Stories and sprinklers�

2004-05-25

Apropos of nothing, passionflowers with ladybug

Mom and Dad each told me a story while I was over there on Saturday and I want to write them down while I still remember them.

Mom told me that once when she was about five her family and another family went camping near a lake. The weather turned rainy, but that didn�t matter to her; she wanted to go swimming. She kept asking her mother, and she kept saying no. Finally she told my mom to put on a sweater and told her that she go in up to the sweater. And she did, walking around in the lake with her sweater on.

I wonder who was sillier in that story. The mom making her kid wear a sweater in a lake in the rain or the kid so desperate to play in the lake that she�ll wear the sweater.

Dad told me about a model biplane his brother made, fabric over wood struts. It had a gas engine and he flew it on a pair of lines. He guarded it jealously. One time he let a friend fly. As the guy turned in a circle the plane turned into the wind and the control lines slackened. The plane did a back flip and nose-dived straight into the ground. It never flew again.

Dad seems kind of lately when he talks about his brother, like he still misses him after all this time. Even more lately after being forced to face his mortality.

Put a misting system in the atrium yesterday after work. Part of my on-going project to put in drip irrigation everywhere. It will save me all the time I spend watering, not to mention wasting a lot less of your snowmelt. The whole project has to be done by the time we go to China. It�s not really that big a project if I take it in pieces. The hard part will be finding the sprinkler heads in all the underbrush.

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