A Spring Egging

Not a great pic, but the only one
my dad could find. (And since he
spent three hours searching the
albums I feel like I should use it.)

As children, my sister and I - with the help of our parents and a ladder - decorated the Crab Apple tree in our front yard with brightly colored, plastic Easter eggs each spring. In March of 1988, as the four of us carefully dressed up our tree, a newspaper reporter drove by. He stopped, struck up a conversation, and eventually wrote a blurb for the paper about our annual tradition - he even used one of my quotes.

"It makes everything look more colorful," said nine-year-old Erin. "More like spring."

We (usually) waited until the first or second warm-ish day in March to tackle this project and as I said 25+ years ago, the eggs added much needed and longed for color to the otherwise drab, melancholy tree. These factors combined in such a way that I began to associate this tradition with the beginning of spring.

It's been cold here, and not just by Texas standards. We nearly froze to death at Will's last two early morning soccer games (thank goodness I had my rising blood pressure to keep me warm this past Saturday), and more than once last week Hallie cried all the way to school because she just couldn't handle Mother Nature's wrath. But on Saturday afternoon, for just a brief window of an hour or two, the sun came out and we followed its lead. While Tom treated for ants (seriously Texas, enough with the fire ants) and I organized and cleaned the garage, the kids tried - unsuccessfully - to fly kites in the front yard. As I went through holiday bins, I found my bag of plastic Easter eggs and decided it was time to brighten up the front of the house for the first time in five years.

Spring 2010

We dressed up four of our trees, making everything look more colorful, more like spring.

And then two hours later it started raining and continued raining for the next 60+ hours. Well played, Spring. Well played.