Too Cold For Plants And People

The early bird sometimes gets surprised. Robins and rednecks alike were dodging snowflakes in our corner of the universe yesterday. The plants that were so happy to be back on the patio were equally thrilled to return to the house this past weekend. Temperatures have teeter tottered on the thermometers between a low on the north side of 25 degrees overnight to a high on the west side climbing to nearly 54 this late afternoon. I discovered yesterday that there are very few people that celebrate May Day anymore. Perhaps this is another sign of getting older, when one can remember the simpler times when May Day baskets were filled with goodies for neighborhood children and the ladies wore their finest dresses to church replete with white gloves, purses, and shoes to match. I've been looking through scores of old pictures in an attempt to find visible proof of how things were when I was just a lad, but, as yet, have met with little or no success. The weather never surprises the residents of the Great American Desert, though. Last August in our tent located two blocks from downtown Sturgis, the temperatures fell regularly below freezing at night. There I go wandering off again in my thoughts. Was I going to write about the weather or the cold summer we had last year, plants or birds, or ladies fashion during a bygone era? I can't remember now. Maybe it will come to me again, later. Let it be sufficient to say, "Things are not always as we remember them." There are times this is a good thing. May God bless all of your memories of living, real and imagined, for it is in imagining that we turn on the creative juices that flow within each of us and spur the individual to make his or her world a better place in which to live and raise up plants, and animals, and most important, more of God's children. In Christ's Love, Preacher.

Happy May Day!