Thanks to the many readers who wrote to us lamenting the end of the weekly pandemic postings. So, we begin an irregular schedule of Journal entries. These will be highlighted of our journey through life, providing an outlet to post meanderings and muttering we are willing to share. As we travel around the country and world, we will also log those journeys.
Birthdays to report since our last writing: our friend Garth Highland turned 42 on May 23rd. On Saturday, May 29th, Kate Duggan celebrated her 45th and, likewise on the 29th, Ted James celebrated his 78th. Wishes for continued long life to each. Speaking of Garth, he and Zoë are expecting a third little Highlander in August. Unfortunately, Zoë has encountered some difficulty in the pregnancy and so now is spending at least the next three weeks, maybe longer, depending on fetal development, in the maternity ward of UNMC, confined to bed rest and boredom. That of course makes Garth the Dad-In-Charge and for a very taxing fatherhood stint. All friends and relatives are pitching in to assist, babysitting with Iris and Esmè, taking the girls on walks and to the park, and spelling Garth for either work requirements or visitations. Our own specialty has been sitting in the family room basement with them while watching Disney episodes. We are really good at that!
Breaking news: our eldest son Ed proposed to his paramour, Meg, on Mother’s Day and she accepted the proposal! No wedding ceremony dates yet but it will most likely be on the West coast, and sometime in the spring or early summer of 2022. We are very excited to be welcoming Meg into our family.
That bit of news added to our enjoyment of a lovely Mother’s Day this year, with a brunch at Abigail’s home, and we have spent quite a few hours at her house over the last few weeks working on the vegetable garden and creating a shade garden area along her south rear yard fence line. This will be a long term project as we hope to eventually create beds all around the perimeter of the yard. Her deck continues to be a draw, and next month Mark hopes to complete the railings around the deck.
Speaking of gardening, we have been toiling away on our ongoing creation of an English Cottage Garden in our own rear yard lot. We have planted it over the past four years with all sorts of shrubs, perennial flowers and filled in with pots of annuals. We are slowly creating a happy place to contemplate, view the beauty of nature, and keep us out of the bars and casinos.
But, as our friend Jeff Kirkpatrick remarked this past week, he had never heard of a Japanese Maple in an English Cottage Garden, nor did he see any hollyhocks in evidence. Now we are on the hunt for hollyhocks seeds, but we won’t be removing the beautiful dwarf red Japanese maple anytime soon.
We have now been able to dine in at a restaurant four times in the past month. We went as a couple to one of our favorite neighborhood bars, Paddy McGown’s for their fabulous Rueben Corned Beef Eggrolls, and a club sandwich. We did it again with Abigail one night last week, her first dining experience in a restaurant since March of 2020.
We joined our friends Marsha and Ted for a patio lunch at Jimmy D’s here in our Aksarben neighborhood. Deb ventured out to a girls lunch at another Benson area restaurant. Just getting out seemed like such an adventure. Then Deb joined her friend Char at a movie - an Angelina Jolie vehicle about firefighters. The movie was so-so, and Angelina is way too beautiful to be believable as a back-country firefighter that nobody hits on. Deb returned home to tell Mark all about it - he felt bad until the next night when we found it was available on Netflix, so watched it; the story line didn’t get any better, but Jolie still looked good.
Deb hosted a Zoom book club meeting this month, and they are scheduled to meet, in person, for the first time in over a year, next month. All is beginning to return to normal, at least for those of us who are vaccinated. The subject of vaccinations and relaxing of the mask mandates elicits comments and is another subject altogether. We have only knowingly allowed vaccinated individuals in our home or visited those who have likewise been inoculated. We struggle with the latest CDC directive stating masks need only be worn by the unvaccinated, wearing same is on the honor system. In Omaha, the current vaccination rate is just over 50%, however, we continue to wear our masks whenever we are in a store or in close quarters with a group. We are disbelieving when we arrive at the local hardware store and find that we are only one of perhaps four customers with masks. Everyone else is mask free, yet the population is only 50% vaccinated? All the unvaccinated people, honoring the rules, are staying away from stores and other venues? This is a soapbox we shouldn’t climb onto as we are probably preaching to the choir.
Two weeks ago, we drove to Lincoln for an evening dinner on their rear deck with our friends Glenda and Jeff. Glenda prepared a lovely meal of chicken breasts with some Greek seasoning, a fine salad and oven-roasted potatoes. The weather was excellent, the food tasty and the conversation enjoyable; we were home early and we carried off a number of shade loving plants to place in Abigail’s gardens. Glenda and Jeff are having a contractor rebuild the retaining walls in their rear yard, pulling out the decades old deteriorating tie wall and replacing with more modern landscaping blocks. Since the work will end up destroying some plantings, we walked off with a bunch as a saving maneuver.
Until yesterday, the weather has been most accommodating, seasonably warm with plenty of moisture; very welcome as most of the State is in drought conditions. However Friday broke cloudy with a morning temperature of 44ºF and a high forecast of 60ºF. We are hoping for a sunnier Memorial Day weekend coming up. Enjoy your beginning of Summer his weekend, stay away from unvaccinated ones, and mask up in crowds.
