May Day

With Obama in office, May Day is no longer a disaster signal, but once again a beautiful spring tradition.

My younger daughter's 3rd grade class went for a walk around the neighborhood by their elementary school, handing out flowers and greeting people. The daffodils are finished blooming, and the azaleas and other flowering bushes are beginning to brighten the yard.

Yesterday I put up two hanging plants -- fuscia and red geraniums respectively, and I was inspired to fill the cedar planter on the back deck with geraniums, pansies, and other colorful flowers.

As I bought those red geraniums, I thought about my grandparents, who always had red geraniums in planters on either side of their front stoop in their house in South Minneapolis. Putting in geraniums every spring makes me feel like I am carrying on my grandfather's gardening legacy. He taught me so many things about gardening and yard work.

Many times I would talk to him while he used a hoe to edge the sidewalks, keeping the grass from growing over it, and pulling weeds from the cracks.

"Edging is just a small thing," he would say, "but it will mean a lot to your neighbors. Keeping your front yard neat-looking improves the neighborhood, and is a sign of respect for your neighbors." "If you weed a little bit every day, then you never have to spend a lot of time weeding." "Pull the dead blooms off a flowering plant and they will bloom again." "Petunia flowers are done when they come off easily." "Always plant petunias on the edge of your tomato bed and it will keep away the rabbits." "Corn should be knee high by the fourth of July." "Always water in the evenings."

And he always managed to weed without getting his hands dirty. Perhaps it was all those years of farming experience in North Dakota when he was growing up, or just years of experience tending his own garden. But I'd end up with hands black with the rich earth, and he'd quickly brush his hands and look like he'd just sat down to dinner.

Spring also brought baseball season. Every year on Opening Day, Grandpa would call me, whether the Twins were home or away for the first series of the season. The first opening day after he died, I called my grandmother and said, "Grandpa always called me on Opening Day."

"I know," she said, "He always said, 'I have to call Ann.'"

The smell of warm earth and geraniums and the sound of the crowd and the crack of the bat bring such strong memories of being with my grandfather at their Minneapolis home that sometimes the memory seems more real than the present. I can almost hear Herb Carneal saying, "O and two. Here's the pitch..."

I am still a Twins fan, but these days I more closely follow the Mariners. And I have an edger instead of a hoe, and a driveway that is almost as long as the block my grandfather lived on. But when spring comes I am out there planting my geraniums and half waiting for the phone to ring one more time.