Saturday, April 4, 2009

Mother Nature's April Fool Joke

This is what we woke up to on April 1st, now I did not find it all that amusing. The last couple of days have been nice, with yesterday being in the 50's. Today and the next few days will be a whole different story, we are under a winter storm watch. As always the amounts vary, but seems a pretty good chance that we will have several inches of snow and high winds. I do not plan on going any where.



Last Monday I went to a program in a nearby town, it was offered by a local community college. The speaker was Duane Otto from the arboretum in Minneapolis, he is in charge of making the place beautiful. I really enjoyed it and the accompanying slide show. The number of plants he has to deal with truly boggles the mind, well mine at least. Each year the garden has a theme, this year it is Sky color reflections on water so all the flowers will be in shades and tones of blue and violet and water movement hues of white and silver. The beds will be planted in wave patterns to follow this theme. He showed slides of one year that he did a white theme, was truly striking. This year he will plant more then 10,000 tulips and 8,000 pansies. This is just the Spring portion, he will have thousands more plants so there is color all through the season. Makes what I do seem so trivial. After the meeting there were refreshments provided by a local greenhouse. Home made cookies and bars, coffee, punch all very good.



I was hoping to talk some about the show and local flowers but that was not to be, each person I was introduced to wanted to know who I was related to. It's a local thing, you get asked who you are related to and who's house you live in. After two years of this I find myself getting testy, trust me I do not want to be. There is just so much to talk about other then these two topics. The house thing I want to say, "I live in MY house", childish I know but it still oozes out. I think I offended one lady the other night, I declared "I am not from around here and I am not related to anyone". Some times I feel as if I have an alternate personality that peeks out now and then and says things I feel bad about later. If I meet her again I will need to apologize and see if I can make amends. My rational side knows that this behavior is what they are accustomed to and while it offends my New England reticence I know they do not mean anything bad by it. I grew up with my Grandfather and Grandmother for the most part. I was taught early on to not be nosy. You do not ask personal questions of anyone, if they offer you listen and then keep it to yourself. I would never dream of asking some of the questions that I get and often it throws me for a loop and I do not know what to say. I try and remember the advice Ann Launders gave, she said reply "why would you want to know?".

I bought seeds yesterday, so my project today is planting them in all my mini greenhouses. Also trying to figure out how to rig a grow light over them. I bought the bulbs and I know we have some of the fixtures around here somewhere. Now cross my fingers and hope they grow, always the hard part. Did I mention we bought a tractor? We found one at a good price , it runs and has a scoop on it. Too bad it is not delivered yet, I could use the scoop for the snow. So one of my tasks will be learning how to drive it. I can use it to clear old hay out of the goats house and move hay bales around as well as plow the garden and flowerbeds. Will make things much easier, I want to clear out the wooded area so can load limbs etc in bucket. We also have a couple of big piles of rocks that I want to use around flower bed and around the pond once it is dug. I have this whole scenario of a water course that babbles down to the pond. Of course we will have to build a bridge over it, so cool to have to much land to play with.

Wonderful weekend to you all and thank you for visiting.

9 comments:

Mary said...

Barbara,

I don't think I'd be comfortable being asked such questions either. No matter where you are from, you need to be polite.

I am enjoying the writing course but certainly miss writing the articles for the website that closed. I am so used to being busy writing that I'm quite bored. That makes for problems in writing fiction. I think when the weather gets nicer, I will get over my bit of writer's block. Right now, I have no real desire to write anything and can't seem to get myself out of this rut.

Take care, my friend. I hope your weather is nice than ours. It poured rain from the wee hours of Friday morning until late afternoon and today is cold, overcast and windy.

Enjoy your weekend.
Blessings,
Mary

Renie Burghardt said...

Hi there!

Oh, my, an April Fools gift in your neck of the woods! Well, the good thing is, it won't last long now. We've been, well, I should say Greg's (one of my sons) been cutting grass for the first time this year, today. Now he went to the cabin on the river to cut it there. Got to get it done while it's sunny and 70 out there. Storms in the forecast for tonight, then some nippy weather for a couple of days, with snow showers possible. Perish the thought!!! lol. But warmer weather will return by Wednesday.

The sky blue garden theme sounds lovely. What a sight that will be to see.

I had the same thing here when I first moved to the Ozarks in '83. But by now people just refer to me as "the writer woman that lives in the woods." lol.

Hope your weather will warm up so you can get on that new tractor and tackle the jobs you have in mind.

Have a wonderful Sunday!

Hugs,

Renie

Joanne said...

Oh Barbara, I hope you don't get too much snow today! If so, maybe the winds will blow it right away.

Duane Otto's plans sound amazing - I'll bet when those wave patterns are blossomed, the flowers will look actually fluid. I would love to see that.

I appreciate your privacy issues, I'm the same way, and often told my children the very same Ann Landers advice. When you ask someone that question in answer to a nosy question, it seems to end the issue nicely as it turns the attention back on them.

Well Happy April to you, Barbara. I hope you get to go outdoors soon and begin your projects. Enjoy!

Stasia said...

Hi Barbara, looks like we are in for some major snow this evening... luckily, the goat barn deep bedding was changed today!

Congrats on the tractor! I haven't yet learned to drive ours. You'll have to give me some tips.

As far as chickens, what's on your wish list? Meat, eggs, both? Hens that will raise up new sets of chicks, or ones that won't go broody? If you'll let me know, I'll try to share what I can.

Have a lovely Sunday. I'm hoping the snow will give me an excuse to knit...

Karen said...

We've been fooled, too, after weeks of beautiful weather. Snow off and on for a week.

The flower/water theme sounds so beautiful. My favorite colors. I'm so in awe of how creative people can be.

A friend now lives in your neck of the woods, where 'everyone is family.' It can be lovely and yet for those of us not accustomed to it, I am sometimes taken aback by the questions. The Ann Landers rule would be a perfect response here.

Hope spring arrives, to stay, for all of us soon!

Nancy Jo said...

Hi Barb,
listen this snow and cold thing just has to stop. ENOUGH ALREADY. There that should do it, everything will be OK now. This wasn't a good thing to happen right after you went to a nice show all about pretty flowers and thing to plant.Might want to think about something for the windowsill.
NANCY JO

violetlady said...

When I first moved here, I was irritated by the same thing. It's not that I am asked those questions all the time -- it is the constant theme of who you know. It is apparently typical in small towns. I have lived here for almost 17 years and I still find it amusing/annoying. Certain houses are still referred to as so and so's house (who may have lived and moved from there twenty years ago). Since I am in real estate who you know is a big deal. I feel like I don't know anyone! ha,ha.
Your town sounds like it has a wonderful gardening project!

Nancy said...

I can understand how you feel. I was raised to mind my own business, too. I never pry into other people's business, either. Different areas, different folks!

You have critters chewing up your RV and I have critters that chew up my computer cables! LOL But we love 'em, anyway, don't we? ha-ha

Your kitchen flower garden is beautiful!!! I love your cabinet doors painted with flowers! You are such a talented lady!!! Just beautiful!!!

Check out the 206-pound dog on my new post! He was HUGE!!!

((( Hugs )))

pbb29556 said...

After living in our small South Carolina town since 1971 and this house since 1980, we are still asked who we are realated to and whose house we live in. It used to annoy me when asked that, but now I just laugh it off and have come to realize that no matter how long we live here, we are "outsiders". Our relatives didn't settle the town or come pre-Revolutionary War and move here from Charleston, so we never will fit in to "society". And from what I have seen and what I know of this town's "society" I say, "Thank GOD!". LOL