Of dead cats and other things

And so today we'll visit the backyard . . .

My parents planted quite a few rosebushes around the yard. There is even one that they tell me is over 100 years old that they rescued and transplanted a long time ago when some building in town was being torn down . . . or something like that. This one I can see through the kitchen window when I'm sitting at the table, and it always lifts my spirits. However, it is painful to prune because it has GINORMOUS thorns. I have had a tear in my flesh more than once from this beast, but we still keep it around.


Our raspberries are thriving. We got enough off the plants last year (their first year) to mix in with strawberry jam. I'm hoping for enough this year to make some raspberry jam, or at least mix in with the blackberries. We have 3 plants, one died shortly after planing last year. We should get one or two more, but we may have waited too long. We'll see if there are any left when we go to get the vegetable starts in a few weeks.

The apple tree is really starting to leaf out. This should be the "off" year for apples, which is fine because I've still got tons of applesauce from last year. There are no blossoms at this point, so if we don't have blossoms, we won't have apples, so I should know relatively soon what sort of apple crop we'll have, or not have.

Today I walked to work. I do this on occassion. It's easy to do in the spring before it gets too hot. It's almost exactly 2 miles one way. Walking to work is easy, downhill all the way, and still early enough in the day that it isn't hot and awful, even in the summer. It's quite pleasant to walk down. Everything is still pretty quiet, and I have time to think and reminisce. I go past the high school, which was a happy time. There used to be some lilac bushes at the house just west of the high school on Battle Creek (no longer there, it's a parking lot) that smelled so sweet! I go past that place where Locust meets Battle Creek, where I somehow still remember passing when walking to the pool with my friends (don't know why - that's the LONG way), and there was a dead cat kinda behind a bush. The bush is gone, but for some reason, I still remember that. Then there's the Old Grove Ward building, which was torn down a few years ago to make way for the New Grove Ward building. The old one was very old and had lots of stairs and strange little rooms. The new one looks just like every other church. Anyway, there are some shade trees there, and people start saving spaces for the Strawberry Days Parade (on a Saturday) on the Sunday prior. That gets on my nerves. There are some really old houses on my walk down Battle Creek that have surely been here since the town was settled. My dad always refers to them by who used to live there back in the 40s or 50s. I always nod my head and pretend to know exactly who he's talking about. Then there is the until-recently Community Center, previously Pleasant Grove Junior High (the current one was built in the late 70s or early 80s), and it was the High School before that. The main building was torn down and the building that remains is the school gym. I remember going to the old school when it was the junior high with my mom to do newspaper stuff. I was either not in school at all or in kindergarten and that's why I had to tag along. I don't remember much about the school, but it was a 2-story school, and it seems like there was a big, wide staircase that led to the upper level just inside the front doors. Next to this is the former Recreation Center, where my mom forced me to take all manner of classes during the summer time. I specifically remember taking a dance class that was followed by a recital and one of our dances was to the "Baby Elephant Walk" and we wore lavender culottes and flowered shirts. We also had to take writing classes, ceramic classes, drawing classes, and always swimming lessons. So as I think about the Good Ole Days and other happy things, my walk to work is a pleasant time. It takes me about 35 minutes to walk it.

Walking home is not so much fun. I don't dwell on happy thoughts walking home. Mostly it is thoughts of why was I so stupid as to walk down in the first place? What am I making for dinner? What else do I have to do when I get home? Should walking uphill be this hard? Why don't we live in a flatter town? Why am I still thinking about that dead cat?

It also takes me about 35 minutes to walk home, which surprised me at first until I realized that sheer anger at having made such a stupid decision to walk to work is driving me to just get it over with as quickly as possible. Then the next day I have shin splints and I don't walk again for about 2 weeks when the shin splints are healed, and I wake up thinking "What a nice day to walk to work!"