It's late spring in Charleston. Azaleas are blooming. Colorful window boxes filled with geraniums, lobelias and petunias are everywhere. What a beautiful time to visit. We are here again!
We are staying at our favorite bed and breakfast. One of the reasons I love visiting here is because they have a double decker porch and the guest rooms all have doors to access it. Often while Jerry is at work I will sit on the deck and type, enjoying the breeze.
I also like to chat with whoever else shows up. I am quite gregarious, as most of you know first-hand, and I never met a stranger. Yesterday I was in my own little world, typing away and when I looked up, a couple was sitting at the end of the porch. I wandered over and struck up a conversation.
We exchanged pleasantries and they told me they are from up north. I mentioned that we used to live near Cleveland but moved to Charlotte two years ago. At this point I saw that they were drinking beer which is, no doubt, delightful if you are a beer drinker which I am not. The woman mentioned that they had a few left in the cooler from the trip and wanted to finish them up before switching to the wine that the inn serves for happy hour.
Now I personally don't carry a cooler of beer in my car when I go on road trips (or ever, for that matter) but I won't pass judgement on people who do because I don't know the circumstances. Maybe they only pop open a couple of cold ones after they reach their destination for the night, I just don't know. What I do know is that these folks seemed pretty happy and my guess is that these were not their first brewskies of the evening.
About this time, the guy asked me how long it takes to drive from Cleveland to Charlotte, to which I replied, "Eight hours door to door but my husband is like a race car driver." The lady, however, being in a bit of an altered state mentally from her aforementioned activities, got all excited and started jumping up and down.
"Race car driver! I can't wait to tell our son that I met the wife of a race car driver!"
She clearly had not absorbed the little words (like a) and was so excited that she didn't hear when I tried to straighten her out. Her enthusiasm at the idea was so impressive that finally I decided to allow her to continue believing this fantasy. After all, Charlotte is the home of NASCAR, and Jerry could be a race car driver. He certainly drives fast enough to be a qualifier if he chose to. Is it so wrong to let her think she had had a brush with the wife of someone famous?
If you see us walking down the street in Charleston this week, just pretend my husband "drives the 18 car" and call him Kyle Bush.
Last night was different because in addition to our sweet bluebirds, yellow and purple finches, tiny woodpeckers, Carolina wrens and cardinals, about fifty turkey vultures arrived. I started wondering if they knew something about me that I didn't know yet and was relieved that they weren't circling. Man, those birds are big!
It was shortly after the vultures were perched high above us in the trees that we realized it was raining bird poop. (We must have been the vultures' second stop, right after some road-kill buffet.) It was splattering everywhere and Jerry, whose newly repaired brand-new car was parked out in our driveway, ran outside and desperately started whacking two sticks together. (Remember the stick scene in the movie "The Parent Trap?" It was kind of like that only louder.)
Immediately the sky was black with birds. The jumbo avians swooped gracefully into the air and lit a few hundreds yards down into the woods where they remained undisturbed until they caught their collective breath and flew onward on their journey.
Before bed, Jerry covered his car with a couple of old sheets, just in case.
* * *
Even though it's going to be February tomorrow, I am still sweeping up Christmas needles in my living room every time I vacuum. The weird part is, our tree was artificial.
It's springtime in the south, the most beautiful time of the year here.
Twelve months as southern transplants is drawing to a close. Only the devil himself could have loved our first sizzling summer that stretched well into October. We weathered the "worst winter we've ever had" if we are to believe the locals.* But guess what? Spring arrives in FEBRUARY! After almost a year, I've finally found a time I love living south of the Mason Dixon line!
(*Fall was a blur, a surprise to experience next year perhaps. I went to Michigan to greet our first grandbaby and stayed five weeks. When I left, it was summer. When I got back, it was winter. Go figure.)
Blossoms arrived before March did. Forsythia and Camilla bushes are blooming. The Bradford pear blossoms here rival Washington D.C.'s cherry trees. Happy daffodils smile at me when I walk by them. A gentle breeze is blowing and it's in the sixties, the perfect temperature for a beautiful, sunny day.
Family and friends we left behind in the Great White North are clamoring to come visit. It's been icy and snowing heavily for the last couple of weeks up there. Meanwhile, I'm walking in the sunshine without wearing a sweater.
Yeah, springtime in the south is spectacular. Y'all.
It's late spring in Charleston. Azaleas are blooming. Colorful window boxes filled with geraniums, lobelias and petunias are everywhere. What a beautiful time to visit. We are here again! 
Now I personally don't carry a cooler of beer in my car when I go on road trips (or ever, for that matter) but I won't pass judgement on people who do because I don't know the circumstances. Maybe they only pop open a couple of cold ones after they reach their destination for the night, I just don't know. What I do know is that these folks seemed pretty happy and my guess is that these were not their first brewskies of the evening. 
