A Quiet Week

School has started back up here and it's been a quiet week - well, except for the crazy lady jacked up on something unidentifiable who was out in our garden at work picking flowers and plants. Apparently business had been good because she was carrying around a disposable aluminum roasting pan full of plant parts and someone's small empty flower pot. She had crashed through the plants to reach the large hibiscus-type flowers in the corner, so there was a lot of breakage. Then she was pulling up parts of ground cover plants - roots and all! At first I thought she was from the radio station and was taking the weather measurements. When I realized she was the same crazy woman that had come to church and acted like she was possessed, I went outside and ran her off.

At this point, I guess I should backtrack and explain the weather measurements and the incident at church. Many years ago, the then-owner of the funeral home established an official weather station out in our garden. We used to have to take measurements of the precipitation in the container twice a day and whoever closed at night had to reset the machine that recorded temps, get the numbers and call it into the National Weather Service in Springfield, Missouri. Several years ago we turned it over to the local radio station which is our neighbor to the east, but the measurement recording equipment is still located in our garden. Someone comes over from the radio station everyday to record the rain/snow levels, so we see them out there in the garden. The equipment out there is kind of ugly, so we try to camouflage it with plants.

As for the incident at church, well, my husband, being a law enforcement officer in this community for 30 years, knows just about everyone. So when I noticed this woman at church behaving slightly odd during worship and praise time, I naturally asked him who she was. As soon as he got a look at her, he instantly recognized her as TROUBLE (all caps!) and explained she had been arrested many times on drug charges and also spent time in the state mental facility, but was sent back. (More than likely because she isn't crazy enough to keep - they do that a lot because of money). According to my boss, she was recently seen outside on the roof of her house dancing with her sundress over her head. What kind of "odd" behavior was she displaying at church? Well, nothing like dancing with her dress over head, but more like clutching herself in various places and swaying, then abruptly sitting down and rocking her head side to side, then jumping back up do some more swaying and clutching. I was afraid we'd have some hysterics during the altar call, but she slipped out and left.

Similar to flowers that got picked

Hibiscus, similar flowers that got picked

So...when I went outside to the garden after realizing who she was to run her off, I asked her to please stop pulling up the plants. Her response was "Should I stop?" Okay..."Yes. Yes, you should definitely stop that and go on!" Then she proceeded to chatter a mile a minute about how she loved flowers and weren't flowers pretty, and how she was planting a garden and how MUCH she loved flowers...the whole time swaying her dress a la "I Feel Pretty", and swinging her roasting pan as if it was a basket full of beautiful cut flowers rather than the mess of flowers, roots, plants, and dirt that it was. Soon after she left, Lou from the flower shop popped in with a plant and I told her about the encounter. She said it sounded like the person she had heard on the police scanner that was seen pulling up flowers all through downtown the day before. I told her if she wanted a gander at her, she just left thattaway (pointed to the back of the building). Shortly after that, my boss came in and after telling him about it he told me it sounded like the same woman he'd seen up on her roof down the street from him, and if she comes back to call the police. Then Hubby stopped by and after relating the story to him, he said the same thing about calling the station instead of engaging her directly. Noted!

And if that isn't small-town crazy enough for you, here is another example of how things get done around here. On the corner across from the back side of our building, city crews just finished weeks of work tearing out the old curbing and putting in the brand new curbing all the way down the block to the south. This morning I had to detour around because they are now tearing up not only weeks of work on the curbing but the street as well. So now they are going to put down new asphalt and then new curbing - again! There's no doubt that section of road needed to be re-done, but unless they just needed to waste time and money, I think someone made a big mistake tearing up that new curbing. Or possibly they made a mistake in the curbing and it all has to be redone. Who knows? One thing that can be agreed on is that a mistake has been made somewhere, and I will tell you right now that is typical for around here. Nothing gets done without at least one major flaw. So does that classify as crazy or just plain stupid?

So that's the news from my dusty little corner of Kansas. I leave you with a pretty close-up shot of the Crepe Myrtle in our backyard. I took this Saturday while pulling nails and staples out of the clapboard siding on our house. The siding that is what I would call Goldenrod or maybe 70's Harvest Gold. Remember when everything from appliances to carpeting was green (avocado),  brick red, orange, yellow and brown? Ugh! Even though I was a small child, I remember it very well and hated every moment of it. It was everywhere! And so was plaid! And if it wasn't plaid, it was big ugly flowers or stripes. And all in those obnoxious colors - on furniture, walls, and yes, even on me! It's no wonder that I love blues, pinks, and purples. I do like greens also, just not that nasty color the 70's called Avocado - it didn't look like the inside of any avocado I'd ever seen. Yikes!