Easter Sunday

Easter Sunday

Noel Laflin

4-12-20

If I was watching the news right now, I would note that this is an Easter Sunday unlike any in my lifetime.

But as it is Easter Sunday, the news is off currently, and we carry on as if it is just another Easter Sunday – except we have rain coming down at the moment – something unusual for this day out our way; although, now that I think about that, I do remember an Easter downpour some twenty years ago. It wrecked the backyard Easter egg hunt for a while. But the sun eventually did come out, and the children were happily scampering about grandmother May’s lush garden. They liked finding my hidden plastic eggs especially, as I would fill mine with coins and paper currency. One even held the likeness of a Jackson. It made one seven-year-old very happy, as I recall.

Today’s Easter activities include David studying up on gardening ideas – something in which I am delighted to share with him. In fact, we have seeds drying out on paper towels and platters of cuttings scattered about sunny locations throughout the house, just waiting for more tiny roots to appear so that they can be transplanted to pots in the garden. More potting soil has already been ordered through Amazon – a first for this kind of delivery; usually its books delivered via my iPad. But strange times call for strange solutions.

So, we plan for a future in an uncertain future. But, that’s life.

Meanwhile, I type this on my laptop while ear buds connected to my iPhone deliver the tunes of Aaron Copeland to my brain. Good music is always a comfort in trying times. Rimsky-Korsakov's Russian Eastern Festival Overture will be coming up shortly - it's a favorite and seems appropriate for the day.

And so, this is how we are celebrating Easter Sunday 2020.

I just pretend it’s twenty years ago, waiting for the rain to stop, so that I can watch the expression on a seven-year-old's face when they find a certain egg that I was sure I had hidden better. But never underestimate the young.

Oh, hey, the song just switched to a Handel tune.

Hallelujah indeed.

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Canal

Canal

Noel Laflin

4-6-20

There are miles and miles of a concrete-lined water canal running from north Orange all the way to Newport Beach.  It’s about ten feet deep and just as many feet in width. It collects both runoff from rain events as well as excess yard watering. The section here runs directly behind our property.  I shot this about an hour ago when the rain took a break. It has never overflowed, but has come close in years past.

From our house, it’s about a quarter mile run to our neighborhood treatment reservoir/pond.  It’s what keeps it full, year-round.

Water in the pond sits for about a week, baptized and cleansed by sunlight, and then is released back into the canal to rush on to the Irvine Marsh and eventually Upper Newport Bay.

I am grateful to city/county planners of long ago for protecting us from flooding, as well as taking an old ditch and creating our pond.

I think that I speak to the ducks, geese, turtles, egrets, herons, fish, etc., for that last part too.

And Just Like That

And Just Like That

Noel Laflin

4-2-20

Meanwhile, with the help of a hundred kids, the cabin took shape. With old two-man saws we scored the ends of the logs. We then turned them on their side and chipped out the large notches with hatchets struck by mallets. It was with some trepidation that we tested our first notched logs. They fit beautifully. We were off and running. There was always tinkering of some sort. Deepening or widening of a notch could be maddening, but necessary. Chain saws would have made a big difference too, but we adhered to our self-imposed rule, no power tools. Consequently, our tools were simple: hammers, axes, hatchets, bow saws, two-man saws, bark scrapers, and mallets.

The whole project seemed to take on Tom Sawyer-like qualities. I told the kids signing up for the Pioneering Merit Badge class that they would be expected to contribute at least one hour a day to the project. Many of those guys stayed all day, foregoing other activities and free time.

And just like that, or so memory teases, we built a cabin.

Thanks, Jim Donovan, for what just might be the last photo of our old cabin as it stood in Camp Ahwahnee. I had not seen this particular picture before, but it's now a nostalgic favorite. Jim took the photo in the fall of 1980. The cabin was built during the summers of 1972-73. When the Scout council closed the camp in 1980, the cabin was sold, dismantled - just like a giant Lincoln Log set - loaded onto trucks, and reassembled in a neighboring Boys Club camp seven miles away. The Running Springs fire of 2007 destroyed their camp, burning every structure to the ground, including the cabin.

But we've got Jim's photo here. And for that, I am most grateful.