Spring storms roll through Colorado the second week of May often enough that we always assume there will be a "Mother's Day storm" of some variety. The rule is never to plant your garden until after that happens. Often enough, it's a Mother's Day blizzard, and not the kind that comes from a Dairy Queen. The storm came through today--ALL day--but it was easily 10-15 degrees too warm for it to snow, at least more than a few seconds. Waves and waves of strong thunderstorms rolled up through town, and with the heavy bands of rain we saw at least one little burst of hail. Low lying areas had a bit of ponding. There was so much water in these storms that if it had been cold enough to snow, we would have had a minimum of 6-8 inches of wet snow that would have snapped plenty of blossom-laden branches. I learned today that I was supposed to get a second garden bed up front this weekend, complete with the skinny cherry tree that has been patiently awaiting a permanent home and irises dug up from our friend's house in Louisville, on a berm built from the big rocks laid out in front of my garage. I was going to get that had we not wound up in the middle of four or five days of cold rain instead. If I'm lucky, I'll get the new berm late next week, which means I need to be on the lookout for a few interesting young plants to drop in it. I'll get right on that.
For much of my young adulthood, I wanted to raise a big family. I would have produced more children than I did, but my body put the kibosh on that in a hard and final way. Despite herculean efforts on my part to increase my biological output, I was not capable of creating more than two (admittedly perfect) humans of my own. So I did what any person in my situation would logically do: I "collected" additional family members whenever I could. I acquired a foster daughter, and informed her that she was one of us permanently. To this day, I consider the high school boyfriends of all my girls as honorary kids of mine, as long as my daughters tolerate me continuing to speak of/to them. I risked my reputation and became a crazy cat lady who also has dogs and lizards, and I refer to and think of them as fully vested family members. (Fight me. They are my kids too.) And now I have a teenager from Croatia who is figuring out that she is also one of us. It will be harder to keep in touch with her in person, but if I have to go visit her in Eastern Europe, that is a sacrifice I'm willing to take. (What's that? Tour Kings Landing while I'm there? Oh, if I must...)
I expected a low-key Mother's Day, and I was fine with that. My foster son-in-law came by with flowers last night, when he picked up his wife after she spent the day with me. She was back this morning and joined us for cassava-flour crepes with goat cheese and mixed-berry compote that Mr S-P cooked for us. And then right as she left, my in-town daughter showed up unannounced, and told me to get dressed now, now, now. (I had been sewing all day, wearing my jammies.) I'm learning to roll with it when they all tell me not to ask, just do what they request, so I showered and dressed and went to the car. They all took me to a buffet at one of my favorite restaurants downtown, and we had a lovely bonding experience with our latest addition (XS). I worried at first that my existing family wouldn't be as enthusiastic as I was about hosting an exchange student, but they took to her like she was raised as one of us. Days like today prove that I just had to be patient with my dreams of a big family. I now have four daughters. And I only had to go through labor twice. What a nice revelation for Mother's Day.
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