April Showers Bring May Flowers

Well, at least I hope so. In an hour David and I are speeding our way toward northern California to preview the May sunshine and avoid a few days of Kingston showers. Still, it is hard in many ways to realize that it is already May. March and April just slipped by under the rug.

Anita and sister Mary An

Robert Kent

I suspect it was the dull thudding of losses that encouraged me to ignore time moving along. My uncle, Herbert Kent died. He way 93 so it was not really a big surprise but it was still a surprise. Anita and I went down to Benge for the memorial service in March. It was great to see family that I hadn't seen for many many years. It was also interesting to realize how important Herb and Dorthy were to my sisters and I. They were the essence of our extended family- the kind with aunts, uncles and cousins. We had Father George and Betty in Spokane; San Dee and Gail as cousins. But Herb and Dorthy's family were are  first cousins and the people were stayed with when we drove into Benge. They were our home-base for Anita's family. Ellen spent a week at the lake with us, skiing and adventuring every summer. Dorthy  told us stories about the Grange and Herb instigated our now family obsession with homemade ice cream. I remember vividly the hand-crank ice cream maker on their front porch where kids "got" to help.Herb was Benge's version of Tom Sawyer with a white washing brush or ice cream crank or weeding bucket.

Nancy Hohn and partner

Cousins Ellen (Kent) and Deborah Bruhl

Hoop gardening in Kingsto

At home in Kingston, March and  April were wet and cool but that is such the norm that I decided to accept and live without summer. To that end I have constructed a garden under plastic. This may be the wave of the future here, until global warming finds Kingston. I have a large hoop garden in the vegetable space and a smaller one in the front yard. There are a  few starter spaces for experimentation but I am not sure they will be successful. They will go away in May in any case.

The gardener's eternal hope in Spring never fails to amaze and surprise me. Despite the limited summer successes, I still keep trying new approaches. But hope was marred a little this Spring with the loss of 2
of my lovely goat friends. I lost my old friend Bucky and a new friend,
Loretta,  both to old age. It happens but it was a slow couple of months while I tried to get them healthy. They were just too tired out. Now we have Mary, who might be too mean to get sick, and a young guy, Dewey. Hopefully, they will have an active and happy summer!

As I leave for a few days, I leave Kingston at its annual BEST. The flowers are always spectacular in the Spring and the cool weather means they hang around longer, overlapping colors and fragrances. Nothing to complain about unless it is that the beauty of dandelion yellow in not always the most appreciated color in the palette.

With this new ambling, I am ready to greet the rest of Spring and the upcoming summer with much enthusiasm for new projects in the garden and at the loom. I had better get to that fiber stash because the fiber fairy paid me a visit when I was at school and left at least "10 bags full" of wool, angora and mohair. I guess she thought those other 20 bags were empty! Gentle nudges to "GET GOING"!

Happy Spring breezes to you and a final glimpse at Angora Acres in Spring.