Speaking of Hope

Every chilled to the bone Detroiter is filled with new hope today.

It’s Opening Day for our Tigers. And even though it will probably be in the 40’s, even though the forecast is for rain and even though we already have players out with injuries, spring is in the HOUSE!

It’s not easy to get tickets to opening day so I’ll be watching the game on TV. And while I watch the boys take the field, I am sure to be transported through space and time to a warm seat in the sun with a cold beer in my hand and I’ll immediately get a craving for a hot dog.


I grew up with Tigers baseball and I remember days at the old stadium with fondness. It was a great place made greater because I always went with my dad.

Now I have fond memories of the new park. In April 2000, our first spring back in Michigan, Brian and I got tickets to a Tigers vs. Mariners game. Our two home teams. It was cold, it even snowed. It wasn’t easy to get food, (the vendors were still getting used to the brand new park), but I felt like I was in heaven. It wasn’t heaven, it was baseball.


We eventually got to take the whole family to a game. We bought eight tickets and “gave” them to my mom for her birthday.


My parents came, my sister Karen, my Brother "in law" Steve and the fabulous, then pre-teen, niece and nephew, Ali and Jason, all cheered through a game in the bleachers in the sun. We were in the right outfield, right behind Magglio Ordonez. And even though my dad was already feeling the effects of Alzheimer's disease, he beamed through the game, I hope I will never forget that day, even though he did.

So here’s to the games, past, present and future. And here’s to the fans and the team and the roars of the crowd. Here’s to the all the memories of afternoons in the sun.

Here’s to everything that the new season brings to this baseball fan. 

Here's to you. The Beer is on me

--David

originally posted on iWeb

A Beautiful Morning

originally posted on iWeb
Friday, March 28, 2008

Another three inches of fluffiness was waiting to greet the dawn. No doubt moving us up even further in the top ten snowiest. Budding branches wrapped in white against a blue sky. Just lovely.

After I shoveled the sidewalk, again, we took an hour to play outside, the three dogs and I. What else can you do? With a day like this, who needs to plant?

Planting may not be advisable with Lucy around, anyway. Lucy is a dog’s dog. Well known as a lover of sticks, she has recently taken to the remains of an old Christmas tree. The needled branches are used to mulch the acid-loving perennials. The old trunk is left behind, waiting to be chopped up for yule logs. Odds are it won’t make it to the firebox. I hadn’t foreseen the new puppy, or that she would claim it as her own.

But she has other tricks that will probably prevent any attempts to spruce up the garden. Dog’s dog Lucy is a digger. So far this winter she had dug up many of the dead annuals we had left out for the birds. She also managed to dig out an old steel fence post. She has even taken to the bricks that edge the walk to the back door. Her deceptively “soft” mouth is strong enough to lift the bricks out of the frozen ground.

All these prizes become her playthings, including the bricks, which she proudly grips with her dainty jaws while running around the yard. Her act is cute now, but if she starts eyeing the good plants, I may have to find a cute little muzzle.


Not that I have anything to worry about today. All the investments are safely dormant under the fresh blanket. Maybe Lucy will lost interest in the beds once Spring arrives. Hope IS eternal. 


--David

Hope springs

Originally Posted on iWeb
Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Today I saw a daffodil bravely poking out of the cold soil. Last summer I transplanted a hundred of them from the front of the house. The new porch needed a new planting plan, so I dug huge holes and sifted the bulbs from the soil. I tucked them into the beds in the backyard. The little kids next door where enthralled with my days of labor. They promised to come back to see them blooming. We were full of hope.

Now, the bulbs I transplanted are the first ones coming up. Will they keep growing? Will they survive to bloom? There are no guarantees in the garden.
But I will keep hoping, keep waiting.

I have been taking the Master Gardener Class since January. Tomorrow is the 11th of 12 weekly classes. Deep in January, I remember thinking how glorious Spring would be by the time I was finishing class. By now the beds would be groomed, I would have planted the early crops. I’d be watching the pea shoots emerging. I was being overly optimistic.

March is almost done, of course I am behind schedule. The raised beds are still snow covered and too wet to dig. I can’t plant seed for peas and spinach in the mud.

Am I being delusional? Has our historically early Easter, the earliest one in our lifetimes, tricked me and filled me with false expectations? Mother Nature has been not been kind, teasing me with afternoons of warm sunshine and then dosing out one chill pill after another.

Will the snow ever go away? I am ready, willing and able to put my book learnin’ to good use. I wonder if I will ever be able to get my hands in the soil.

-- David

Hope springs eternal in the human breast;
Man never Is, but always To be blest:
The soul, uneasy and confin'd from home,
Rests and expatiates in a life to come.

-Alexander Pope,
An Essay on Man, Epistle I, 1733