GOOD DAY, SUNSHINE!

I was 15-16 years old when the British Invasion, in the form of the Fab Four hijacked the teenagers of the United States of America. Unless you are the same age that I am, you can only imagine the complete euphoria that kidnapped the soul of a young reluctant Calvinist when she heard the immortal words "She loves you, yeah , yeah yeah!" My introduction to the Beatles came during those dark days of our family's lives, between November 1963 and June 1964, when my dad was buried away at a desk in the headquarters of the Great Northern Railway in St. Paul, Minnesota, developing plans for weed control along the tracks. We had moved to St. Paul during the weekend following the John F. Kennedy assassination - a shocking and numbing experience that would have turned our lives upside down, in any normal circumstance. The move made it even worse, and I will always associate the one with the other.

I really LOVED the people of St. Paul and Minneapolis - they were so friendly and welcoming - a far cry from the cold shoulder I had become accustomed from the Dutch farm boys I went to school with at the Monroe Christian School, where, if your dad didn't have a dairy farm, and you didn't wear green rubber boots covered with the excrement of Holsteins, you were NOBODY! In fact, you were worse than NOBODY - you were a "CITY SLICKER!" - an expletive in the rural utopia where rivers ran through lush valleys, and cattle grazed in every electrified barbed-wire fenced field. Riding the Empire Builder all the way from Monroe, Washington to St. Paul, Minnesota, was my escape...A trip to paradise for me.....Until I experienced my first and only Minnesota winter. "Brrrrrrrr!" only starts to describe how starkly cold and dehydratingly dry the 30-below-zero temperatures were, as my siblings and I waited on Stillwater Road for the school bus that would take me to Maplewood Junior High School. (Personal ego injury note: In Monroe, 9th grade put me in High School. In St. Paul, guess what? 9th grade was in JUNIOR high....oh, the humiliation!)

Yes....it was cold...no doubt about that! But the one thing that managed to warm me from the inside out, causing the hoarfrost that whitened my eyebrows to vanish -was the announcement each night around 8:00 pm....where our local radio station WDGY (Weegie!) announced the winner of the listener call-in votes for favorite song. For 14 days in a row, I heard the opening strains of "And I Love Her.." I'm pretty sure that song held the top position longer than any Beatles tune to date.....and may still hold the record today. Just hearing those first few notes made me feel like everything was all right.

What, you may ask, does that have to do with anything today, or in this blog, or whatever.....Well, a week ago tonight, I sat in the park, listening to my friend Michael Carlos and his band, as part of our Apple Blossom Festival. I wore a warm jacket, gloves and wrapped myself in a thick fleece blanket....After all, it was around 37 degrees and windy - it was cold! But a week later, I spent the day in the sun....just like I spent yesterday in the sun....and the yesterday before that.....and the yesterday before that. For the last four days, we have had absolutely luscious weather....so warm and enticing, that the temptation to spend my days in the garden were simply irresistible. My 6 raised beds at home, and my 4 -30-bloom beds in our club's demonstration garden called me to them, as surely as the sea maidens' siren song enticed unsuspecting sailors to their death.

I found my sunscreen, leftover from my last trip to Las Vegas, where my son and his wife live. After slathering myself well, I stepped out into the glow of the warm afternoon, and started my planting! I have been planting and labeling ever since, and loving every minute of it. And all the while, a song keeps playing in my music-teacher brain - "Good Day, Sunshine!" And less obviously, I can hear the strains of "Here Comes the Sun..." This sunny serenade comes to me, courtesy of  no one less than the Mersey Boys, the Lads from Liverpool - the Beatles!

Suffice to say that I now have around 200 plants in the ground, either in tuber form, well-started plants, or struggling baby seedlings - such a sense of satisfaction and anticipation! I'm so happy that I have ONE MORE DAY to play in the garden before I have to return to work on Thursday.....I'm thinking that it might be just enough time to make sure I have all the ADS Classification numbers and the descriptions on the tags nestled in the dirt next to my 200 "promises". It is, indeed, a GOOD DAY, SUNSHINE!