Another weekend is behind us and a new week is underway. Most of the weekend was certainly nice with the sun coming out after a cloudy Saturday beginning and then disappearing after a mostly sunny Sunday.
My wife and daughter liked the weekend. On Saturday they got our two vegetable gardens planted, some seeds, some plants. The veggie selection has grown this year with some we haven’t planted for years. They also got a few flowering plants into the ground. My daughter had given her mother a bunch of them for Mother’s Day. The flowers, some annuals, some perennials, found their homes Sunday.
When we were first married back in the early 1960s, my wife’s parents had a huge garden in a yard behind their home in Portland. They grew enough vegetables of all kinds to feed them through the year. Of course canning or freezing was part of the routine. It was my first adventure into the world of really fresh vegetables. It didn’t take long to learn that veggies pulled at three and eaten at six were among the very best one could have.
Corn became one of my favorites. Wow! There is nothing like the flavor of corn picked less than a half hour before a meal, dropped into the pot or put directly on the grill. Eating super fresh corn has stayed with us all through the years. And even today we buy all our cob corn in the summer at farmer’s markets. My friends say that modern procedures make even frozen corn delicious. I don’t know. We want to eat it the same day it’s picked. I don’t remember eating corn between seasons since those early days.
When we were married, my wife’s dad gave us several long rows so we could grow our own. The only condition was that we had to tend to it. For the next several years, many spring and summer afternoons were spent in the sun, but when we ate the results all through the winter, the work was worth it. Can you imagine someone who professes to “not do outdoors” spending time in the sun in a garden? I did, but that was in another place in another time under much different conditions.
My wife has always in the past waited until Memorial Day or later, depending on that last frost of the season which comes with the last full moon of May, or something like that, to do her planting. This year she’s a week early so I’m hoping she hasn’t miscalculated. I mentioned it her and she said that she thought it would be O.K. considering where we live. We’ll see.
So, with the weekend behind us, it’s time to turn our attention to the June primaries, among other things, coming in the next few weeks. This year we have some very spirited primaries facing us in both parties. There are contended primaries on the Democrat side for both the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate. On the Republican side, there is a choice for the House of Representatives. I hate to admit ignorance on this one, but if the Senate seat is being contested on the Republican side, I’ve missed it.
Of course there are many Maine legislative seats up for grabs, too. For Mainers this is a good chance to begin turning our state around.
I read a forum daily about Maine politics and other stuff. As Maine Goes is mostly Republican, but you can get some “both sides” education on all sorts of things there. One poster yesterday asked what I consider to be a great question as the debates over candidates move toward the Primary climax. Ray Richardson, a local radio/TV (WLOB/Fox23) talk show host, asked, and this is loosely paraphrased, why can’t we show our support by being “For” a candidate and not just be “Against” another.
If people extolled the reasons to vote for someone rather than just negatives against another, we all could learn more about who would better represent us. I for one would like to see campaigns become positive and not negative. Negative remarks tell me nothing. Attacks advance nothing. Yet, I could better make up my mind on whom to support if I could learn the positive things a candidate would do for us, for Maine, for our nation.
It won’t happen. As the Primary gets closer, and now it’s only three weeks from tomorrow, we can only expect the attacks and negativisms from the various candidates’ supporters to increase. That’s too bad. We could make such better choices with the positives.
GiM
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