2021 Life Logs, Day 83: First Crocus in Bloom
Date: Wednesday, March 24, 2021
Weather: Sunny Early, Then Overcast; High 54, Low, 42 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
Saturday was the first day of spring, but at that point I had seen no spring flowers in bloom. Today was an early release day for Ollie and when I drove him home and parked the car in the driveway, I spied a little dot of the color purple in the landscaped area by the driveway. I told Ollie to go investigate and we both delighted to see the first flowers of spring in bloom. The tiny purple crocuses with their bright yellow centers were such a delight to see. He went in to get Heather and bring her out. There were squeals of joy. Spring has officially arrived.
It was also a day of joy for Massachusetts. Boston Mayor Marti Walsh is headed to Washington to serve as President Biden’s Secretary of Labor. And after 200 years of being a city with a white man as the chief executive, Boston’s acting Mayor is now a black woman, Kim Janey. A new era is ushered in . . . finally.
I achieved my goal today of finishing up Chapter 12 of my proposed book and I started writing Chapter 13. I did a quick reread of Chapter 12 which is about the time Windbird spent in the Marquesas Islands in French Polynesia. I will begin tomorrow by reading it again and making a few more edits. Then I will continue on with the new chapter about our time in Tahiti, Moorea, Raiatea, and Bora Bora. When Mark and I left the Marquesas, we were headed for the Tuamotus. We never got there. So, I started the chapter today writing about how plans change. I started the new chapter by writing, “Of all the people we met while sailing around the world, it was a couple we met on Langkawi Island in Malaysia, and with whom we buddy sailed across the Indian Ocean, that we remained closest to once we returned home. Ed and Lynne on Constance were in the sixteenth year of their circumnavigation when we met. They had been ‘out there’ long enough to know what they were doing. They soon learned that Mark and I lived by an adapted version of a Ben Franklin quote. ‘If you don’t have a plan, you are planning to fail.’ When I would say this to Lynne, she would always smile and say, ‘You can make all the plans you want, but then life happens.’ Our planning, and then our rapid change of plans during our last days in the Marquesas and on our passage to the Tuamotus was a perfect example of Lynne’s ‘then life happens’.” So true.
