wednesday's words and wanderings and wonderings

Bloom where you are planted...Like a flower pushing through the cracks, you can thrive despite challenging situations. 

 Look at this cute little pansy! Don't you just love its face-like markings?

A pretty bouquet for the Easter dinner table grown by a young woman who has a small-scale flower farm in Dayton's Historic Inner East neighborhood. She sells the bouquets at Pink Moon Goods, a gift and stationery shop in the neighboring Huffman Historic District. Two women-owned businesses helping one another out.

A walk through downtown's RiverScape MetroPark. The ducks are waiting for the small pools to be filled with water. 

The Miami Valley Bikeways is the nation’s largest paved trail network.

Two US Bike Routes pass through Dayton and RiverScape. US BR 25 North begins at the Michigan border and passes through Toledo, Lima and Dayton before ending just north of Cincinnati. This route runs along segments of the Little Miami Scenic Trail and Great Miami River Trail. USBR 50 in Ohio connects West Virginia in the east through Columbus to Indiana in the west. A few bikers were riding a long the river but had a few detours because the river was flooding the trail.

Saturday my daughter-in-law and I went to see Suffs, a musical based on the suffragists and the American women’s suffrage movement. It focuses on the historical events leading to the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1920 giving women the right to vote. Both of my grandmothers were born in 1904 and were 16 years old when this amendment passed. I wonder if their mothers were involved in the suffragist movement. One of my grandmas was from Chicago where Ida B. Wells, a black woman, a pioneering suffragist and civil rights activist fought for women's voting rights while battling racism within the movement. She founded the Alpha Suffrage Club in Chicago to mobilize Black women voters and famously refused to march in the segregated back section of the 1913 Woman Suffrage Parade. She walked with the Illinois delegation, not behind it. Suffs will be on TV beginning on May 8. I highly recommend watching it.

tiptoe through the tulips

The daffodils are at the end of their blooming season and now it's the tulips' time to show off their spring colors. We are under a freeze warning for the next couple of days and I'm so hoping these beauties will laugh in the face of the plummeting temperature and escape undamaged.

 

monday's mulling: grand-aunt leta

Easter dinner was quiet and casual. It was just the four of us -  my son and daughter-in-law, Todd and me. To set the table, I opened the cupboard for the everyday dishes. Practical and familiar. But then something in me paused. "No," I thought. "Easter deserves a little bit of pretty." So I brought down the set my mom gave me, the one edged with delicate violets. The same violets now peeking through the yard, bright and cheerful beside the dandelions.

One thing led to another and white paper napkins felt too "blah." I opened the buffet drawer, the one filled with hand-embroidered cloth napkins, each one stitched with care by hands I never knew. As I sifted through them, I reached the very bottom and found something tucked away: an embroidered dish towel, a bit of brittle paper still taped to it.

"Made by Leta for your hope chest."

Leta Ophelia was my grandpa’s only sister, 3rd child in the line up of four siblings, born in 1902. She stitched this piece for her brother’s fiancée as a bridal shower gift, something pretty to begin their married life. My grandparents were married on June 17, 1925.

This careful work has traveled a full century to reach my hands - one hundred years held together by thread, memory, and love.

Out of curiosity I googled "What is my relation to my mom's aunt?" I thought the answer would be great-aunt, which most people assume. But it's not, my grandpa's sister is my grand-aunt. Ancestry.com gives this explanation: "A grand-aunt is the name that should be given to the sister of a person’s grandparent, indicating that they are the first generation of an aunt or uncle beyond your parent’s siblings. So, just like with grandparents, saying grand-aunt indicates the familial relation is two generations away." Isn't life grand?

happy easter and it's national dandelion day, too

Happy Easter to all! Wishing you blessings of love, joy, and hope.

National Dandelion Day celebrates a flower that many overlook. It's often labeled as a weed but the dandelion brings color, food, and healing to the world. The flower’s strong roots dig deep into the earth and its bright yellow blooms appear early in the year. After winter’s cold and gray, these bright yellow flowers dot the greening yards with sunshine. This day reminds people that beauty and purpose can grow where least expected.

 “I am born as the sun,

But then turn into the moon,

As my blonde hairs turn

Grayish-white and fall to

The ground,

Only to be buried again,

Then to be born again,

Into a thousand suns

And a thousand moons."

HYMN OF THE DIVINE DANDELION by Suzy Kassem

“...I love dandelions. They make me feel like sunshine itself, and you will always see some creature resting on an open bloom, if you have a little patience to wait. This vital source for all emerging pollinators is a blast of uplifting yellow to brighten even the greyest of days. It stands tall and proud, unlike all the others opening and swaying in the breeze. The odd one out.”

~ Dara McAnulty, Diary of a Young Naturalist

sunflower stamps

On March 14, the U.S. Postal Service unveiled its new Sunflowers Forever stamp, a tribute to the flower’s beauty, symbolism, and ecological importance. As someone who adores sunflowers and delights in dressing up my correspondence with cheerful, eye-catching stamps, I couldn’t resist. During a visit to the post office last week, I picked up two sheets of this fresh release to add to my ever-growing stamp collection. 

And arriving April 18: the Happy Birthday Forever Stamp. Safe to say I’ll be making another pilgrimage to the post office. It’s such a cheerful, first-glance greeting - perfect for celebrating the recipient before they even open the envelope. 

 

the friday feed: sugar and spice?

What are little girls made of?

Sugar and spice 

and everything nice, 

That’s what little girls are made of.

April is National Poetry Month. 

I grew up hearing this poem. Little girls are made of sugar and spice and everything nice and little boys were made of frogs and snails and puppy dog tails. I wasn't much of a play-with-dolls girl. I wanted to be outside climbing trees, playing in mud, riding my bike, playing tag until I was sweaty, not inside playing with dolls. To this day I'm still that kid who loves to ride her bike and get dirt underneath her fingernails and all that other stuff.

april fool's joke

My youngest child loves April Fool's Day. He's pulled some pretty good pranks over the years. 

One year, it was around dinner time and he called up and said he and his wife were cooking a turkey for dinner. It was still frozen, they were soaking it in not water to thaw it, and he wanted to know how long they should cook it in the microwave. I fell for that one hook, line, and sinker. 

"Andrew, you can't thaw a turkey in hot water. It's not safe. Bacteria will grow and you'll get sick. How big is your turkey?"

"12 pounds."

"One, you don't microwave turkeys and two, it won't fit. Why are you cooking a turkey in April anyways?" Then it hit me right before the hilarious laughing ensued. He got me good...

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This came in the family text yesterday morning. The Cleveland/Chicago jabs run strong between the Ohio boys and the Chicago boys...this is the most recent. 

 "And you Chicagoans think you're something special because you have the Pope."

~ Andrew from Cleveland