My town hosts an annual 5k run every Memorial Day. I usually run it, but I haven’t been running consistently in at least a year. So this year I was a spectator. A spectator with an iPhone camera and a fish eye lens attachment, that is…
Tag: memorial day
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(Last one, I promise.)
Part of the Memorial Day festival in our town includes a library book sale. A buck a hardcover, or a buck for two paperbacks. This year I spent eight dollars and came away with some great reading:
Some are books I’ve read before and loved but don’t own (South of Broad). Some are books I’ve always wanted to read (the Bachman Books). Some I think I was supposed to read but didn’t (All Quiet On The Western Front). Some I read but I think a reread now that I’m older will allow me to appreciate the book more (A Separate Peace). Some I’ve seen in a past life while shelving books and thought “Now that looks like a cool book” (The Company). And some are just for fun (Elmore Leonard).
All in all, for eight dollars, I think my summer reading (and then some) is all set.
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The front part of my house gets no sunlight in the summer. I have a pretty large tree in the front yard, such as it is, and another tree right next to it. And because I don’t really have a house but rather a condo, I therefore don’t really have a yard so much as I look out on the common areas of the property.
Don’t get me wrong, the condo property is beautiful, the trees tall and gorgeous, especially during the Fall, and I don’t miss mowing the lawn or shoveling the walk. But I can’t do much about the trees.
Because of said trees, I have a helluva a time getting anything to grow in the small patch of land I do own, which is the garden in front of the house. I plant flowers and bushes that are partial or all shade, but sometimes they last and sometimes they don’t, and then the winter comes and the snow and ice tumble off the roof and crush anything that had only the slimmest hope of survival. It gets so bad that my wife jokingly refers to it as the “Addams Family patch.”
All this said, about every five years or so I have to yank everything out and start all over again. So part of what I did over Memorial Day weekend was tear up the front garden, till all the soil, and replant just about everything. The only things I left were two hastas (cause nothing seems to kill them and my daughter begged me to keep them) and a few day lilies (which I love to see bloom for literally the one day per year they do so). Which means the garden went from this:
to this:
PS – Every single rock you see lining the garden came out of the garden throughout all the times I’ve tilled the soil. It wasn’t until I started tearing up the garden the first time ten or so years ago that I understood all of the farmer walls in New England. Honestly, how did anybody grow anything here when they first settled?
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It was a long weekend here in the States, a holiday weekend. Memorial Day was today, which is the day we celebrate the men and women who served our country and gave their life in that service. To honor that sacrifice, our town holds a Memorial Day festival every year. And for a tiny town of about four thousand people, it’s a helluva festival.
The day goes something like this:
9:00 AM – Katie’s Memorial 5k Race
11:00 AM – Memorial Day parade
11:30-ish – General merriment and festivities on the CommonIt’s always fun, always impressive, always crowded. It starts with the race, and this year the whole family ran the race, with my younger daughter finishing second in her age group (a total surprise to all–including her). We all got the memorial shirts, and my daughter even got a glass and a custom-made cookie as the second place prize. Then the parade got under way, which starts down by the town cemetery, and eventually makes its way up the hill to the main street, and then down the main street which is always lined with spectators. And you always know when the parade is getting close to the main street because you can hear the pipe and drum core as they lead the way with the colors. It really is a fantastic parade for a tiny little town.
Here’s some photos from the day (and, yes, the sign on the back of the tractor in the last picture does indeed say “Tractors and Tiaras”):
Scott Lyerly 