Blame It on Bay Weekly
Oh my aching back!
I blame it on Bay Weekly’s Home and Garden Guide. Last week’s 16-page Guide combined with fine spring weather for a weekend of joyful outdoor labor at the Martin-Lambrecht household. Now we’re both moaning.
As well as winter’s ravages, we had a quarter-century of our own mistakes to undo. So this year’s campaign for Yard Beautiful began with the arrival of a landscape designer. That’s the Guide’s fault, too, for without it calling on professional help might never have occurred to me. But with the designer came a plan beyond my fondest dreams.
Saturday morning husband and I jumped right in. Wet heavy leaves were raked, bushes clipped, trees pruned, weeds dug, rocks carried, mistakes amended with shovel and saw — and all that and more just to get ready for one small section of The Plan.
By Sunday dusk, we figured out that our Yard Beautiful plan detailed everything but the labor required to carry it out.
Collapsed in a heap on Sunday night, I returned to the Guide. This time I was looking for the help I’d need to catch up on everything neglected and imagined, from a clean house to washed windows to fresh paint to a plumber. Not to mention many new shrubs and plants plus a few boulders and most certainly a spa for aching bones.
In that reading, I learned what the Guide was missing. Where were the massage therapists? Where were the remedies for aches and pains? And where was dinner, for I certainly didn’t have the strength left to cook?
Bay Weekly came to my rescue. Every one of those necessities I found in the rest of our pages.
The new paper you’re reading now, thank goodness, has Maryland Disc Institute advertising on the back cover. Next week I expect to need Dr. Hodges’ services, for the weekend forecast is perfect for more lawn and garden work.
That’s the trouble with a good newspaper: in it you can find everything but the time to do it all.
In that sense, this week’s paper has way too many siren calls, in stories, 8 Days a Week and advertisements.
Here’s the Pride of Baltimore II, reinforcing the siren song of the water. Heed the call of boating, as I’m just about to do on a much smaller scale, and there goes the time you’d devote to your home and garden. Here this very weekend is the Bay Bridge Boat Show, where — unless I resist — certain trouble awaits.
Then, just next weekend, it’s opening day of the Trophy Rockfish Season, when much of the population of Chesapeake Country turns into fishing zombies.
There’s more. Under your eyes and at your fingertips are upcoming Easter events, parades and egg hunts, religious experiences and feasts.
There’s the Naptown barBAYq coming May’s first weekend. Plus SPCA’s Walk for the Animals that same weekend.
With all these calls on your days far into the future, it’s a good thing spring’s sun sets early, for how else would you find time to see Colonial Players’ production of Bat Boy. Reviewer Jane Elkin reports it’s the most extraordinary theater experience ever to come to Chesapeake Country.
Close your newspaper quick, before you’re tempted any further. If your life is filled with the pain of too many good things, blame it on Bay Weekly.
Sandra Olivetti Martin
Editor and publisher; [email protected]