100th Post Giveaway and Station Wagon Ducks

First and foremost, I am 2 posts away from 100 and am excited to reach that milestone. Please leave a comment to be entered in the 100 post giveaway, if you follow my blog you will be entered a second time and if you mention the giveaway on your blog you will be entered a third time.

I woke up to a pair of mallards in my back yard this morning, something that I don't usually see in suburban Atlanta. Lots of Canadian Geese but not mallards. Seeing their swishing little tails and hearing their low quacks reminded me of a story I posted for Dances with Flowers http://danceswithflowers.wordpress.com/ back in July. She had taken to her bed with an illness and asked several of her blog friends to submit a story as a guest poster. Jennifer has a natural green thumb and all of God's flora truly dance for her. I submitted the below posting and I hope it puts a smile on your day and perhaps makes your laugh:

Jennifer has asked me, the Sea Witch, to be a guest poster of which I am shamelessly flattered. Having read two guest postings so far I feel I am a wildflower in a garden of orchids as these folks that I have been asked to follow behind are knowledgeable and passionate about plant life. My only “expertise” is that I love anything that Mother Nature so willingly gives us, and having spent many days watering my dad’s pair of personal greenhouses when he and Mom were on vacation.

My dad was a New York City boy, born and raised, but somewhere in his soul he had a horticulturist’s heart. He adored flowering plants and especially roses. I remember growing up in New Jersey, surrounded with the over 100 different rose varieties and colors that dad tended to and nurtured around our yard. When the flowering season began, our yard would smell like a perfume counter. The heady scent of roses was everywhere.

Dad was also obsessed with the Jackson and Perkins contest for nurturing the perfect white rose and spent years trying to cultivate a pure white rose, but never quite accomplishing that because deep in the center there always remained a gentle hue of lilac.

When we were transferred to Minnesota in 1966, attempting to nurture flowering plants in a short, 6-week summer season was frustrating. So Dad turned to water plants, as we had a huge pond in our back yard. All I remember is that I had my own pond which meant I could swim in the summer, skim rocks and fish all year long and skate on the frozen water in the winter… even then, always a child of the sea… my mom used to say I would find a water world in a rain puddle. Dad wanted mallard ducks for the pond so he grabbed my sisters and me and we piled into the 1966 family station wagon and headed off to a duck farm.

Dad purchased 6 female ducks and 2 males. Being a “city boy”, he thought it was a perfectly sound decision to put one daughter up front and the other two in the back seat and then put the ducks in with us. Hey, how bad could this ride be as it was only 8 miles to the house? The minute Dad turned the engine on the ducks began flying all over the inside of the car. The quacking noise was deafening and this transplanted city family learned firsthand what happens when ducks get nervous.

Dad set land-speed records in getting us back to the house with my two younger sisters crying and screaming at the top of their 6 and 10 year old lungs… which did nothing to soothe the mood of the frightened ducks. The minute we pulled in the driveway, I opened the door and the ducks flew out and ran to the pond, quacking loudly and anxious to settle into their new digs.

My mom heard the commotion, came out of the house and looked at her ducksh*t and feather covered and crying daughters, turned to my dad and said, “Paul, what the hell did you do to the girls?” At the grownup age of 12, I recognized how funny that sounded and how we looked and I began laughing — which only made my sisters wail louder. All my dad could do is turn the outside water on and hose us and the car down. Needless to say, we city folk never picked up ducks in a station wagon again.

Have a wonderful day and watch out for station wagon ducks. Sea Witch