CLAY AND WATTLES

Garden Show

Today we went to Little Rock to the Arkansas Garden Show at the Convention Center. Richard asked us to go with him and we left around 8:30 a.m. We got there around 10:30, after picking up the passes that Linda's friend Vikki had provided for me and Paul, compliments of her booth. The shuttle buses ran about every 10 minutes from NLR to LR just across the river and there was hardly any way for ours after we parked.

This was our first time to go to the garden show and I've heard about it for years. It's just amazing all the planning, preparation, and just plain hard work that goes into a show of this size. Whole arboretums, garden walkways, fountains, and even a small bamboo (I think) thatched garden shed were laid out, assembled and displayed with every color and flower of spring.

I bought a couple of items from Vikki's booth (Body by Vikki) - hand exfoliate with sugar "granules" and hand cream, which Richard and I sampled and it felt really wonderful. I also bought a jar of honey with comb, which I have not had in years. It looked so pretty and golden in its jar I couldn't resist. I bought two small birdhouses with corrugated tin roofs that friends of Linda make for shows like this. (One is for Sher and if she reads this, she will know what her "prize" is.) Linda did not have many things left, which is good for her, but she will still be at the show through tomorrow and do handwork on more cushion covers if she has nothing left to sell. Her next show is in Franklin, TN, in about a month, leaving just about that long till her and Richard's wedding (May 3).

The only other people we saw whom we knew were Suzanne and Haynes Ragsdale who used to live in Wynne. Oh, and Congressman Vic Snyder and his wife and little boy; and P. Allen Smith, who has a gardening show on AETN.

We left around 12:30, having walked around and through all the beautiful displays, and ate lunch at Shorty Smalls. Paul and I had chicken tender dinners, Richard a hamburger; then Richard and I shared the Fried Twinkie dessert. Oh, me! It tastes a lot like funnel cake, which I also love. Hot crispy crust, warm Twinkie inside with melty cream filling! Absolutely "no carbs!"

After we got home, I called Sher to tell her about my "Marble" Saturday. She was in New Orleans with some people from her class. It doesn't take much for us to recall something about Mama and I can't remember what started us this time, but probably me saying that this week I suddenly realized that this is the first time in 60 years (since I will be 60) that Mama is not here for my birthday. It was an arresting thought when I had it a couple of nights ago, and it still is. Steve has had his first and I'm sure I thought that when his came and went, but now it's mine and it's a lonely kind of feeling. Then Mike and Sher will experience the same thing. Another first. Sher said she had heard Johnny Cash singing old hymns and thought of our time in the hospital with Mama when we sang together. Sher got a hymn book from the chapel and we would turn through it and sing a verse or two from old favorite hymns. Mama was having with some of her meds, among other very bad, no good things, but she remembered words to hymns and would sing with us, word for word, and with breath. What a blessing that God gave her breath to sing to him and with us!

So I have had a wonderful day seeing Linda, being with Paul, Richard, talking for two hours there and two hours back about everything from cars to weddings, to WECC, seeing creativity in blooming plants, bamboo and bulbs, in planting ideas, in sewing/textiles, even in Fried Twinkies. (Whoever thought of that was creative!)