Best Friends, Sundresses, and Digging Holes

"You're one of my best friends." Mommy said to me tonight.

"Yeah? When did you fall in love with me?" I teased, looking up from my set of garden blueprints.

"Oh, recently."

We laughed. There's a Chris Rice song out called When Did You Fall, and Mom has been having fun singing that question all over the office and house lately.

"I don't believe you really mean it about turning the backyard into a garden, Tisy."

"I'll prove my commitment by digging holes for the rhododendron hedge!" Quoth I, with feeling and pathos.

"Ooooohhh... that's commitment all right."

"Exactly. Now, where shall we put the fishponds?"

"Who is going to maintain these fishponds?"

"ME!"

"Uh-huh..."

And so forth. There's no one I enjoy giggling with more than Mama, and though the garden may not come out looking like this...

.....There's no reason why we shouldn't have one of these....


Charity wandered in. "Come snuggle," I said. She came, saw, and snuggled. "Do you want to help me dig rhododendron holes?" I inquired.

"You know, I was thinking about gardening. If I did I could wear my sunbonnet!"

Then Marjorie appeared. "Oh! I want to show you the dress that I'm wearing to the banquet on Saturday!" She vanished into Mom's capacious bathroom and reappeared, a vision in the blue satin dress that I wore to the same event when I was seventeen.

"Wow!"

"But what should I do with my hair?"

Daddy came up, and Mommy booted us (nicely) so that she could hang out with him (husband privileges. Hmphf.) So we egressed into my room, where I did up Marjorie's hair in one of those sophisticated dodahs that looks like it took forever but actually takes five minutes. Charity meanwhile glanced over my garden plans. We had been talking about making cotton (though I could be persuaded into muslin) summer dresses, and about how the dresses that fashion designers make these days are deplorably immodest, and how early we should start, and whether we three girls would want matching dresses like the ones that we had when we were little....

Burgee didn't get the vision---she still had the banquet on her mind. I expect that she will be properly enthused about the project sometime in mid-March, especially if she gets to listen to books read aloud while we sew. You must understand, gentle audiens, that in a house blessed with the most magnificent reader in the world---aka Daddy---sewing is never tedious. We simply pop him into a comfortable chair, keep him well-provided with ice water, and are superbly entertained while stitching.

Now, if only I could employ a similar method for gardening....

The first and most important thing is the privacy hedge: hence, rhododendrons. After that come the half-gazebo laced with fishponds, and then the hammocks, and then the patio under the deck. Mom says this is the year for the patio. I say huzzah. :-)

That's all from Lake Woebegone, folks. January is the perfect time to think about April.