Hey, maybe Quint was on to something last Monday. Maybe all Mom needed was some lazy summer napping cats, a couple of favorite toys and her camera. Shall we call this a Week of Toys or maybe go one step further and proclaim this the Summer of Toys?
. . . and then she said, “I’ve got nothing.” And I thought, “What?”
This is my mom who always has something. She has things to do, things to say, things to share. And she has me! Why would she say she’s got nothing? On a daily basis, I give her all kinds of blog content. I politely ask for food in my bowl in the morning, I clean up after eating like any gentleman would do, I take all my morning naps in more than one spot and that’s just the morning content. She could have a field day with all that, at least enough blog material to run for weeks, more if interspersed with content from my sisters. Yeah, I know, more glaring from one, more napping from the other. Whatever. Mom, just run with all this for a week. I can’t believe I’m saying this but if things get really tough, you could always put toys on my sister Tessa’s head and take pictures.
All right, Mom, see if I ever try to be helpful again!
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THANK YOU dear Friend of Colehaus for thinking of us last week. We’re building our vet services fund because we never know when something might happen. Both Tessa and Quint are 14 years old now and Viola will be 13 in October. The babies have grown up. THANK YOU dear angel for your generosity!
We’re almost halfway through the month of August and if you didn’t suspect Mom of being maybe a little odd, here’s another one to add to that pile: Getting through each month makes her happy, especially financially tight months like this one has been. She believes everything is cyclical. We have lean financial months and we have “It’s okay to take a deep breath” months. Just don’t get used to taking deep breaths and all will be okay.
Last year, during a period when Mom was reminiscing about her past lives and tough financial times, she remembered how much she found joy in simpler things, like growing a houseplant or two and thought about the African violets and Streptocarpus she used to have. African violets “may” be making a comeback; sometimes you see them in grocery store plant sections but you never see streptocarpuses (streptocarpi?). The two are related and both come in a wide arrange of colors, and then, one day three months ago at the local feed store, Mom saw a streptocarpus and it did not look like the photo above.
She should have taken a photo of the poor half-dead thing when she brought it home. It hadn’t been watered well, maybe for its entire life, and was scorched from sitting in direct sun. It had one pink-ish colored flower that had shriveled and dropped on top of the dusty dry soil. Honestly, she wasn’t sure the plant would live.
Instantly after arriving home, she repotted it out of its broken plastic pot, figuring it couldn’t hurt the thing much more, and watered it well. A week later, a single, short flower stalk popped up (the small flower on the lower far right) and we’ve not looked back since. Today, it’s full and flowering nonstop and seems to like sitting in a northeast window next to the once neglected ponytail palm (Beaucarnea recurvata) that Mom “rescued” last year. She likes to think they share stories about their tough beginnings, much like Mom’s gone through and now, for the moment at least, the horizon looks a little brighter.
