgetfulness. A bittersweet reminder to cherish each moment, because who knows what’s next.
All the way back we were mostly quiet in the car, and I studied the sky again. I noticed hawks, perched on telephone wires and soaring overhead. I glimpsed a blackbird mobbing a hawk, a lone great blue heron passing overhead, a lone sandhill crane, a killdeer in cropped grass.
Work is busy, family is calling, I’ve got chores at home piled up from a weekend away. Today at work a sparrow clung to the ledge of my fifth-floor window, chirping cheerily. It reminds me of another world outside my own head, and of a big, big sky.
My friend Andy is going to laugh at me. He’s the kind of guy who collects the names of things, so he was a great help when I was in grad school and wondered about the name of, say, any plant, insect, or rock near at hand. We used to work together, and so we’d sometimes walk to lunch together, and often I’d ask him the name of a plant that I admired, but whose name just never, ever stuck with me. Spiraea. It was laughable. I’d ask him again and again to remind me, and he’d mock me, and then tell me it was, yet again, Spiraea.
Hmmmm. I’m a slow learner sometimes. Anyway, I think he can finally rest assured that until dementia hits, I’m going to remember what spiraea looks like. You see, I just purchased three pink-flowered “magic carpet” Spiraea for the front yard (to replace the “holes” in the garden where I pulled out the euonymus), and I have my heart set on a
I’m grateful for the patient advice on plant selection I got Sunday from Abbott’s Landscape Nursery, I’m grateful for Andy’s patient re-explanation of what Spiraea is (and correcting my spelling), and I’m most grateful for a glorious sunny early spring day spent out in the garden.