Spring Bouquet

Spring arrives with the same exhilaration I feel when I receive a gift of flowers. I have said time and again in this blog how much I love spring and how it is my favorite of the seasons. I particularly love the hopeful, spring-green color that emerges in the hillsides when everything starts to wake up and come back to life for another season of growing and blooming.

While I know that spring officially arrives in March, in our cold climate, spring doesn’t start to make itself obvious until sometime in April.

My love of spring began when I was a child, perhaps because my late mother and I enjoyed spring birthdays. More likely, however, I love spring because my mom embraced the season fully with a joy that could only rub off on those around her.

My late mother, Barb Naidl (right), and me, posing in front of one of the lilac bushes in our backyard.

Spring meant an ever-cascading array of flowers in our home—lilacs, lilies of the valley, branches of forsythia and flowering current, and stems of iris, some dark purple and white and others brown and yellow. All of these flowering beauties grew without much assistance in our spacious backyard. They seemed to know they were welcome there, so they flourished pretty much on their own.

Me, lounging in our backyard. The beds of iris are visible behind me.

Beginning in April all the way through May, Mom would fill antique pitchers of all sizes with flowers, including one really large white porcelain pitcher that nestled perfectly into a large porcelain bowl, even though the bowl was not its original mate. That pitcher was so heavy that it required two hands to carry it safely.

This heavy bowl and pitcher held sprays of beauty during all seasons.

My favorite spring flowers were the lilacs and the lilies of the valley because of their heady scent. Mom would carefully cut, trim and then arrange small branches heavy with lavender and white lilacs in her precious pitcher collection and then place them strategically in nearly every room in our house, thus filling each space with fragrance.

There would be delicate milk glass vases filled with lilies of the valley, offering a lovely white-on-white contrast to the dark walnut antique commode chests on which they would be featured in our home’s living room. My mother loved antiques, so our home was rich with them.

Spring also meant the early budding of our yard’s three willow trees. Although they tend to be messy, I’ve always loved weeping willows. In the spring, they are among the first trees to hint that the seasons are changing, with their delicate yellow hue. 

The weeping willows in our yard provided a place for me to play and imagine.
In the early spring, they were among the first trees to hint at spring when they
turned a gentle shade of yellow-green while everything else was still brown.

Violets played a big part in my childhood springs and they still do today. As if overnight, our backyard would transform into a sea of white and purple as the violets began to bloom. Our family would wait to mow the lawn for the first time in the spring until the violets had had their time to shine.

Aside from nature’s welcoming changes, spring also meant a change in wardrobe, particularly represented by a new dress to wear to church on Easter. I can still remember how special I felt in one particular Easter outfit. The dress was made of a linen blend, the top portion of it white splashed with large, navy blue polka dots and the skirt portion plain navy. Over the dress was a matching navy linen blend coat. I wore a white hat decorated with a wide, navy blue grosgrain ribbon. The outfit was topped off with white anklets, white shoes and white gloves. I felt snazzy!

One of my favorite new Easter outfits from my childhood.
I felt so dressed up with my hat and matching dress and coat.

Despite my fond memories of new Easter clothes and the remembrances of how special I felt in them, when I reflect on springs past, it’s the flowers I recall most vividly and how my mom would bring them inside to transform our home into a special, fragrant and lovely place.

There are signs of spring sprouting everywhere now. Spend some time in nature, watching the changes unfold, the flowers bloom and the increasing signs of earth’s reawakening.

And as the earth transforms, contemplate what that reawakening of spring might mean for you.

A Recipe for Happy Memories

     Have you ever smelled a particular scent, heard a particular song or tasted a particular food and, as a result, a flood of memories fills your head and heart? So it is at this time of year when I smell the scent of evergreens and cinnamon sticks, sing Christmas carols, hear church bells on a winter night and taste Christmas cookies, candies and treats. 
     So it is, also, when I pull out my late mom's recipe box filled with cookie recipes from Christmases of days gone by. The memories hidden inside that unassuming, yet precious box envelop me like a warm comforter.

     As I reminisced over Mom's recipe box this year, I found myself carefully lifting out recipe cards that are faded and stained from years of use. I read recipes for Aunt Mae's sugar cookies, our good friend Betty's biscotti, Aunt Alice's date macaroons, our dear friend Barb's seven-layer cookies, Grandma Carrie's fruit cookies, Aunt Ellie's sugar cookies and Mom's dream bars. Each recipe was written carefully in the baker's penmanship on a plain, lined 3" x 5" index card. 

     I got swept away just thinking of these special women in my life.

     Soon, my memories took me back to Christmas days of my childhood, when my parents and I would drive the three hours across the state to Grandma and Grandpa's home. We'd enter their home through the kitchen where I'd immediately spy a huge stack of large coffee cans in the corner. Each can would be filled with a different variety of Christmas cookie. They might be peanut crunches, gum drop cookies, lemon snowballs, pinwheel cookies or bourbon balls. They would all be delicious because Grandma was a wonderful baker, but my favorites were always the Russian tea cakes -- a shortbread-type of cookie made primarily of butter, powdered sugar, vanilla, flour, salt and chopped nuts, rolled into balls or crescents and then smothered, while still warm, in another round of powdered sugar.

     If I was a lucky girl, I'd receive new pajamas for Christmas from Grandpa and Grandma. If I was a really lucky girl, I'd get a small container of my very own Russian tea cakes, too.

     I'm admittedly not the baker I once was. We rarely eat very much refined sugar anymore. But I can't part with that recipe box. It sits idle in the kitchen drawer for most of the year, but when December rolls around, I feel urged to look inside at its precious contents, holding each recipe card, studying the ingredients and directions through faded handwriting and cooking stains, and thinking back to Christmases past when coffee cans of cookies was one of the most spectacular holiday sights for a little girl.

Note: Check back here on January 1, 2018 when something new for the new year will be unveiled at "Time to Be"!

Unfashionably Comfortable

A dear friend pointed out to me on Easter Sunday last month that she was wearing a skirt that had been my mom's and a sweater that had belonged to a mutual friend. Both of these women are now deceased, so my friend's decision to wear articles of their clothing that day was a particularly special way to remember and honor them. At about the same time, the weather had finally warmed up enough that I could store my winter bathrobe in the back of the closet and bring out my lightweight version. My warmer-months robe is lightweight pink fleece, but it has seen better days. It's pilling a bit, has a little stain on it and features a hem that could use repair yet again, but I simply can't part with that robe, for it had been my late mother's. When I wear that robe, I can see Mom wearing it and I feel as if I'm closer to her. As with many facets of my personality, I must take after Mom when it comes to finding comfort in another loved one's clothing. I recall my mom keeping my dad's bathrobe after he passed away, for she, too, drew comfort from wearing it. It took her several years to part with that robe. While I am not one to surround myself with many mementos or articles of clothing, there are certain things I treasure. Anyone else would look at my rather tired, pilled, stained robe and wonder why I don't simply discard it and replace it with something bright and new. But, that faded pink, lightweight fleece robe, complete with stain, pills and saggy hem, has nothing to do with fashion and everything to do with finding comfort in something that my lovely mom had touched, had worn and in which she, too, had found comfort. Someday, I'll part with Mom's robe, but for now, pills, stain, loose hem and all, I wouldn't trade it for anything.

Waxing Nostalgic

I recently read a great book by Faith Baldwin, called Face Toward the Spring.  My friend Karen loaned it to me and it seemed to have come into my life just when I needed it.  One of the chapters has to do with time and how we perceive it.  As a child, I naturally lived in the present.  Time had a different meaning then and that continued to be true even as a young adult.  Now that I'm in my mid-50s, I live in this strange world of yesterday, today and tomorrow, seeing all equally.  Faith Baldwin cautions that it isn't healthy to live in the past, and I would have to agree, even though it's easy to confine yourself there.  I tend to filter those yesterdays and see only the best in them, so they're not as they really were anyway. There is truly so much beauty, wonder and adventure in today and so many hopes and promises for tomorrow that we can't just get lost in times past. Faith Baldwin also calls her readers to not be afraid of the future.  Truly, I believe it's healthiest to appreciate the past and trust that there will be good in the future, but to live squarely in today, for the present is our own to enjoy, shape and live.  So, although I tend to wax nostalgic at times in this blog, especially as I remember the spirit of my parents, there's nothing like living today with a heart full of gratitude and an anticipation for the next adventure ahead.