10 on the 10th is hosted by Marsha over at Marsha in the Middle!

I am very excited about the questions for April!

My favorite pink item:

I love pink but this question made me realize that I don’t have many pink items of significance. I need to remedy that. Anyway, I do have one that I absolutely treasure. It is not entirely pink, but pink enough. It is an old vintage quilt that my bestie Kelly’s grandmother made. I ended up with because Kelly had a full house and I absolutely love it. It needs to be repaired, and I don’t know how to do it though. I still love it and I am very careful with it. It is the quilt I usually wrap up with in the mornings – it is that perfect blend of warm and soft.

Birthstone:

My birthstone is the citrine/yellow topaz. My mother gave me a beautiful topaz ring on my sixteenth birthday. I never used to like my birthstone when I was younger, I wanted a flashier color, like a green emerald, or a purple amethyst. Once my mom gave me that ring though, I fell in love with the ring and my birthstone.

Favorite thing to plant:

This changes all the time. Sometimes it is vegetables, sometimes trees, sometimes roses. This year I am looking forward to planting a few trees. I also am dreaming of planting a huge patch of sunflowers! Sunflowers are always so cheerful, and I love how they follow the sun.

Shakespeare:

“Lord, what fools these mortals be!”

My favorite Shakespeare play is A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Fairies, an enchanted moonlit wood, a comedy filled with misunderstandings, who could ask for anything more? I love the idea of fairies and humans mixing it all up in the woods, with love spells gone wrong and then of course, a happy ending. I love Shakespeare’s comedies far more than his tragedies.

“And though she be but little, she is fierce!”

Earth Day:

For Earth Day, we are attending the Detroit Zoo Greenfest, hopefully. It is the weekend before Earth Day, and there will be live music, hands on activities, green food trucks, a sustainable marketplace, and animal engagements. Also, if you are in the first 250 groups to arrive, you get…a 2 gallon bucket of “zoo poo”, which is compost created from waste collected at the Zoo, including manure, bedding and food waste. I guess it is unique, and if we used we can always say, that garden grew from tiger poo!

The Eclipse:

We were *almost* in the path of 100% totality! We were at 99%, and it was still pretty cool. I knew Wyatt wasn’t going to leave his glasses on very long, so I planned a different day. We spent the afternoon painting night and day paintings, and Wyatt also made a solar eclipse picture. Of course we had a solar eclipse playlist, with songs like Moonshadow, Blinded by the Light, Dancing in the Moonlight, etc. And snacks! I did run him out for a minute to look at it, and then I bopped out alone to check it out at peak. It was an amazing wonder of nature and science, right in our own backyard! (sky?)

The Beatles:

My absolute favorite Beatles song is “Blackbird”. I think it is haunting and beautiful and it can make me cry on the right day. I read that Paul McCartney was inspired by two things when he wrote it. The song of a blackbird, and by the Little Rock Nine, and the racial tension in the American South. Wyatt’s favorite Beatles song is “Here Comes the Sun”, which is also a really great song, especially this time of year.

King Henry and His Wives:

I don’t know about you all, but I remember his wives by the rhyme, “Divorced, beheaded, died; Divorced, beheaded, died.” Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves, Catherine Howard, Catherine Parr. So many Catherines! It is hard maybe to pick a favorite? I have a soft spot for them all I guess. Hmm. I am going to say Anne of Cleves, and Catherine Parr, both who made out pretty well in the grand scheme of things. Anne of Cleves, the “ugly” wife, got to divorce her the King after just 6 months and live out her life peacefully, which is not a bad fate for a wife of King Henry VIII. I also like the smart and mature Catherine Parr. She was quick-witted and clever, and managed to keep alive and even outlive the old King. She also was pretty integral to the court and exerted some influence over the court. She also managed to have the King restore his poor daughters, Mary and Elizabeth, to the order of succession. Without her, the history of England would be very different! (Also just throwing it out there, Catherine is my middle name)

Flower:

My birth month flower is the chrysanthemum. I always think of them as the last colorful blooms before the winter, that splash of autumnal color that blends so perfectly with the changing leaves. But we also have a variety that has totally taken over a corner of our yard. I had no idea when we planted one lone chrysanthemum plant that it would go rogue. I find them popping up all over! I just leave them where they bloom, and work around them. Billy’s birth month flower (the secondary one) is the poppy, which is his favorite flower ever. Wyatt’s birth month flower is the daffodil, which is absolutely perfect for my happy, sunny boy.

First Car:

My very first car was a surprise! My mom, a single mom who never made much money, worked as the bookkeeper and office manager at a small auto body repair shop – it is actually where she met my stepdad, Jerry, who was a very talented auto painter. Anyway, a totaled maroon thunderbird came in, and somehow my mom, the shop owner who is the nicest man, and the other employees, including Jerry, worked on this car for free. My mom paid for the car and the materials, which probably took her a long time. I was away at Central Michigan the whole time, unaware that this was happening for me. Then, near the end of the school year, my mom sent me a photo – snail mail because there were no cell phones – of the car, and told me it was mine. It was a fantastic car, and took me all over. I used it for commuting to Eastern Michigan that year, because I left CMU to live back at home. I drove it to Mackinaw City and the Upper Peninsula a few times with my friends, I drove it to work, I took my brother to concerts, to Cedar Point, the zoo – it was the car that went everywhere with me and I loved it so much until it finally died. That was a sad day for me, and when the shop called to tell me that it needed a whole new transmission, I cried because of how sentimental that car was for me. So many memories and emotions wrapped up in it, knowing how hard my mom worked for it for me, and the people that she worked with as well.