As Spring Unfolds at the Lake

     Spring popped out this year before winter stood a chance to become cold.  What does this mean at Long Cabin Rental?LongCabinRentalatLakeOzark.com First off we noticed the grass greened up early. This, in turn, made us transplant some items in the flower bed and put out bulbs earlier than I can ever recall. Next, the Redbud and the Dogwood bloomed about three weeks early. The crappie began their spawn three weeks early, according to reports from my personal crappie king. 

    This year we have been caught by the Hydrangea bug.  After admiring the big blue ones surrounding the front of our daughter's home at Osage National, we studied up and bought three. We purchased two Little Limes to sit in the sun and one pot of Endless Summer to sit in partial shade.  Now we wait and see how tasty they are to deer.  Late this winter, the monkey grass became so comfy, they began sleeping in it!

     The early morning hum from bass boats involved in tournaments reminds one of some kind of giant group of bees about to land. The crappie king always gets a little excited when he sees professional fisherman testing the waters near our docks. I'm never sure if that is a happy excited or sad when he sees these guys. He's been known to count how many fish the neighbor pulls out of his boat well in order to decide whether to check out the fish. Each week not only do we see bass boats, fishing boats, but the leisure boaters are beginning to exercise their propellers. 
            Even the roads and stores near by seem caught up in spring growth.  We now motivate about on new by-ways and highways designed to get us to our destination faster, designed to help lake visitors not get choked in traffice as they drive to and from the lake.  It seems to work, even though it took us old times awhile to get used to it.  Store seems to be springing up in weeks.  The latest to pop up on the scene are Kohls, CVS Pharmacy, and JoAnns. Right behind these latest opening is Menard's near Eagles Landing.http://lakeexpo.com/community/community_news/article_73a799f4-4696-11e1-9fcc-001871e3ce6c.html 
     What do all these early signs of spring mean, stock up on bug spray, I think they're going to be hungry this year!

When Spring Arrives

Although spring will not officially arrive until March 20th, I'm afraid it will already be summer when the 20th debuts at our casa since winter this year seemed almost balmy in my perception.  Spring for me is time to glance out the windows and see our landscape greening more each passing hour.  We gaze across the cove to see the trees budding, in the sunshine of one day - today the service berry tree bloomed white in a matter of hours in our Ozark hills. I stumbled across this bit of information about where the name service berry derived from.  Here it is:

Historically, a blooming serviceberry was an indication of important timing, and that is how many of the common names used for this plant came about.  One such common name is shadblow, called as such because serviceberries bloom when shad fish have come to spawn.  The name serviceberry came about from the colonists.  After a long winter, serviceberry was in bloom when the ground had thawed enough and it was a perfect time to bury the dead.  So serviceberry meant funeral service.

After reading this tidbit it seems ok to mention we lost a friend this week, Jim Brand.  He used to be our weekend lake neighbor until moving to Texas about fifteen years ago. Jim always had a big smile for everyone, a big belly laugh and an endless line of jokes he could tell and make everyone laugh till they cried.  I remember he would take his upper teeth out and put them back in upside down and do "Hey Vern!" jokes for hours. Rest in peace dear friend.



Grandson Nicholas



Bowl of perfection



In Bill's case, the crappie king, spring means keeping track of the water temperature, he also watches for visual changes in the landscape to know the best times to start testing the waters for fishing. Crappie is the only fish he cares to catch and the only fish he truly cares to eat.  Crappie  are a member of the sun fish family and are known by many different names, depending where you are catching them.  Other interesting names for this delicate tasting fish are: speckled perch, goggleye, paper mouth, white perch, and my favorite - Sac-a-lait. Normally he has relied on advice from his favorite past fishing partner, his mom. Zelma always believed when the red bud and the dogwood trees were blooming the fish aught to be biting! One knows when the service berry blooms, the dogwood and red bud blooming are shortly behind.  However, this year all bets are off! The service berry just bloomed today, probably a couple of weeks early and the white perch have already started biting! As I finish this the crappie king has arrived and my nose tells me he has been successful!

No winter lasts forever; no spring skips its turn.  ~Hal Borland



Family Operation



The Memorial Tree

Do you ever feel at a loss of what to do, no ambition, no goals, numb?  With the murders of James and Zelma, the death of Aunt Rita,  that's how we felt, and sometimes still feel everyday, from the time the sun slowly peeps out a good morning over the horizon till the sun slides back down out of our view. We had lost our purpose and were at a loss to regain it.  We tried therapy, books, articles, advice, we took short weekend trips, trying to regain our perspective.  Slowly, almost without our knowing, one interest began to take hold.



Charlie Brown no more!



Moon Flower





Peonies from Jim's garden

 One day as we drove across the state back to the lake during one of our many trips to court for a case that has stretched from 1996, still running today, we stopped at a nursery along the interstate.  Earlier we had talked of planting a memorial tree.  We looked at a tiny, Charlie Brown looking Japanese Maple and took the poor thing home.  We chose it because of Bill's dad's life-long habit of bringing home Charlie Brown Christmas trees.  Then we added Knock Out Roses in memory of my dad, Moon Flowers in memorial to his parents.  Then came old fashioned Day Lilies in honor of my mom and Uncle Floyd.  China Boy and China Girl Holly Bushes arrived one spring in memory of Aunt Rita along with a grass. 

Each spring we do fine tuning, making changes, moving this or taking out that.  There are two things that have remained constant - President Cannas and Elephant Ear plants.  These two plants originally came from Jim's garden.  We have planted them every year since and given away hundreds.  One year, the Elephant Ears grew so large we had to use a chain saw to cut them down in the fall.  Another year one Elephant Ear plant bloomed a few small white lily looking flowers, a phenomenon so strange we discussed it with the St. Louis Botanical Garden people and area Master Gardeners.  We finally came across one person who had also seen the same thing; she suggested it was an Elephant Ear that had reached it's life potential and would probably not live much longer.

Today we look at the flower bed often, fishermen and boaters float by to enjoy the colors and shapes, visitors compliment our lovelies, grandkids sniff them, cats fertilize them, deer sleep in them and nibble them. They are conversation pieces to remember our loved ones gone too soon, but not forgotten.


Knock Roses with Blue Fescue



Our Neighbor on the Other Side of the Gray Cabin



My Dad, Raymond Frederick Sparks



My Aunt Rita F. Sparks Farnham





My Paternal Grandparents
Verna and Fred Sparks

My dad passed away in 1967. Thirteen years later with two young daughters keeping me busy, my mother passed away.  It seemed unfair at the time, but God had a plan.  My dad's sister, retired from school teaching early and took care of the girls so I could spend as much time as I could with my mom.  Over the years after mom died, Aunt Rita became like a mother to me.  After several years of taking care of my Grandmother, Grandpa and Uncle Floyd both had long since passed, my Aunt was free to do as she wanted.  She decided to become my neighbor again and move to the lake!  We had been neighbors back at the time my mom was sick. So, she purchased the house next door when it came up for sale.  She told us how she wanted it to look and we remodeled it.  Six weeks after she moved in, she passed away from colon cancer.  I was devastated, my second mom had been taken away, Bill was still reeling from his parents murders and the trials - still going on yet today!  We slowly came out of a fog and began to think about renting the two little cabins on each side to pay the taxes, insurance and upkeep.  Thus, we slowly began to refer to them by color -   Green Cabin and Yellow Cabin!

The Sun is Shining and I'm Remembering Dark Clouds

James and Zelma Long around 1947



Blame it on former Mississippi Gov. Barbour, these dark thoughts I try to push out of my mind on this sunny day ever since our lives changed in a matter of minutes in July of 1996.  Have you ever given thought to how you feel about the death penalty in this great country we live in?  A lot of people have an opinion, although the fickled finger of fate has never reached out and touched them. It's never struck them so hard they're scared to walk out of their home. It's never touched them so hard they fall to the floor and sob.  It's never touched them so hard they pull the covers up over their head and refuse to move. It's never made them afraid to walk in a store.  So, how do they know what they'd really feel?  I'm here to fill you in - they may think they know, but they don't and please, God, don't let them ever find out.  It's the worst kind of nightmare one can ever not awake from. Bill and I had this debate alot for awhile.  He felt it was terrible for his parents who were murdered, execution style in the bedroom of the home they shared. I thought it was worse for my parents who both suffered the slow death of cancer eating away at their bodies until they were gone - both at an age much too young, since I am older now than either of them.  But then it slowly seeps back in, my inlaws, they had to have been terrified, the kind of terrified where you wet yourself and you can't hardly draw a breath, you can't think to make sense of anything.  The murderer admitted that in court.  My father-n-law could not remember the numbers to open the safe.  How would you feel if someone took away your loved one before their time, just because they wanted to?  Years later, I  have come to think it was harder on Jim and Zelma's children, the loved ones left behind.  Once supposedly a close knit family, with the nucleus gone, their DNA scattered like particles of dust after a windstorm.  Where before they got together and there was no hesitation to pick up the phone and call, now if a phone rings on a birthday from everyone once a year, it's a miracle, easier yet, text two words, Happy Birthday, and move on, relieved no voices communicated.   That's the story of what happened to my next door neighbor's in 1996, six weeks after we moved back to the lake.

Jim studying for the horse track











Jim and Zelma being chauffeured by grandson, Jimmie.



Cabin Changes During the '80s

Shortly after the Green Cabin was finished, or as finished as it would be, Margaret and Roy started on the Gray Cabin.  Before the paint was barely dry, a tornado blew through, destroying alot of their hard work.  Being of perservering natures, they worked to put back the pieces.  They would then move on to build a duplex next to the Green Cabin, later known as the Brown Cabin.  Around 1982, Margaret and Roy  decided to sell the Brown Cabin to Bill's parents, ending years of staying in the Green Cabin and listening to all the different levels of snoring from tired, alcohol infused bodies at night.  By 1989 Roy had passed on to the big lake in the sky, leaving Margaret older and tired of walking on a slope.  Bill still had fond memories of the Green Cabin and approached her to sell.  Her only way to sell was if he bought the Green Cabin and her cabin, soon to become known as the Gray Cabin.  The next years flew by with Bill's parents doing a major remodel to the Brown Cabin and Bill doing lots of cleaning, building seawalls, etc.  1996 brought about many changes, with the youngest daughter about to graduate from highschool, we put the old house in Versailles up for sale and set about work on a major face lift on Margaret's old home place. She had moved on to Sedalia, Missouri.  The day after graduation we packed up and headed back to the lake!  We had now lived in Laurie, Gravois Mills, Versailles, and now Rocky Mount.  It seemed we had tried to circle the lake in a manner of speaking, actually we were just coming back to the spot where we had shared many great moments in time, ready to share more!

Changing Jobs, Changing Locations, Changing Times



When we first married Bill worked for Chrysler building vans in Fenton, Missouri.  Some hard economic times were rapidly approaching our young family. By the time baby number two was born, Bill had been laid-off from Chrysler and he was doing odd jobs to supplement unemployment. 

A family friend suggested he go to work in line construction and complete lineman training for a card.  So, in the early '70s, he was a groundman rapidly finishing his classes and becoming a lineman. Traveling from job to job, it was hard to say where he would be going for the next job.  Sometimes the job was close enough to drive, sometimes he lived out of the back of a camper and sometimes he lived in old hotels. It was kinda hard for us both, me with a baby and a toddler and him on the road. 

In the summer of '82, he went to work on a job building new lines here at the lake. We were able to stay in the Green Cabin with the girls for weeks.  It was a wonderful summer, the girls played in the lake everyday and when Bill would come home from work we would jump in the boat and go water-skiing.  Bill was incredible on the water, he could salom ski and make it look effortless, he could pull the girls up on his shoulders and water-ski all over. Back then there was no boat traffic and no wave-runners to worry about.

On a rain-out day, Bill drove over to a local RE and applied for a job. Powers to be called the week before I graduated from Jefferson College, and one week later we packed our belongings in our old Ford pickup with cattle racks borrowed from my Uncle Floyd.  We must have looked like a traveling comic show, but we were on top of the world - we were moving to the beautiful Lake of the Ozarks!