Happy Father's Day!

© harrington

Hi. Thanks for stopping by. The picture shows the daughter person and her Significant Other [SO] planting the two apple trees (Honeycrisp and Snow Sweet) they, with my son, gave me for Father's Day. Materials and labor included. You can see from the pear tree to the left that, once established, fruit trees will survive on our sand plain soils. The challenge is to get them to survive long enough to become established. Daughter and SO have promised to keep the new cousins to the pear watered using alligator bags. The trees are older, and therefore larger, than prior plantings. Maybe that, combined with watering for two or three seasons instead of just one, will lead to success this time. I hope so. All in all a very thoughtful Father's Day present. As I write this, my early present, SI-Si the blond wonder lab is lying down and napping behind me and I, for the first time this "season," am sitting on the screen patio reading, writing, enjoying the warmth and the breeze, and looking forward to a juicy lucy and french fried onion rings for dinner. In a good year, at least once or twice a year, life is good. Any and all rants will have to wait until tomorrow. Today is an opportunity to sit back and experience gratitude for my life, my family and My Minnesota. I wish all of you as much. Come again when you can. Before you leave, see what you think of this poem by Robert Hayden. I think it honors very nicely fathers, families and Father's Day. I know it reminds me of my father.

Those Winter Sundays

By Robert Hayden 

Sundays too my father got up early

and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,

then with cracked hands that ached

from labor in the weekday weather made

banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.

When the rooms were warm, he’d call,

and slowly I would rise and dress,

fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,

who had driven out the cold

and polished my good shoes as well.

What did I know, what did I know

of love’s austere and lonely offices?