Spring Celebrations

 Krissy's Birthday:   What's better to kick off spring but a gardening show!  Since Krissy is totally into sprucing up the outside of her new home, I thought she might like that idea. An event at Heritage Park in Fishers fell right into our plans for celebrating her birthday this past Sunday.  Being in a nice garden is a great start and if we learned to be better growers, that would be a bonus. But what we weren't interested in was a lecture-type event. So we decided we'd check it out first, thinking we could reject the idea at the last minute if we didn't get the warm fuzzies.
    Fortunately, as soon as we got out of our car we saw people leisurely hanging out on the grounds of this historic home in casual conversations.  And we seemed to have great timing, too, because the master gardener we met at the entrance  was a lovely person.  Shirley greeted us in her pleasant British accent,  with a huge smile. She asked if we had anything specific we'd like to know about gardening.  From there on, Shirley walked and talked with just the two of us, giving ideas and demos as we came to various shrubs, trees and flowers.  She showed us how to plant and prune and position.  And she gave Krissy some tips to keep her just-planted, acidic-loving bushes happy.  Very laid back, but informative! 
    Thinking about the variety of plants we saw along our path, my top choice for the afternoon would be this Andromeda.  Maybe you can see in the picture how the bright crimson leaves spray out of the layers of green under them. Each one of the limbs of this small shrub has its own green and red bottle-brush of leaves. They are beautiful!  And Shirley explained that there are flowers earlier in the spring that drape in long fronds out of the center of those red leaves.     

    But....we also had an ironic experience during our visit with Shirley in the gardens.  We were about half way through our sunny tour when we heard a loud rumbling somewhere overhead. Everyone looked up to see a formation of about 12 historic airplanes flying over our heads. After they were passed, Shirley remarked that it reminded her of when she was young, living near London during World War II during the Blitz. She described darkening their windows and the warnings they received if they left a crack of light.  She remembers that even though they lived miles outside London they had to be ready to be hit.  If there were bombs left after hitting the assigned targets, the bombers might just drop them anywhere.
     Just as she was describing how the bombers made the first fly over to scout their target and the second to drop their bombs, the array of airplanes roared overhead again going back to wherever. It was a unique coincidence that just at that point in time we were standing there with her to hear her stories.  Very interesting! 
    We did squeeze some shopping into our birthday afternoon, too.  On the route home to meet Jerry for dinner was a consignment/estate sale barn that called to us.  The place was packed with furniture, art, jewelry, etc.  Krissy found a sleek, mahogany, arts & craftsy-type coffee table that was meant to be hers. (After measuring at home, she made the return trip to grab it.) At the end of our escapades, we were starved. We let Jerry take us out for an early dinner, enjoying the rest of this nice spring day on the patio at a local restaurant. 
Mother's Day: Happy Mother's Day to all you ladies who are mothers of any kind.  I hope you had a pleasant day. Mine was fantastic!  Krissy prepared a delicious brunch of ham frittata, fennel salad and lemon pound cake with raspberry glaze.  The three of us toasted motherhood with mimosas and enjoyed an excellent meal and our time together.  There were a few spring showers today, but they didn't dampen anything going on inside.
      To top off this Mother's Day, I've chosen to dig up a couple of generational photos for some flashback fun.  Here's my mom, Rosemary (Weber) Niehaus with her mom, Tillie (Kuhn) Weber and me, Nancy (Niehaus) Hurley with my daughter, Krissy Underwood. 


      Have a beautiful Spring!  Thanks for staying with us here on Hurley Travels.