Getting Back in the Groove

Last week was a hectic week here for me. Not just because of the problems Friday night that landed me in the hospital in Pittsburgh for two days but also because I had a lot of stuff going on during the days prior to that.

These were things that, for the most part, took me out of the house for several hours a couple days during the week.

One day, I had to go out to the church and there, along with about 7 other women from church and our women's group, we spent the afternoon cleaning the church's social hall -getting it all prepped up and cleaned from top to bottom so it would be ready then for the "Spring Garden Party Luncheon" that our women's group held there this past Saturday. (And for which I had baked four different kinds of bar cookies to be served at the luncheon but because of the emergency trip to Pittsburgh, obviously I was unable to attend the luncheon and have a chance to buy some nice plants (tomato, green peppers, flowers and such) to support our fund raiser.

Last Wednesday, the little group of 4 other girls from my high school class that normally gets together for a lunch meeting on the last Thursday of the month, met a day ahead of schedule because two of our group -my friend Kate and I -had a memorial service to attend last Thursday at church and I was also delegated to help work/serve the lunch after that service too. So that took Wednesday then out of my time to do some of my routine stuff.

Thursday -well as I said above there was the memorial service to attend and the dinner to serve. The service was for the husband of a woman originally from here, from our church who has lived in Tennessee (Johnson City area) for quite a number of years and she also happens to be a distant cousin to me as well as that she grew up across the street from me in the house that had originally belonged to my Great-grandparents.

Then, of course with the trip to Pittsburgh and not getting back home from there until midnight Monday night, I had by that time missed taking Sammy for any of our regular longer walks for almost a full week.

On Tuesday, I started trying to take Sam out again and building up the distance we walk too back up to what I had been doing prior to last Wednesday. So Tuesday, because I was a bit out of practice shall we say after a week of no lengthy walks, we only went about 3/4 of a mile, round-trip. Yesterday, we went down towards the ghost town of Peale again and walked about 1.2 miles. Today, I took him out to the area called "Cooper Two" and walked 1.72 miles, round trip.

This is the area where there has been a lengthy procedure ongoing for several months now -a mine reclamation deal -and the last time I walked Sam out there, the work was still in full swing.

Since that time -about 4-5 weeks ago -the reclamation is now almost complete and today, there was only one person working, running a big bulldozer and pulling behind what looked somewhat like a rake type thing and more just smoothing over the soil, perhaps readying it for some type of re-planting of trees and stuff to complete the work.

Along the way today, I noticed all the apple and crabapple trees along our street -which as late as last Thursday had been in full blossom and just gorgeous to see those pretty blossoms, had all shed every last one of those flowers.

But, as Sam and I walked along the road up to Cooper Two I noticed today there were two different kinds of very pretty little tiny ground flowers now blooming. One type was of a darker shade of violet, bordering on a purple color along with some wild violets too in a pale lavendar to deeper lavender shade. I also saw some tiny yellow flowers too -and no, these weren't baby dandelions although in all the lawns along our street there is a humungous array of dandelions blooming in every yard!

I picked some of these lilac/lavender/purple and yellow flowers, brought them home and put them in a glass in hopes maybe some of them will then sprout a root or two and I can transplant them in the not-very-much-used flower bed along the front of my house. Heck, if these flowers can come up on their own out in the wild, then surely I can get a couple of them to take hold and grow in this flower bed, don't 'cha think?

I have no idea at all whether this will be a successful venture mainly because I know absolutely zilch about gardening -especially not gardening flowers of any type too!

I'm just sort of experimenting with this in the hopes a couple will live to bloom another day, another year then too!

Last evening, I bought some vegetable seeds and put down a couple rows in the garden bed the son-in-law had fixed up for me last year. Okay that wasn't the most successful garden project ever although I did have good luck with the leaf lettuce I planted there and also, even though the leaves of the two rows of bush beans I planted last year did get hit by the bean blight, I still managed to get a yield of green beans -enough so that I was able to fill 28 baggies with 2 cups of beans in each packet and froze them therefore giving the family "fresh" (frozen) green beans from my garden throughout the winter months. So the garden wasn't a total loss in that respect and we also did get a good crop of cucumbers from it too.

This year, I planted leaf lettuce again, carrots, beets, bush beans, cucumbers and a small row of green onions too but absolutely, under no circumstances whatsover, did I or will I ever again plant corn! Not taking any chances on having the veggie I do love within reach of me at all as I definitely will go to all lengths in that department to avoid any possible re-run of my last visit to Pittsburgh -which I am convinced was caused by my having put some corn in the fried rice I had made for supper last Tuesday, ya know!

My neighbor, Kate, also dropped off a big bucket to me the other night with some rhubarb plants that her daughter, Susan, pulled up from her rhubarb patch and now I have to find some place near the house, but with a lot of sunlight, to transplant these rhubarb plants too.

Now that, the prospect of once again having fresh rhubarb growing somewhere around my property really excites me! It has my mouth watering already in anticipation of being able to cut some stalks of rhubarb and making a pie -rhubarb cream pie -from a recipe I have that was my Grandma's and which was always one of my very favorite types of pies too as long as I can remember. I'm also dreaming of being able to use more rhubarb to cook it down in to a yummy rhubarb sauce too -just like my Mom and Grandma both always used to make -and they would can it too so during the winter months, we often then were able to feast on that delicious sauce with our meals.

Ah, the anticipation of it all, ya know! Just say a prayer that if I do have a tiny -the tiniest degree of a smidgen of a green thumb at all, that it takes affect on the rhubarb so I can once again -before I die -enjoy the tart delicacy of rhubarb sauce or rhubarb cream pie!

Yesterday afternoon, I had such a pleasant surprise in that I had a phone call from a lady who has a home in this area -a "summer home" it is for her now as she winters in Florida, I believe in the West Palm Beach area. She's in her mid-to-late 80s and a sweetheart of a lady too. She's known me since the early 50s when my Mom-who was a registered nurse and always worked private duty -had cared for this lady's mother during her last couple of months of life. She had thought so highly of my Mom and her nursing abilities and had also kind of taken to me too back then, that I count her among one of my very dear friends.

But I was still really surprised to see on the caller ID her name and number showing up there as she isn't normally one to telephone me. But it seems she had received a message through our church's prayer chain (probably through e-mail I would guess) that I was ill, and in the hospital in Pittsburgh to boot. So she said upon hearing that, she was so concerned that she had to call me to find out what was wrong, if I am okay and if everything is going alright now for me.

But the absolute best part of that call was when she told me there was someone at her place then in Florida visiting her -someone who is an old, old friend of mine and who also wanted a chance to check in with me too. That person just happened to be a high school classmate of mine and also, her husband, who graduated a year ahead of me and this couple were my ex-husband's and my closest friends too from the time we moved back here in 1972 until my divorce and when she and her husband had move to Safety Harbor, Florida in the St. Petersburg area thirty years ago next month!

I can't begin to tell you how great it was to be able to talk to all three of these good friends but especially to Priscilla and Ted -who also just happen to be my son's Godparents too.

Although, as I said, it will be 30 years in June since Ted and Priss moved away from here and yes, I have seen them on a couple occasions when they have been back up north for a visit, those times are way to far and few in between. And even after 30 years of our being apart, I still miss them very much! The friendship we had established was one of those where Priss and I either spoke on the phone every single day or we got together at her place or mine and we socialized together too with a circle of about four other couples most every weekend too.

And it made me wax very sentimental then too as I thought of them, missed them still, but was so happy to have talked to them and knew all was right too in their end of this big old world.

And then, this afternoon, when I got back home from today's longer walk with Sammy, I had another phone call but this time the caller was from West Virginia and was my bestest friend ever that I met in 1964 when I went to work at the National Rifle Association in D.C. and with whom I have stayed in touch for the past 38 years now since my ex-husband and I left the Maryland/D.C. area to move back here to my former home in Pennsylvania.

And as great as it was to talk to my friend Joan again today, it too made me a bit sad as I realized how very much, even after 38 years it will be pretty soon, I still miss not being around her every day too.

But the nice thing too about these friendships is that regardless of the distance, of the number of years since we separated when I moved from D.C. or when Ted and Priss went to Florida, as soon as I hear those familiar friendly voices, we are able immediately to pick up on that friendship and those feeling right where we left off 30 or 38 years ago.

Truly is the epitomy of what a great friendship should be, don't you agree?

So, since my blogger friend Shelley Tucker of This Eclectic Life -who started the "Only the Good Friday" meme changed it to one that is now simply just called "Only the Good" I'm calling this my post for that meme my entry for this week!

So here's to the best kind of friendship -the ones that last and last, across the years, across the miles in between too and are most certainly the kind that are Only The Good!