Sunday, April 7, 2013

Glory Days

Reporting out that today was just a fantastic day in Virginia. The weather was sunny and the humidity low. Spring is just around the corner. The march of the grape hyacinths continues, the daffodils are in full bloom, and the forsythias are beginning to pop. This week the cherry blossoms are supposed to hit their peak in D.C. I really have to go see that some day.


I put down 30 bags of mulch in the flower beds, but sadly had to put down a volunteer redbud tree that I had been nurturing for some 10 years. It had been trying to eek out an existence under the nandina, but was really a stunted Quasimodo-like thing that never bloomed. I sat in the grass, soaking up the sun with Panda. She had a friend come over. they wrestled and drank water outside. She later slept under the shrubs while I finished up.


There was time for some hill training, and then back for a brisk walk with Panda the Jacaranda. In the field a boy was flying a most excellent dragon kite like the one above. Panda has taken to Robins and squirrels lately, but here was something truly amazing. And of course, my mind was hijacked into my single-digit days, when we used to fly the paper Jello Kites.


Yeah, it looks lame, right? Well this was before there was PS3, or 2 or even Atari or cellphones! or PCs! I think my Mom got them from boxtops or something but we had a seemingly endless supply of them. We would go into the stubbled cornfield next door, and that was entertainment. Or we would climb in a tree, as high as we could go, and just sit there. Swaying in the breeze, looking out over the cornfield. And those were great days too.