Sally in The MIX

Friday, March 11, 2016

Hold on Spring!

Spring is springing up all over, hopefully not too soon, and hopefully not before Winter doesn’t sock us one more time with below-freezing temperatures.

We dread those 32-degrees and below temps. That’s because all those things growing in my yard, and everyone else’s, has got spring fever too and erupted in a warm-weather flurry. My roses are leafing out like crazy, my climbing vines are climbing up anything they can wrap themselves around, my daffodils have been in bloom for a week (and pop right up again every time they get beat down by the rain), and all kinds of shrubs I buy on sale, but have no idea what they are, are bursting out all over with leaves.

But most frightening of all are the fruit trees. Good grief! Should my precious pear and peach trees really be blooming so early? They scare me. One good frost and it’s all over for pears and peaches at my house.

Both my yard’s flora and I have very bad cases of spring fever. I love Spring, even Oklahoma’s wet springs. I don’t even care that my yard looks like a frog pond right now, and no rain let-up seems to be in the future.

This year I have about the worst case of spring fever ever! Started haunting the garden centers way before they had anything on sale except left-over Christmas decorations. That may have been prompted by all the seed catalogs I ordered on line. Now there is a stack of them right next to my evening-sit-down-seat. I don’t order anything. I just like to catalog shop. 

But once the local shops got some seeds in I grabbed them up, and even planted. And lo and behold, the lettuce and the radish seeds have sprouted. I would have waited to plant the lettuce and the radishes, but one of the OETA shows I love – Oklahoma Gardening from OSU – recommended we go ahead and plant the cold-weather crops. What the heck. I did.

Oops! Now they’ve sprouted and I have to kneel down in the mud (yuck!) and thin those baby seedlings. OK. I’ll do it. But only because wilted lettuce and bacon salad is well worth the effort. It’s a recipe my mother taught me. And dad was the radish lover. Throw in a few tomatoes (yep, already bought some baby plants), and I’m done with vegetable gardening.

Flower gardening has my attention too, and, oh joy, all the flowers are breaking out of their brown winter doldrums and getting ready to do their bloom thing. Even the bulbs I stuck in the ground earlier are shooting up and blooming. Well, not all. That dang squirrel ate some of them. Oh I’ll try again. But the ones who have ignored the winter weather predictions are gorgeous. Now I’m wondering if I have enough tin cans and old milk cartons to cover them up if Winter decides to alight again and ruin what little my non-green thumb has accomplished.

Still, Spring fills our horizons once again, and, as Spring does, instills the hope that everything planted will fulfill our hopes for a beautiful garden.

After all, Spring does its own thing too. The redbuds have tinted the woods a lovely dark pink, and those wild plum trees (at least I think that’s what they are) decorate our Oklahoma woods like tiny clouds that have drifted down from the sky to lift our souls for a new warmth.

Hold on Spring. Keep Winter at bay, so we may rejoice in new growth.

Thursday, March 3, 2016

Observations on the Politics of the Day

Wow! That was some Presidential Political Primary on Tuesday. 

Told Granddaughter recently that this was turning into an historical presidential primary. Sadly, and apparently, that is correct, or so say the political pundits on TV.

The process from the beginning has fascinated me, and many others it turns out. I’ve been watching every move, and the media reports on every move, of our presidential candidates. Don’t get me wrong. Not pushing for any one candidate here, just reporting on observations. In the U.S. of A. we get to talk about government, and the people who conduct it, as much as we want.

And, if we want to, we can do so with sarcasm.

Been collecting those kinds of comments lately. So if you enjoy sarcastic political humor, read on.

Apolitical Aphorisms

“If God wanted us to vote, he would have given us candidates.” Jay Leno

“The problem with political jokes is they get elected.” Henry Cate VII

“Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build a bridge even where there is no river.” Nikita Khrushchev

“When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President; I'm beginning to believe it.” Clarence Darrow

“Why pay money to have your family tree traced; go into politics and your opponents will do it for you.” Author unknown

“Politicians are people who, when they see light at the end of the tunnel, go out and buy some more tunnel.” John Quinton

“Politics is the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign funds from the rich, by promising to protect each from the other.” Oscar Ameringer

“I offer my opponents a bargain: if they will stop telling lies about us, I will stop telling the truth about them.” Adlai Stevenson

“A politician is a fellow who will lay down your life for his country.” Tex Guinan

“I have come to the conclusion that politics is too serious a matter to be left to the politicians.” Charles de Gaulle

“Instead of giving a politician the keys to the city, it might be better to change the locks.” Doug Larson


And then there are the political comments made by one of our own, and which are priceless! Hear the wisdom of Will Rogers.

“There ought to be one day -- just one -- when there is open season on Congressmen.”

“I belong to no organized party. I am a Democrat.”

“On account of being a democracy and run by the people, we are the only nation in the world that has to keep a government four years, no matter what I does.:

“That’s the trouble with a politician’s life. Somebody is always interrupting it with an election.”

“The more you read and observe about this politics thing, you got to admit that each party is worse than the other. The one that’s out always looks the best.”

“Politics has become so expensive that it takes a lot of money even to be defeated.”

“Anything important is never left to the vote of the people. We only get to vote on some man; we never get to vote on what he is to do.”

“A fool and his money are soon elected.”

“The Republican Convention opened with a prayer. If the Lord can see His way clear to bless the Republican Party the way it's been carrying on, then the rest of us ought to get it without even asking.”


Thank you Mr. Rogers.