There's power in growing flowers

By Sheila Donnelly/Austin Daily Herald

I spent the weekend planting flowers for my daughter Mary's upcoming wedding in August. She is marrying a coworker, David Silverstein, whom she met where she lives in Los Angeles. I had promised her I would try and grow the flowers for her wedding. I planted gladiolus, calla lilies, dahlias and lots of annuals. Mary is like many young women that get married nowadays in that she is having five bridesmaids, a traditional white gown and a buffet style wedding dinner. The other day a woman asked me what has happened to the days when people had sandwiches, mints, nuts and cake at a wedding?

She went on to say that weddings cost so much money, have so many attendants and last for hours. I agree. But Mary wants a big wedding and she and her fiance are footing the bill for most of the ceremony.

When I was married ages ago, I paid for my wedding too. I was married in Ireland. I wore a simple cotton dress with great big green flowers that looked like curtains. It was pretty ugly. Tom wore a brand new suit. He is only 5 feet tall and weighs less than 100 pounds. He bought the suit at an exclusive boys shop in Dublin off Grafton Street. It was a three-piece tan suit with bellbottom pants.

We were planning on starting a restaurant and Tom said that when he wore the suit he got respect from the Realtor agents he was looking to rent space from. I really didn't believe we would be able to start a restaurant, so I didn't dare spend any money. We were living with another couple at the time and eating lentils and brown rice for every other meal. It was a big deal when we could buy eggs or a candy bar. I was hungry all the time. I was pretty angry with Tom for buying a new suit when I was dreaming about eating a good meal every day. I was working as a cleaning lady and kitchen helper for the Little Sisters of the Poor. I worked from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. five days a week and saved my bus fare by walking three miles home every night.

This contributed to my ire with his purchasing the suit. I was worried about every 10 pence we spent and he was walking around looking like he had money.

The night before our wedding, Noeleen, the woman we lived with and my bridesmaid, told me she would take care of the flowers for the wedding.

She had taken a course the previous winter on how to arrange flowers Japanese style. I said, "I don't have any money for flowers as I spent it on the wedding cake ingredients."

I had baked a "cake" with corn meal because Tom liked corn breadmuffins. I know it doesn't make a lot of sense, but I knew how to make corn bread and I didn't know how to make cake, so our wedding cake was corn bread. I had forgotten to buy baking powder so the corn bread was flat. I cut the cornbread in layers and put whipped cream and strawberries between the layers.

Anyway, Noeleen told me not to worry about the flowers. She was going to make the most beautiful bouquet for me. I went to bed and when I woke up, I found in the refrigerator a beautiful wedding bouquet with roses and peonies and a carnation boutonniere for Tom. I went and thanked Noeleen and asked her where she had gotten such beautiful flowers.

"All the ladies in the neighborhood have such beautiful flower gardens. I went out after midnight and clipped a few flowers from each yard. I was careful and didn't take their best ones. These flowers won't be missed," Noeleen explained.

I'll be thinking of my pilfered wedding flowers while I watch Mary's wedding flowers grow this summer -- only Mary will have the best ones in her bouquet.

Free junk is still just plain junk

By Sheila Donnelly/Austin Daily Herald

This past winter we had such little precipitation that I was worried that the ground would be too dry for spring planting. After this weekend, I don't have to worry about too little moisture. It rained so much that the ditches and fields are full of standing water.

It was a cold, windy and rainy weekend. I went to a party on Saturday night.

It was a nice party with friendly people, good food and plenty of refreshments, only it was so cold and damp. The party was held in a garage and there was a fire for guests to stand around in the backyard. The guests would turn their backs to the fire to get warm and when their backs became warm, they turned their fronts to the fire. I stayed in the garage to keep dry. I was glad to go home early and lie in my warm bed and listen to the pouring rain and howling wind outdoors.

Sunday, my mother, two sisters, a brother, cousins and my children came over for dinner. We had hoped to have a picnic. But with this cold, wet spring, we fired up our wood stove in the kitchen to keep everyone warm and toasty. Tom hauled the barbecue grill into the barn and grilled chicken and steak. It was pretty crowded in the house as half of our kitchen is torn off. We are still in the midst of remodeling. What would normally be the dining room is filled with boxes in every corner. I advised everyone not to lie anything down in that room, as it quickly becomes swallowed up with all the junk. Everyone was tolerant of the junk and the food was delicious. The new grandbaby, Tommy, was passed back and forth between aunts, uncles, and cousins and lots of photos were taken.

One good thing about the wet weather and cool spring is that it is good for transplanting. I have been separating herbs in the garden. Tom has been planting trees and bushes we got through the extension office. When I was growing up, my dad planted cedar pine trees all over the front yard and to the north of the house. He dug the trees out of the ditches and a neighbor's pasture. They were the scruffiest, scratchiest trees. My dad planted more than 600 of these trees. They were free for the taking and he planted them close together to form windbreaks. My brothers and sisters and I spent hours hauling heavy hoses and buckets to water these ugly trees. I asked dad why he wouldn't plant apple or plum trees. I figured if we were going to be spending so much time planting and watering trees that it would be nice to grow trees that we could eat fruit from. Dad said that fruit trees were a lot of work and they would get rust from the cedar pines.

"So why not grow fruit trees instead of the cedar pines? I asked.

"Cedar pines are free, fruit trees aren't," Dad answered.

Coming from dad, this made sense because he was always dragging home anything that was free. He fed the cats roadkill that he picked up each day driving around the county. The garage was built out of creosote-treated wood that was recycled from a highway shed. The barn was built from an old wooden silo that dad and my oldest brother spent hours pulling nails out of the lumber. An old iron oil tank from a semi was turned upright and cemented into the ground where dad stored grain for the animals. Nothing was new on our farm. Everything was made of recycled junk. So it made sense that we could not plant trees that cost money.

But I am not like my dad and I like to eat from the trees I grow. I have apple, pear and plum trees. I am starting a vineyard and I am looking forward to fresh grapes. I don't mind spending money on a plant that I can eat from for several years down the road.

Cows help explain life's problems

By Sheila Donnelly/Austin Daily Herald

We have a cow that Tom calls the Motherless Child. She is a two-year-old and we raised her on a bottle as her mother had mastitis right after she was born. We sold her mother right after she had her calf. We have Shorthorn cattle and they are on pasture all summer and winter. Motherless Child never has become part of the herd and I don't think she feels like she is a cow.

Because she has never become part of the herd, she wanders by herself and has taken to slipping through the fence to find greener pastures.

Thankfully for us, those greener pastures have been right besides the pasture in the ditch. Tom finds Motherless Child waiting by the gate each morning to get back into the pasture. It is as if she has had enough of being alone and reluctantly wants get back with the herd. We have to sell her before she starts causing trouble. Right now she is just a gentle cow that hangs out in the ditch because the rest of the herd snubs her.

I have a friend whose cows are out a lot. My friend is older and spends his days on his riding lawn mower and driving around his pasture checking fences and making sure the cows are where they are supposed to be. Last winter, when the ground was frozen and he couldn't pound fence posts in the ground, he sat in his truck with the motor running, day after day to keep an eye on his cattle. He doesn't like to sell his cattle. I asked him once why he hung on to so many cows when he had a hard time keeping up with the fences. He likes to read a lot and said, "I was reading about the tribes in Africa and they determined their wealth by how many cattle each man had when they herded them around. The more cattle each man had, the more wealth. I don't have much money, but I feel like I have wealth like an African herder with how many cattle I have."

Makes sense to him. I have another neighbor who is dead now. He lived with his son. The two milked Holstein cows and the dad would not wave back at us when we would drive by their place. The father and son wore matching wide-bib overalls with blue work shirts and striped engineer hats pulled down low on their foreheads. The dad would glare at us long and hard when we drove by their place. The son waved when his father wasn't around, but did so turning his back to us. I asked another neighbor how he got along with these two.

"Oh the son is really a nice guy, but his dad is so ornery. One time my dad's Jersey cows got out and went into the ditch by their house. The dad herded my dad's cows into his barn and milked them and then herded them back to my dad's pasture. My dad hadn't even known his cows were out and couldn't figure out why they had no milk that night. The son stopped my dad on the road the next day and told him his dad had milked his cows dry," my neighbor said.

My neighbor said they never got along real well after that. I can see why.

It's not the best claim to fame
By Sheila Donnelly/Austin Daily Herald

I am in Chicago this week with two of my sisters. We are staying with my oldest brother's daughter, Megan O'Leary. She works for a virtual reality company. The weather has been gorgeous and I have done a lot of walking.

Megan lives right next to Wrigley Field. The apartments that are across from Wrigley Field have bleachers set up on the roofs to get a bird's-eye view of the game.

This is my second trip to Chicago. I came here four years ago for an art trip though Riverland and stayed downtown at the Hyatt Hotel. It is a more relaxing trip this time and I am in the neighborhoods of what my niece calls the "real" Chicago. The city is full of young people in their 20s and many don't have cars, but rely on public transportation to get around.

This weekend the streets were filled with people running and roller blading and on bicycles. It is so great that it is finally warming up. I'm sure the Mill Pond has a stream of people coming out of the woodwork after the winter and taking in fresh air and exercising.

Sunday night I went to see the play "The Lion King" at the Cadillac Palace.

It is a beautiful theater with ornate carvings and chandeliers on the ceiling. I thought that we are so fortunate to have an equally beautiful and ornate theater like the Paramount in Austin.

Today my sister Kate and I are going to a cemetery where wellknown people like Mayor Daley and people that perished in the Great Chicago Fire of the 1870s are buried. My maiden name is O'Leary and I have heard stories about the Great Chicago Fire all my life. The story goes that the fire was started when a lantern was knocked over in Mrs. O'Leary's barn. Her neighbor, O'Sullivan, was stealing milk at night from her cow and the cow kicked the lantern over, which started the fire. Most of the buildings in Chicago were made of wood and the blaze spread quickly. Half the population of Chicago perished in the fire. Mrs. O'Leary was exonerated from the fire and O'Sullivan was responsible for the disaster. Megan told me that where the world-famous shopping area on Michigan Avenue runs is where the shoreline for Lake Michigan used to start.

Now the shoreline is several blocks from Michigan Avenue. The burnt buildings of old Chicago were dumped on the former shoreline and filled with dirt.

Now, large buildings and Lake Shore Drive are built on this landfill from the fire.

My grandfather Ed O'Leary used to take train trips to Chicago back in the 1920s and '30s. He met two of Mrs. O'Leary's sons. My grandfather tracked down the lineage of how he was distantly related to this O'Leary branch. We were related and came from the same county in Ireland. So my claim to fame is how my family was connected in supposedly destroying Chicago in the 1870s.

On a final note, I became a grandmother last week. My grandson, Thomas Michael Donnelly was born April 21. He weighed 7 pounds 8 1/2 ounces. His mother and father are thrilled, as is the whole family.

Life goes on.