Thursday, April 26, 2007

Stopping to smell the flowers


For some reason, I thought I'd signed up to blog here on Tuesday of this week. Tuesday was my 31st wedding anniversary. It was also the day of the combined community- junior college choir concert, and I joined the community choir this spring. The community choir has six to eight members (depending on the weather and whether our tenor who works for the highway department has to be out on the highway to deal with flooding or tornados). The college choir has around 15 members. So every one of us had to be there, both for dress rehearsal on Monday and the concert on Tuesday.

Tuesday, I also had to drive the 60 miles into Amarillo to put money in the bank for our son at college. (There are banks in our little town--two of them--but none of them are also in Waco.) Baby has to pay his rent, you know. And then I had to drive home again in time for warm-up. I didn't even think about computers or the Internet, much less blogging, until Wednesday. Fortunately, I hadn't signed up, so I was safe. (whew!)

And I'm trying to revise a book I just finished writing. For some reason, just after I've finished something, my life is much less organized than it is when I'm driving for the finish line, heading frantically for the point where I can write: The End. Now that it's done, I have to go back and look at the beginning again and figure out if the beginning matches the end, and if it gets lost anywhere in the middle and--well, lots of stuff.

But when I walked home from picking up the last couple of days' worth of mail at the post office this afternoon (it's only 3 blocks away--if you don't count the swing around the park and baseball fields), I noticed the iris blooming in my front yard. I inspected each one of them and picked off the faded wads of old blossom. I pulled up the nasty thistly dandelion thing that isn't a dandelion, but tries to fool you into thinking it is. (Should have pulled up a lot more of them, but the ground's a little hard.) I stopped to smell the flowers. And I wanted to share them with you. I hope flowers are blooming where you are. Go take a whiff, okay?

7 comments:

JoAnn Ross said...

Gail-- It's after eleven p.m., and I'm taking a break from 14 hrs of writing before another 3-4, and for some reason wandered over to our Pasic blog and saw your purple iris. (Btw, I wrote a LOT of HQ categories to pay for my own kid's college, so I could so identify with that!)

Anyway, crawling out of my deadline cave this morning, I noticed we had some bearded iris blooming in the back yard way early, I guess from our exceptionally warm winter. Even more surprising, my sweetie pointed out, was they were ones he'd transplanted, and we weren't sure they'd survive.

So, thanks so much for sharing. And especially thanks for reminding me, four days from deadline, that there are, indeed, a lot of wonderful things out there beyond writing!

gailbarrett said...

Beautiful photos, Gail! Thanks for sharing them!!!

JoAnn Ross said...

Forgot to mention. . . a belated happy anniversary!

Susan Vaughan said...

Gail,
Beautiful pictures. I do love irises. Here on the coast of Maine my daffodils have just started to form buds. The irises will be awhile longer, about mid June. But I can enjoy yours in the meantime.
And happy anniversary.

Susan

Gail Dayton said...

Thanks, all for the kind wishes.

Our spring exploded suddenly, here in the Texas panhandle, after a wet and snowy winter--that extended into spring. It snowed at Easter! But all the moisture has made things beautiful. Enjoy spring as it gets sprung where you are!

Tessa McDermid said...

Congratulations, Gail. And now I'll confess, we're coming up to our 31st anniversary the middle of May. I know we've changed in our physical appearance but so many times when I look at him, we're just those two kids who decided to get married to each other. Time is a funny thing!

He takes care of the flowerbed in our front yard and I never know what's going to be in there. He told me on Saturday he had an appointment early morning -- turned out he was hitting the plant sale at one of the local shops! He didn't want to miss the pick of the blooms. One of the reasons we're still together after all these years.

Nancy Morse said...

30 years for Gail and 31 for Terry? Why, you girls are still newlyweds. I just celebrated my 40th, and I'm still in shock. I must say, no birthday ever affected me as much as this anniversary. It really drove home the passage of time. A few days before my wedding my mom and I had an argument and she said my marriage wouldn't last. Well, I guess I showed her.