Day 109 - bloomin' idiots

 Today is the 4th day of the 16th week, the 19th day of the 4th month, the 109th of 2023 [with only 249 shopping days until Christmas] and:

• Bicycle Day
• Congenital Diaphragmatic Hernia Action Day
• Humorous Day
• John Parker Day
• National Amaretto Day
• National Banana Day
• National Garlic Day
• National Hanging Out Day
• National Poker Day
• National Stress Awareness Day - trust me, I am quite aware of stress, thank you very much for the reminder
• National Wear Your Pajamas to Work Day - much easier to do when working from home
• Oklahoma City Bombing Commemoration Day
• Rice Ball Day

Quote of the day:
"Experience is simply the name we give to our mistakes."

~ Oscar Wilde, Irish poet and playwright

Today is my first day dragging myself into the office since Thursday, the 6th.  Commuting is always such a joy, especially on Wednesdays when it seems that everyone who works a hybrid schedule is in the office and traffic is definitely back to pre-pandemic levels, alas!  I drive a lot of back roads and older neighborhoods as I try to stay off the main, clogged thoroughfares, and what struck me was the green - trees have leafed - and the azaleas are in bloom.

Seeing the houses with these flowers in their yards never fails to remind me of Grandmom Hughes.

She and Grandpop built that house on a nice piece of property - and no, I have no idea how large it was but the kid-me remembers it as immense, with woods in the back and on one side.  They built a house next to them on the other side, but there was a thin line of trees between the two properties - and azalea bushes.

The house was literally surrounded with color in the spring - double flowered bushes, variegated blooms, every color you could imagine.  There was a dirt driveway down the length of the property as the garage was at the very back, and on the side facing the woods, there was a line of bushes about halfway back.  The entire lot, where the woods started, were lined with azaleas.  And they bloomed at different times so there were flowers for a couple of months but there was always a time, a little after Easter that was peek bloom.  Looking back, we didn't take enough pictures of it but in memory it is gorgeous.

Grandmom could grow anything.  She was the only person I know that grew her own gardenia tree - kept it in a rusty bucket, let it die in the fall, and put it in the basement, took it out in the spring and set it next to the back porch cement steps and it would bloom constantly.  She loved those azaleas, and tended to them assiduously.  If a bush around the house got too big, she would dig it up, plop it in a wheelbarrow and switch it with another bush from elsewhere.  She was always shifting them around and changing the color patterns that way.  If a bush got scraggly, she moved it to the back to recuperate and put another in its place.  She always claimed they had shallow roots and were easy to move, and the only downside is that sometimes she disturbed a yellow jacket nest and had to spray.  If she wanted a new bush, Grandmom just weighed down a branch with a rock and sure enough it would root and she'd have a whole new plant.  She gave many of us in the family baby bushes of the more spectacular bloomers.  And when the day drew to a close, she was sit on the glider,  and admire her handiwork, with or without company

A couple of years before COVID, I was on the east side of Baltimore around the time the azaleas were blooming and decided to drive past Grandmom's house.  I drove up the little unmarked narrow road, slowing down and gawking, trying not to be too intrusive because I knew nothing about who had bought it when we settled the estate after Grandmom died.  I was extremely distraught and came to a complete stop in the middle of the road as I realized the azaleas were gone - ALL of them.  Not one single bush was visible.  Nothing around the house.  Nothing lining the driveway.  Nothing lining the line between the woods and the lot or the neighbors and the lot, not even a flower garden.  

Just ...  grass.

At some point in the past 40 years or so, someone had pulled out every single azalea on the property, and leveled the ground.  I guess it was a lot easier to mow that way?  I don't know.  I drove away muttering under my breath  "bloomin' idiots" and mourning even as I realized how ridiculous it was to tear up over plants.

Another childhood place washed away by the progress of time...