Changing Lanes

Our first spring in El Dorado has been an unrivaled marvel. Maybe it's like most springs to people who've lived here for some time, but for us the burst of growth and beauty has been breathtaking.

After a year of drought, we've had plenty of rain. Our farm ponds and the lake are full. The trees that fell into depression last summer have thrown off their mantle of suffering and delivered up an umbrella of green against whatever may come along. The seven gorgeous mature trees on our lot were pruned and shaped last fall, and are rewarding us with llimbs and leaves directly from a masterpiece oil painting. The twelve little sticks that we received from the Arbor Day Foundation and form our little in-house tree farm are thriving youngsters already, ready in a year or two for locations of their own.

On the road, it's easy to see that our winter wheat crop is bountiful, and then some. Statewide, the yield is predicted to be 40% above 2011's. Talk about "amber waves of grain"! Tree lines between fields that looked so desolate last fall are back with full boughs and branches.

We have tried to see what comes up in our yard before making any adjustments or additions/deletions, and we've been amazed by all the plantings that have come back or been renewed by some judicious cutting last fall. Overgrown shrubs have been vigorous in their newly shorn state, and the few newcomers have jumped right into the mix. Our peonies were gorgeous, as were the irises and other early bulbs. The lilies are taking over this week, and the annuals we've slotted in here and there have grown quickly and well.

At our Numana Gardens vegetable plot, every starter plant we set out has survived and gown, the seeds have sprouted, and we're getting ready to add the next round to our co-growing experiment (plant corn in a circular mound and add pole beans in the center when the corn is four inches high, followed by squash when the beans sprout; the beans climb the corn stalks and the squash leaves provide root shade for the corn and beans).

But our greatest delight has been the spring concerts at our granddaughters' schools. The graduating middle school choir and band earned "ones" at state competitions and performed impressively for a full house this week. These kids are going to propel next year's high school ensembles with enthusiasm and talent, not to mention a clear sense of concert decorum and protocol. Playing together with prcision, performing in small groups or solos, and speaking to the audience were all done with aplomb. Bravo! No less impressive was the fourth grade's full musical, "Clowns." Imagine sixty kids in highly varied clown get-ups speaking, singing, dancing, juggling, tumbling, entering, and exiting with the rhythm and pace of more experienced actors! Priceless.

All these "growing things" have made their mark this spring. El Dorado is alive and well. We no longer think much about our DC days.

I suppose it was inevitable. Having retired to El Dorado from Washington, DC, I became interested in seeking a part-time job in which to relax from my home chores and projects. After eight years of warily dodging DC traffic, both as a driver myself and as a pedestrian, I never suspected my new role would involve driving full-time.

Going anywhere in our car in DC began with extricating ourselves from the gated lot behind our building. If the sliding exit fence was in a good mood and permitted passage, we were ready to traverse the narrow alley leading to the street. With luck, there would not be a massive trash-hauling vehicle backing up the part of the alley around the 90-degree turn just beyond our lot. (I must admit I admired the skill of the operators and always gave them plenty of room and smiles.) Absent a trash truck, we would head to the street only to find that the patrons of the building across from the alley opening had seized a chance to use our right of way as a private parking lot. Usually some diplomacy freed up the lane before too long.

If you thnk having reached the street we'd be home free, you'd be forgetting about the double-parkers and their close cousins, the adult children who park in the middle of the street, usually next to an open space, to let Mom out of the car and get her multiple bags of groceries to the curb. "That free space next to my parked vehicle? Not for ME!" Maybe by the end of the block, things would break free.... But wait, there's the immense Cardozo High School on the corner, with its 'round-the-clock activities and associated traffic and "driving." The best time to pass here would turn out to be Saturday and Sunday when soccer mania prevailed on the athletic fields.

We usually managed to reach our destination, having allowed plenty of time for these distractions. But sometimes the unpredicatable became the unimaginable. My favorite was the time several major streets and intersections were blocked off after a tank truck spilled its load of vegetable oil on the roadways. You might think such a need for clean-up would be an urgent matter, but you would be wrong.

Here in El Dorado, we are able to walk to many places we frequent, just as we were in DC. But the resemblance ends there. There are actually long periods when no traffic is visble here. Even major streets provide plenty of opportunity to cross, and if a driver comes by she's usually polite to a fault about letting you do so. Driving is just as easy. We've seen plenty of adherence to speed limits, traffic signals, and general courtesy. I've seen more working turn signals here in town than I ever observed in all our years in DC. If I forget to use mine now and then, I cringe with remorse.

When I saw the ad on Craigslist for a part-time transporter at the airport location of a car rental company, I knew I'd found my ideal new position. Three eight-hour weekly shifts moving vehicles to and from the terminal, service area, and regular business customers has provided a chance to practice and reinforce all those valuable Kansas driving skills. Here's hoping I can measure up over time.

It seems my admiration for our spring green fortune is shared by many. This may be a season of rebirth and new opportunities unlike any in recent years.  

I marvelled earlier about the wealth of new growth and abundant greenery springing up around us. But little did I realize its effect on our community and beyond. Just today, in an article in the Wichita Eagle, a long-time observer of our agricultural scene noted that people throughout our state have new hope this spring. After many seasons of drought and even times in which nothing sprang from the earth for months on end, Kansans now are seeing life renewed and have an optimistic view of the coming growing season-and beyond.

When we lived in Washington, we didn't give the crop cycle much thought. It wasn't in our forefront, and its only manifestation, it seemed, was the occasional absence of some favored vegetable or fruit in the lush supermarket display during weekly shopping. "What do you mean, there are no strawberries?"   "Are these the only tomatoes available?"

Coming to Kansas has brought us up close to the land, and we cherish what its meaning is to our daily lives. We look closely at the remarkable winter wheat fields that both brighten and soften our view on every highway and county road. We see the new growth spurting from trees and shrubs brought low by last summer's heat and lack of rainfall. We watch the growing canopy of leaves from our yard's magnificent mature elms, oaks, maples, and sycamores.

How could we take such inspiring natural events for granted? Where is our steweardship role to be enacted? Of course, our neighbors who till and care for the vast agricultural land around us lead us all in good practices. But we can take part, too.

For us, we've created a small tree farm in part of our side yard, carefully preparing the soil and planting a dozen tiny specimens-two each of six varieties-received free for joining the Arbor Day Foundation this winter. We check them daily for signs of taking hold-a bud here, a leaf there. When these "babies" reach transplantable size in a year or two, we'll move them to permanent settings in our yard so they can join their older cousins in making our neighborhood so attractive and peaceful.

Our next undertaking is planting our plot at the Numana Community Gardens at Ninth Avenue and Gordy Street. Taking advice from online research, our granddaughters, and the Gardens' master gardener George Meyers, we'll be getting our little spot organized and underway during the rest of this month.

We look forward to enjoying a grower's perspective this summer and fall, and letting our former neighbors in Washington know what we just picked and savored at home from our own handiwork and God's grace. We know there will be plenty to pick and share with any who might want to savor the fruits of our new community resource.

When we lived in DC, our "lawn" consisted of many square yards of concrete, occasionally interupted by "tree boxes" containing mature or replacement specimens struggling to fit into the urban landscape. I never gave dandelions a thought. 

Our first spring in El Dorado has brought me up short. While everything is bursting into green around us, the most celebratory flowering has been among our yellow varieties-daffodils, forsythia, crocuses. And dandelions.

While I'm the first to welcome signs of spring, dandelions and I go back a long way. When I was growing up in upstate New York, they were thought of as WEEDS. My best friend in grade school, Gene, talked his mother into paying us a penny a plant for each dandelion we successfully dug from her yard. We didn't reach our imagined riches, but we did earn many dollars.

Maybe that's where dandelions and I got off on a bad track. When they began to appear in our yard in El Dorado this month, I admit to having a visceral, competitive reaction after all those years of remission. It would be okay for others to have dandelions in their yards, but I would scheme to wipe out the invaders in our yard.

I took heart from my 89-year-old neighbor who launched a campaign against her dandelions, and described her approach as containing the airborne enemy. Clearly, we were united in our cause.

Being a show-off, I started in my front yard. This had the dual benefit of showing my neighbor that I was in solidarity with her as well as allowing me to perfect my dormant digging technique. Because of our large shade trees, we have relatively fewer dandelions in this area, so it was easy for me to think I could prevail.

After digging up mere dozens of dandelions from my street-side yard, I moved on to the varsity level of eliminating them from my side and back lawn areas (quite a bit larger). Five days later, and counting, I'm closing in, but, of course, new plants crop up in the finished sections every day and require my vigilance.

I've discovered the secret of dandelion persistence: they work in groups. When you put your weed digger under one bright yellow bloom, you usually discover it's connected to another plant. Or several. The highest number I've discovered so far is eight plants in one square foot or so.

They're also secretive. Plants pop up in a space where you finished digging recently-just to make faces at you. They hide in other plants' foliage. They prosper overnight, while the specimens you nurture in your garden take weeks to show growth.

I think we're "winning." We have four adjacent yards that are pretty much free of dandelions. But shouldn't I have just celebrated those brilliant yellow blossoms that popped up all over our yard this spring? Many do-there's one championship yard a few blocks away that has a nearly all-yellow display today. And this is the same family that had last summer's most amazing vegetable garden in our neighborhood.

Hmmm.  

This early spring is a gift, but it rushes us toward things we should pause to savor. 

Our dear neighbor Hal has died, and his memorial service is Monday at First Baptist at 11:00 AM. We should not rush ahead with our recognition of Hal's life, nor should we be in any hurry to refelect on what he gave to our community, or our nation, for that matter.

A man grew up here, and benefited from this city's warmth and support. In turn, he joined our armed forces after college and put himself in our places on the front lines. As it happened, he was diagnosed with a terminal illness in recent months.

He could have been consigned to death in another place, but our county EMS crew stepped in and brought Hal back to El Dorado and enabled him to live out his final days among his family and friends here.

You might say, so what? People die and "life" goes on. But Hal's life was emblematic of our community life. He did his service for us, and we honor him by recognizing that he stepped up when it was not required. His wife Pamela has recorded his last days here with eloquence.  Would that any of us could have met his standard.

After our first summer in El Dorado, we doubted that we would ever experience our new home through shades of green. But looking around today, it's THE color-and getting more vivid by the hour. 

It started even before Saint Patrick's Day, when green takes over the known world for a time. All our perennials had begun to send new growth in distinctive shades of green a couple of weeks ago, and even our lawn spaces have decided to join the parade. Our trees are leafing out, and pretty soon will have made their warm umbrellas ubiquitous.

One catalyst for this burst of color, of course, is the welcome rainfall we have received in recent weeks. With so little snowfall through the winter, it seemed as though we might slip back into drought with even fewer ponds and streams ready for the hot season.

Today's soaking is the most abudant sign yet that our season of renewal is upon us. It has seemed from this writer's window that every drop of clear water has engendered its own mirrored emerging blade or leaf. The greens of March will surely lead to those of April and beyond, as we plant and watch with growing [no pun intended] anticipation.

Our "green" in DC was limited to the one large tree we could see 50 yards away from our windows. We waited for it to send a message each spring that it was still a neighbor, and ready to perform its duties. It was just enough of a signal to raise hopes. Here in El Dorado, it's a veritable rain forest by comparison-all the more welcome given what we remember from last summer.

Now, about those REDbuds.... 

March is about NCAA basketball. Period.   

Except when spring (or summer) weather arrives mid-month, and overwhelms us with early blooms and fragrances at an accelerated rate. We've already had three bouquets on our dining table from the rush of daffodils, and the cardinals are taking numbers to use the feeder and the robins are lined up on the fence waiting their turn at the birdbath.

Most gratifying is the finding that all of last year's new plantings (ground covers, mostly) are beginning to green up and bloom, when a month ago they were properly dormant and invisible. We even had to weed a patch today where mulch had been applied last summer to an area of former "grass" (weeds, bare dirt, a few sprigs of something desirable).

In DC over that last several years, our "yard" was a four by six foot balcony on the third floor of a condominium building. The good news is that it faced south, toward the Washington Monument, and received a fair amount of sun. The bad news is that it was four by six.

We managed to fit two comfortable patio chairs and a couple of tables into the space, so that we could plant a few tiers of differing flowering shrubs and annuals in long rectangular or round planters. Once summer rolled around, we were "armed" with beauty-lots of color and texture in an otherwise bleak setting.

Here in El Dorado, we have scarcely any confines of space or light. Much of our yard is shaded by our seven mature trees (sycamore, elm, maple, oak), expertly pruned and shaped last fall by an arborist. But we have ten crape myrtles and numerous redbuds ready to spring into action and our side yard is framed by a border of lillies, iris, and peonies. They have burst through the mulch and are poised for action.

Who needs NCAA basketball!?

Last week's Friday night basketball game at BCC was technically a fundraiser for the Butler Homeless Initiative (BHI), but it meant more than that to our community . It was also one of those events that we do so well here-come together for a good time and in the process see neighbors and new friends that we hardly knew we had.

The draw was the "visiting team"-the entertaining and supremely skilled Harlem Ambassadors. But our "home team," comprising ridicule-proof local men of stature and character, was the reason we turned out in droves. They were "us," for sure. So what if the score had to be "adjusted" a bit (by 40 points or so) midway through the game to even things up-our guys played hard and with great enthusiasm. At the quarter breaks, they became the foils for the shenanigans of the visiting rivals, which raised their standing still further in our eyes. By the end of the evening, everyone came together and acknowledged a fine program of fast-paced and amusing gamesmanship all around. The BHI, well-organized and confident of their cause, raised awareness and made some money toward their goal of assisting our county's homeless families through long-term solutions.

We contrasted this evening of basketball-as-game with our years of experience in Washington, DC, where we annually watched our hapless NBA Wizards sink to new lows in spite of hype, marketing, huge salaries, and bottomless tolerance of unsportsmanlike behavior (e.g., handguns in the locker room? Come on!). We usually stopped attending games before the end of the season to fend off depression.

True, we had there and here wonderful collegiate teams that usually make their respective playoff berths. But there's something special about a game at BCC that draws a house full of neighbors for a "game" and a good cause.

We are eager to feel and witness our first spring in El Dorado. It's such a relief not to be dreading the version we experienced in Washington, DC, for several years.    I                

That assertion makes me sound like a crank, I'm sure. How could you not love spring In beautiful Washington, especially those famous cherry blossoms? Actually, those blossoms were at the root of the problem, no pun intended.

While Washington is often filled with visitors, there is no season quite like the annual cherry blossom festival. The Mall and its consituent monuments and open spaces become like New Year's Eve in Times Square-for two weeks. The crowds were one thing, but the city's confusing street grid and wonderful but obscure subway system combined to freeze traffic and travel by any means with so many unfamiliar users thronging the area.

The Washington Post runs a feature in late winter to guide readers in predicting the peak of cherry blossom season, using the National Park Service's experts to speculate on bud development and weather patterns to come up with the winning recipe. As locals, we dreaded the appearance of this daily article, knowing that it was a sure-fire harbinger of the fearsome gridlock to follow. Just as Kansans must keep a wary eye out for hailstorms and tornadoes, so Washington denizens must watch the gathering tourist hordes and be prepared to take cover.

It sounds petty to begrudge DC's visitors what must surely strike most of them as one of the most wondrous sights they could ever behold-hundreds of radiant flowering trees astride the buildings for which the city is famous.  But for those few weeks, getting around, going to work, dining out, and other regular tasks became undertakings requiring ingenuity and cunning. Once the blossoms faded, or, more often, were knocked to the ground by wind and rain, the crowds reversed their trek and we returned to familiar sidewalks and trains undaunted.

Then there were the marathons....

But I digress. Here in El Dorado, our daffodils are in bloom, our other bulbs and grasses are showing growth, the birds are flocking to the feeder and bath, and the patio furniture is out. What could be more delightful? 

We bought our Washington, DC, condomimium at the height of the real estate market in 2006. Not that we knew that at the time.

The DC housing market was in full swing in 2005, and we decided if we didn’t “get in,” we would regret becoming permanent renters. We must have seen 100 places during our search, but what struck us was that all the kitchens were the same-granite counters, stainless-steel appliances, “wood” floors, birch/cherry cabinets.

We purchased a condominium in a new building, and lived there happily for five years. The kitchen was indeed attractive and comfortable, but we decided to add a few features for our own enjoyment--under-cabinet xenon lighting and a glass-tile backsplash--you know, for the value-added impact on future buyers.

When we decided to move to El Dorado, we researched houses here and saw several that had cookie-cutter kitchens such as we had viewed in DC. But what I was really excited about was a house built in 1947 that had a “cutting-edge” kitchen for its day.

That’s the one we decided to purchase. Even though I knew what lay ahead.

After a year on the 2010 flat-market real estate scene in DC, our condominium sold for a little less than we had paid for it several years earlier. So much for good investing. Our “fancy kitchen” hadn’t changed the dynamic.

We decided to live with our 65 year-old El Dorado kitchen for a while to see what we might want to preserve or change about it. One thing was easy--the original electric cooktop sparked and tripped the circuit breaker during the first week, so we’ve changed it out for a nice gas model. We’re in the midst of installing a new floor that replaces bile-green asphalt tile with a basket weave-pattern porcelain tile that picks up the colors and design of the kitchen.

What emerges from these projects is a sense that we are now more at home in El Dorado than we ever were in DC. The kitchen project here copies no one, has no counterpart in town or anywhere else. The fantastic experts who’ve done the work for us are local people, not installers from some design catalog.

Just more evidence that this is home, in a way we long missed in DC. 

Arriving In El Dorado mid-summer, we took a while to become familiar with local musical offerings, among other community amenities. In these early months, we were impressed by a number of things. 

First, music abounds. It's available in many public settings live and it's clear that we enjoy listening to and performing music of many types here. Second, we seem to value music for the opportunity it affords us to come together. Whether in church or at school, or in a more formal concert setting, we seem to want to experience singing, playing, or listening in groups. Third, all generations seem to connect through music here. It's not a "kids" thing, or a "teens" thing, or an "older adults" thing. Well, actually, it is probably all those things at times-but predominantly music is a common interest for our families and friends together.

Attending our granddaughters' schools' Christmas season concerts was a highlight for us. The variety and challenge of music performed (choral and instrumental) was impressive, but the demeanor of the students as they arrived on stage, performed their numbers, and yielded to the next group was remarkable. Seeing such discipline and poise, adherence to the "traffic" rules, and being respectful of one another enhanced the experience for us. When we go to a concert by a professional or advanced amateur group, we take for granted that they will follow the usual protocol. But when elementary and middle school students do so as well, it's a special treat and a sign of the wonderful mentoring that our faculties provide.

We were fortunate to be able to hear last month's El Dorado Communty Concert Association presentation of the Carpe Diem Quartet at the Middle School auditorium. It was a wonderful combination of serious classical music, some down-home fiddlin', and some cross-cultural music-making of great color and panache. It was impressive to learn that the EDCCA has been enriching our community for nearly 80 years-a proud record to be sure.

Last Sunday, we attended the Wichita Symphony's mid-winter classical concert in the Century II Concert Hall with a friend's ten-year-old son. It was as fine an afternoon of music-making as one could imagine, and featured the Korean violinist Chee-Yun in the sparkling and evocative Sibelius concerto. We came away highly pleased with the opportunity to hear such exceptional virtuostic playing, supported by our own terrific local orchestra fresh from their performance of Ravel's Le Tombeau de Couperin and Mozart's Symphony No. 40.

It seems to us that our community musical heritage is secure, and that music's place in the educational endeavors of our younger folks is high. However, there were scores of empty seats at the string quartet's concert in the Middle School's auditorium, while in Wichita the hall was full-adults and children together, enjoying a first-rate musical experience. Let's think about ways to have El Dorado's young musicians and music lovers alike experience live music from seats that would otherwise remain vacant. The investment would be "sound."  

We love our new life and home in El Dorado. It is both more than we expected and more than we imagined it would be. Arriving on July 4 (one of last summer's only rainy days), we were immediately thrust into small-town festivities and exhaled our eight years of inner-city Washington, DC. It had been an exciting sojourn in its way-much to see, do, and experience, but the weight of the tensions and hassles had accumulated to burdensome levels and we knew it was time for a new community. 

We have already made more acquaintances and friends here than in our nearly a decade in DC. Part of that phenomenon is the nature of a capital city-newcomers tend to form an exit plan along with their efforts to fit in and succeed. Approximately 60,000 new residents come to the metro Washington area each year, so transition and turnover are familiar dimensions of life there. In our case, apart from our church and condominium association neighbors, we made few close connections with others.

Through our church, we became very involved with an outreach ministry in support of people who were homeless or living on the margins. At first, it consisted of a small group of volunteers who provided a home-cooked meal on Saturdays, followed by discussion of selected Bible passages. With some testimonials and active marketing, we gradually grew the program to the point where dozens of people were involved in preparing meals, serving, leading and participating in discussions, and cleaning up. Almost to a person, our fellow volunteers spoke of the depth of their connection with our guests, some regular, some occasional. It was almost as though we were the hungry people, and our guests were serving us.

The most poignant occasion in our years of involvement was the memorial service for one of our guests. He was murdered while sleeping under a nearby bridge one Christmas Eve; the crime remains unsolved. The service attracted an overflow congregation, including many "regulars," but also scores of people who learned about our friend in a wonderful Washington Post feature published after his death that traced his existence among us through his character and routines. During the service, you would have been forgiven for imagining him to be a head of state.

That searing experience has stayed with me these last few years. Even in so close-knit and generous a town as El Dorado, many of our fellow community members are vulnerable and sometimes pass unnoticed among us. Here in our county, we have many individuals and families who are living in desperate need of food and shelter at any given moment. I'm hopeful that our warm and caring nature as a people can be harnessed to go an extra step for others in need, as we are able. We plan to do our part, to thank you for welcoming us.