Thankful Thursday

I don't have a lot of Thankfuls this week. I can't believe it's already been a week since I wrote my last post. For the last several days, I've been noticing signs of spring. I first noticed that the Callery Pear trees at Home Depot were in full bloom. You may know them as Bradford Pear or pyrus calleryana. They're a trash tree from Asia and have made the Texas Invasive Species List. But they do have an impressive display of white blooms every spring. So starting my list is:

1. I love spring! I haven't seen any wildflowers in bloom yet, but the dandelions have bloomed and gone to seed. I even like dandelions because the honey bees love them, and because they attract aphids which keeps the aphids out of my garden. I've heard dandelion wine is good, but I've never tried it. During the depression, people used to eat all parts of the dandelions, from the roots to the blooms. Thanks to the dandelions in bloom, I've also seen my first butterfly of the year, a sulfur, flitting from one yellow blossom to the next. I've also seen the first grasshopper of the year and the first mosquito. I'm not thankful for them though.

Free photo from Pixabay

2. I like my town. I am so glad we moved here and wish it had been sooner. The other day I had to mail something, so I grabbed it and headed to the post office where I picked up a padded envelope, carefully stuffed my project in it, and walked up to the counter where I realized I had forgotten the address. I started to take my project out (it wasn't a free envelope), but the postmaster waved me off and told me to take it home, put the address on it and pay for it when I brought it back. Small town trust!

3. I like my Sketchers. I noticed this week that they are starting to come apart at the seams and it makes me sad that I won't have them much longer, but they have given me 4 or 5 good years and maybe the next pair will too.

4. I'm adding this hours after posting this, but Hubby came in this morning and said the purple martins have come home! It took awhile for all four of them to be out at the same time, but he took a few pictures for me. Whoohoo! Spring is definitely on the way. These may only be scouts, but they seem to have claimed a couple of nesting boxes, so we'll see.

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This week, Leeanna's prompt is: "Tell us about a time you knew someone was for you... in honor of Love month, I'm thinking a mate but it can be a best friend, or your dog/cat, etc.

How did you know, what did they do or say that made you look again, this time knowing they were your person?"

I feel incredibly lucky to have several friendships that have lasted over 60 years. I think they have lasted so long because we have so much in common, but also because of trust. Without trust, I don't think any relationship will last. Let me tell you about two times that I knew someone was going to be in my life forever.

First was the boy I had known since I was 13. We went to the same church but not the same junior high so I only saw him a couple of times a week. We went to the same high school but we weren't in any classes together and dating different people, so didn't see each other much. But at the end of our senior year, we went out as friends, and we had a nice time. Thanks to years of frienship, there wasn't any first date awkwardness and then we started seeing each other more often. I think I started falling in love with him the day he came over to fix something on my car that he had noticed was broken. We both dated other people too, but it really wasn't until someone else asked me to marry him that I realized I only wanted to marry my best friend. A year later, we did get married and after 47 years, I'd rather spend the day with him than anyone else I know.

Second is a woman named Ruthie who I met on my first day at a new job. She sat at the desk in front of me and from that first day, it was like we had known each other forever. We weren't allowed to have personal conversations at work except during breaks, so we developed a kind of conversation shorthand where sentences went unfinished because we knew what the other was going to say, so it was a series of sentence fragments. It was an odd workplace, with co-workers who barely spoke to each other all day. But somehow, Ruthie and I communicated with nods and goofy facial expressions. We'd wave goodbye after work and then call each other as soon as we got home to have real conversations and laugh that we thought the same things about all the silent communication at the office. On weekends, we helped each other with home projects or went shopping. We moved away first and our conversations and visits became less frequent until they gradually stopped. Then, a few years ago, I googled her name, called her, and it was like no time at all had passed. She had also moved and now had cystic fibrosis. We began talking every day again, but as time went by, it was harder for her to talk very long and once again, we spoke in sentence fragments and still understood each other perfectly. I miss Ruthie but I know if we could talk today, we'd take up right where we left off.

I'm joining the usual Thursday linkups:

Thankful Thursday

I like Thursday

Thankful Thursday