Daddy - Daughter Date Night

Keith and Christine recently had a special “daddy-daughter” date night by going to Cincinniati to see a rock concert. Sugarcult—Christine’s current favorite band—was playing at a small arena and tickets were very reasonably priced. Christine was so excited, and Keith went thru pure heck to be able to take her.

Because the concert was on a Friday night, it was still a work day for Keith. Normal work days for Keith are 9 to 6 with him getting home sometime between 8 and 9, depending on the day. On this particular day, he switched shifts with a videographer from the night shift, so the day of the concert he had to get up at 2 a.m. and be to work by 4. By the time he got home it was two in the afternoon, so he only had time for a short nap before they had to leave the house again. Between the Diet Mt. Dew, caffeine pills and caffeine gum, he was determined to take Christine to the concert and they were going to have a great time.

Naturally, I was worried the entire time they were gone. I worried that Keith hadn’t had enough rest. I worried they would be in a wreck or worse. Normally, when there is a concert, I would be with Keith and Christine, but recently, my anxiety has been preventing me from being in large groups of people. I don’t know why I worry more about them when I’m not with them than I do when I’m with them. Does that make sense?

Anyway, I got a voice mail from Keith about 8:30, and they were already at the arena and they were already talking with some members of the band. It sounded like they were having a great time. I couldn’t wait until they got back home to tell me the whole story.

While they were gone, I worked in the yard. I’m totally seeing my front garden in a new light. The front yard garden should be very eye catching and contain samples of plantings from all over my yard. I learned this recently when I was admiring a new spring store display at the Shaker Village Craft Store. The wonderful display was fresh and pretty and put me in the mood to redecorate. To the average customer, this is just a pretty display set up for people to look at, but working behind the scenes, I realized, this display exhibited a wide range of the items sold in the gift shop.

This is how I see my yard—a one acre lot surrounded by native shrubbery with numerouse gardens interspersed throughout. I have a shoe garden, a rock garden, a prayer garden, a veggie garden, a treehouse garden; I could go on and on. So, my front garden should be a colleage of all the gardens on our property. I settled in for an afternoon of planning, dreaming and digging in the front garden. Little did I know that another family would greatly limite my ability to concentrate on particular areas of the front garden.

The Robin family had decided the make the English Ivy growing up the anchoring wire to a utitlity pole near out mailbox their home for the summer. I first discovered the nest when Kieth was helping me prune the ivy into shape. I want the ivy to grow all the way up the wire, but it has stopped half way up and is now growing back down to the ground. This makes a wonderful cascade of English ivy, but it needed the dead wood removed and be pruned into shape. Keith pointed out the next to me while I was up on the ladder, so I had the bird’s eye view—four baby blule Roin eggs tucked all together in the next. I immediately quite pruning the ivy; that project will just have to wait until the baby’s have flown the nest.

I remember the summer of Junie B. Jones—the mother wren that raised her young ones in the hanging basket on our front porch—and I started to get warm fuzzy thoughts about how much fun Christine and I had while watching the life span of her children. This year, Christine is too old to have much interest in the gardens, so I’m usually alone in the garden with no one to enjoy the little treasures I discover every time I am outside. But that’s okay, I still enjoy being outdoors and maybe one day, I’ll have grandkids to enjoy the gardens with. I decided that I would chronicle the lives of Ms. Robin and her family

© Bobbi Rightmyer, July 2006