Decoration Day

Colors of Memorial Day

As I understand it, Memorial Day started out as Decoration Day, when citizens decorated the graves of fallen soldiers with flowers.

Nature has been decorating everything with flowers around here. It is often surprising to me to find flowers in my yard.  But God does good gardening work.

These miniature lilacs smell SO sweet, the aroma wafting
over me every time I open the front door. A gift!

These dianthus seem to have sprung up overnight.

Dianthus with varied colors

In our yard, dianthus is a winning species right now.

I decided that we should do some decorating with flags for Memorial Day.  I demanded that the taller people in the household engage in climbing on stepstools to hang the big flag.

Father steadies the son.

We permanently installed those hooks, so that we can
hang a flag whenever we want.  That is, whenever I pester
the taller people to hang the flag for me.

Hmm.. Something is not right.

The Common Household Husband declared our drooping flag to be embarrassing.  Apparently we used to have a different flag, now misplaced, that used to exactly fit the placement of these hooks.  Time to get out the tools.

The Common Household Son declared that this job would be
easier if we could turn the house upside-down while he
was hammering.  It's hard to hammer up!

Installing a new hook.

Ah.  Much better.

Finally I got around to planting the Monty Python vegetables ("not dead yet") that I bought at the farmer's market 10 days ago.  The cherry tomato and jalapeno pepper plants look pretty healthy, but I think the marigolds won't make it.  It's always better when I leave the gardening up to God.  She pays more attention than I do.

Future vegetables

Then we decorated the grill with many colors, because that's what modern Americans do on Memorial Day.

Grilled veggies are the best.  Love those sweet onions!

We had friends over.  It was their anniversary, so we decorated for that, too.

When you've been married for 40 years, you tend not
to mind when your anniversary decoration is a bit twisted.
At least I hope that's what our friends thought.

Our friends brought the makings of s'mores-on-the-grill.  Yum!  A sweet end to a quiet day of honoring those who gave their lives for our freedom.  Our heartfelt and deep thanks to them, to God, to friends, and to people tall enough to hang flags.

Directions for S'mores-on-the-Grill:

1.  Find a grill-worthy flat surface, and cover with foil.

2.  Lay out the desired number of graham cracker pieces, saving the other halves for later.

3.  Put mini-marshmallows and semi-sweet chocolate chips on the graham crackers.

Accept the fact that some ingredients will roll off the crackers.

4.  Put the whole thing on the grill.  Close the lid.  Cook for a few minutes.

Peek occasionally.

5.  When the marshmallows start to look puffy, it means they are melting.  When they look good and squishy, put the other half of the graham cracker on top, and press down.

6.  Cook for about another minute, just to be sure everything is good and melted.

Kids, let an adult do this part.  Peligroso!

 7.  Remove from grill with spatula.

Be careful - hot!