doing flowers...

... at the Botanical Gardens on Monday afternoon. Meeting a friend who signed up with me to show up with odds and ends clipped from home gardens that will hopefully turn into attractive decorations to place on tables, mantles for beautifying the hundred year old farm house. The building where we work and put our creations was donated to the city to be the beginning of local garden spot for the community to enjoy. The quite large house, originally home place of Adams family, was relocated to property that has been planted, cultivated over time to be a very attractive show place, rental property for events and locale of spring and fall fund-raiser plant sales.

This is where I was last Saturday, when painting pumpkins and ghosts on small faces. Again on Monday when I met Shirley, with my bucket full of greenery trimmed from an overgrown loropetalum bush on Eleanor St. in Decatur. Plus two bunches of chrysanthemum blooms purchased to add color to the arrangements. Shirley had lots of blooming things she had trimmed from her garden and yard: zinnias, bright yellow daisy-looking rudbeckia, lavender lantana, something with tiny white blooms she called dragon's breath. Me with my yellow, purple and lime green mums.

We always have a good time when we get together - chatting about family, local events, spouses. I thought I would be finished in an hour or so, but it took much longer than expected. I can usually get there at 1 p.m. and be headed home before three. But I got there early and still was after 3:00 pm leaving. Lots of places to put cut flower arrangements: two large antique dining tables, several massive wooden sideboards/ buffets, four mantle pieces, plus various smaller tables in sitting areas.

stetson...

... makes a man smell really good. I like it and like the way a man smells when he puts forth the effort to smell manly and attractive.Fresh and Clean, and Interested in wanting to smell pleasant.

The two bottles here, one cologne and the other aftershave, were gifts from the daughter to her dad. She told me she bought him a birthday gift, probably delivered to the door from those very efficient people at Amazon who can have it packaged and shipped before you sign off on the credit card payment. I have not been around it in many years, and honestly don't remember what it smells like, though my brain tells me it is quite pleasant, providing nice thoughts of manly men.

She said she bought it due to thinking that was what her dad smelled like when she was a child. Even though The Man Who Lives Here has not put forth any effort to smell attractive in many years - it just reminded her of her dad. He received it when they met on his birthday at Cracker Barrel, and hopefully thanked her for the gift, even though it was only half-unwrapped. The two small boxes rode around in his truck for over a month, before he started in the direction of the house, even though they did not actually come in. Until Friday when I brought the Stetson in from where he left them in the carport. The only reason they got out of his truck was to clean it out before he left for a weekend of cards in Biloxi at the casino.

I laughed when she told me what she was giving him for his birthday, after she said she associated that aroma with her dad. Because I am the one who started buying it for him many years ago. Even more amusing is the reason I bought it: the first face of 'Stetson' was Tom Selleck. The first time I saw his smiling face, complete with dimples was on a big six foot tall free standing cutout in a department store.  Oh, my goodness: Life-size Tom Selleck with a big toothy smile, and a pair of dimples. It was love at first sight. I tried to persuade the clerk in the department store in Valdosta to let me have that very attractive man, even though that two dimensional cardboard cutout did not actually smell like the cologne. Sadly she reported he was already promised to another customer who had also fallen in lust with that very attractive man, so he was not available...

I wonder how different my life would have been if Tom Selleck had come home with me that day???

snowman...

...seen in the garden shop at Walmart when I ran in yesterday. I usually buy gas at the Murphy station in the parking lot, and will reload a Wallyworld gift card to use a the pumps for a 3 cent discount. The balance on the card received as a birthday gift was getting really low, so I had to dash in the store to add twenty bucks. The shortest line is usually in the area with out door furniture, fertilizer and seasonal stuff. Even though it is not yet Halloween, the season has been pushed into December: I had to back up and look again when I saw this guy in the line up of fake Christmas trees... Not sure where creative drops off and tacky takes over - but this one took a lot of imagination.

face painting...

... at Botanical Gardens annual Fall Festival. These are your choices....

Every Saturday in October had something going on. I requested to have the day off from my little part time jobette to be volunteering for some non-paying project every weekend. Botanical Gardens the first and last Saturdays of the month, recycling program with Keep Columbus Beautiful one day. That lost weekend in the woods of Harris County working at the retreat for three days.

I've been scrambling all week trying to find some teenagers to help with the face painting event today. I thought helpers were all squared away weeks ago, when I was at a Girl Scout recruitment and saw a group of girls who were painting butterflies and rainbows on attendees. There were dozens of families lined up to enroll youngsters in Scouts, and a number of organized troops doing demonstrations of all the fun the girls do/have when they participate. Got contact info. for the troop leader of the girls who were painting, and thought the labor for today had been arranged.

But when I called her the first of the week to confirm, my plans went awry. No scouts. I began to contact everyone I could think of who had some connection with teenagers, desperate to recruit extra pairs of hands to help. I have no idea who/how many children will be at the event all day today, for the Fall Festival/Plant Sale. I know how antsy little people get when they have to stand and wait, so have some quick, easy designs for them to choose from. But being the only one doing the painting, no matter how simple the designs would be not be a good thing. All those feelers have paid off somewhat, as I have hopes that two helpers will show up this morning. I'm hoping that being a chilly Saturday morning, a fall festival will get off to a slow start, and there will not be a lot of activity early in the day.

Fortunately my commitment is from 8:30 (set up) until 1, when someone else will come and take the second half of the day, with other Scouts showing up to help in the afternoon. I have my fingers and toes crossed that the teenagers who said they would be there to help will actually show up. Allowing me to leave and not devote my entire day to this project.

when he went...

... on his birthday to meet the daughters for lunch last month,  I am certain they would have been at the prearranged location: Cracker Barrel, his preferred destination. Where I can say without a moment's hesitation he would have ordered the "Uncle Herschel" breakfast for lunch. Three different meats plus eggs and biscuits. That is the Only Thing he orders when he walks in the door at Cracker Barrel.

Plus he will always be early. Making you think you are late, because he is sitting there drumming his fingers on the table top, waiting, with a questioning expression on his countenance when you arrive. Not specifically giving the 'stink eye', just a sense of  'what took you so long?' or 'why did you not leave home thirty minutes sooner like I did?' This Man is always early.

Always! The same one who would get dressed on a Sunday morning, back in the era when everyone wore suits and ties to church, and go sit in the car and wait for me and two children to 'Hurry up! Come on! Get out here!' While I was trying to brush hair, find shoes, tie bows, wipe faces for both of them, plus get me ready. He is sitting in the driveway with the motor running, scowling in frustration at our failure. Forcing him to wait instead of being the first one to arrive and unlock the doors.

So he would have been sitting there at the assigned table, awaiting their arrival. Expecting one daughter, but not the second. I can picture the expression on his face, when they walked in the seating area, and there were two of them. The look of wide-eyed surprise he always makes when something unexpected happens. Amazed at the sight, marveling in wonder. Delighted to see both of them, but especially the older one he might see once a year. What a pleasant surprise!


PS... Go back and read the first paragraph, about his devotion to the Uncle Hershel breakfast. And remember the blog I wrote about a family friend. The man who is a retired physician. When he would be on call at the local ER and have to go in to work at 3 a.m., to tend to an orthopedic emergency - there would be gurneys lining the halls with rotund men, lying prone awaiting attention. They came in when awakened at 1:15 in the morning with urgent chest pains, thinking they were candidates for heart attacks. Unwilling to be proactive and do the things they could to be healthy, expecting medical professionals to magically produce a cure for a lifetime of bad habits and non-compliance. This family friend referred to the steady stream of overweight men in crisis as having a problem with 'biscuit poisoning'.

his idea...

...of amusing from the viewpoint of The Man Who Lives Here. He had a birthday recently, and was invited to have lunch with the daughter who lives in Decatur. She asked if he would be willing to drive for an hour to meet her halfway between where he lives and where she lives. It is not a difficult drive on this end, and one that I have done many times for the express purpose of meeting for lunch, just hanging out, a walk in the park to talk. I will never get over despising the traffic in metro, and meeting half-way after a pleasant drive through the piney woods is preferable to forcing oneself to drive into the pit of hell that describes interstates in Atlanta. Practically no traffic at all heading north on I-185 that literally 'dead ends' on the military post here - amazingly easy traveling with clean landscape: not even one billboard, never any noticeable litter, very few big trucks.

He was born in the years of The Great Depression, which was the worst economic downturn in the history of the industrialized world, lasting from 1929 to 1939. It began after the stock market crash of October 1929, which sent Wall Street into a panic and wiped out millions of investors. These lean years had a profound effect on everyone who lived through that time, both adults and young people who grew up in those years of scarcity.

I don't know specifically how it affected his family, when he was growing up in a town where steel mills were the primary employer, but that crash where banks failed affected the entire nation, as well as others around the globe. I have an amateur/personal theory of how living in a time of financial fear affected him, but that is for another day. He was too young to feel the full brunt of constant anxiety, but overheard conversations expressing concerns, doubts, worries would have had a trickle down effect. The abbreviated history lesson is just to give you an idea of his age, as his birth was right smack dab in the middle of those years.

The daughter asked him to meet her for lunch, on a Sunday after church. His response was something along the lines of 'maybe', with an invisible shrug, even though the invite was issued weeks before the actual day. She asked again, after a reasonable amount of time had passed. His response was 'I'm waiting to see if I get a better offer'. 'Wow!' was my reaction when she told me what had transpired through text messages.

When I returned home and saw The Man Who Lives Here, I told him (after he had been fed!) that if someone liked me enough to say 'meet me for lunch', even without knowing it was a birthday, I would jump at the chance. My response would be to immediately clear my calendar, check to see if my slip is showing, and start putting on  my party hat. The answer should never be 'let me wait and see if something better comes along'. The conversation went on a bit longer, with me trying to understand how he could think an insulting response was amusing or appropriate. It has become obvious over many years that his sense of humor does not align with mine: any number of times I have made a serious inquiry to be met with a flippant answer. Baffling until I remind myself of how thankful I am that God made everybody different!

She later reported that I had 'shamed' her dad into accepting, actually making a call instead of the impersonal texting method. Agreeing to make the drive to meet her an hour up the highway, halfway between her home and his. Without knowing there was a second daughter invited to come along, one he rarely sees, meant to be a surprise when they arrived at the Cracker Barrel for lunch.

amusing stickers...

... on the back window of a SUV waiting at the light ahead of me. You've seen the one that has the silhouette of T Rex, that dinosaur with the hopelessly short front legs making them useless for bringing food to it's toothy mouth. And the accompanying caption: "If you are happy and you know it... oh, never mind" indicating the carnivore has legs far too short to bring the claws together to clap, or do anything else with like self-feeding.

And another one that has the same silhouette of the T Rex, gobbling up stick figures, stuffing them in his jaws with both 'arms'. That caption that relates something about how much this hungry reptile enjoyed consuming your 'stick family'. Meant to be the perfect comeback to all those people who enjoy showing other motorists how many family members and assorted pets live at their house, often dressed as zombies or Star Wars characters.

The one I saw today was a small sticker with that T Rex in profile, but he had some of those mechanical grabbers on both claws, the little gadget you can get a discount store to help you reach things on high shelves, or under the bed three feet away. Used to extend his reach enough to grab any tasty morsel that came along and stuff it in his greedy toothy mouth. All three of these decals on the back window of the same vehicle were pretty amusing. At least that's what I thought when I was waiting for the light to change from red to green....