17 Dec 2014 Time well spent
by Vivian Lawson Hogue
January 1 seems an odd day of the year. Celebrants have blown up good money on fireworks. Some attended parties held not so much to welcome a new year but to celebrate making it through the last one. It is a quiet day. No getting up early and going to work. No traffic. No shortage of chips and dips. TV is on with parades and games.
My mother always said to never do work on New Year’s Day as it means you’ll work hard all year. Thus I began thinking of a monthly list of to-do suggestions for 2015.
January: Look through seed catalogs; set up a 1,500-piece jigsaw puzzle; watch for crocus blooms; open and heat a jar of home-canned vegetable soup; have handy a box of salt for icy steps and a shovel and sled for snow; look for that list of indoor snow day chores you made in August.
February: Learn to say FeBRUary, as it is spelled; send Valentines to elderly acquaintances; piece a quilted wall hanging; play Chinese checkers; get your tax information together; prune fig trees.
March: Read a mystery; plant peas; buy a weather radio; find out for whom Caldwell Street was named; make southern-style cornbread in an iron skillet (no sugar).
April: Watch for the daffodils you planted last fall; learn to identify cloud forms; build a bluebird box; notice that birds stop singing when a storm approaches and start again when it’s over.
May: Go fish — not the card game, I mean, go fish — with a pole, line, bobber, hook, cricket or worm; hang a hummingbird feeder in semi-shade with nectar made of one part sugar and four parts water, no food coloring.
June: Attend a wedding; plant sunflower seeds; ask a Conway long-timer how many minutes it took to travel to Little Rock in 1955; prune flowering shrubs when through blooming.
July: Go to a school supply store and inhale the wonderful aroma of wooden pencils, crayons and notebook paper; visit the county museum; look up the “toothache tree” that grows in Faulkner County.
August: Write a letter to the editor; hold a block party to pick up neighborhood litter; discover what well-known downtown building still has a very old alarm on its façade; clean the haze from your headlights.
September: Check for holes in hunting boots; clean yard and garden tools before storage; make sure vehicle batteries are good so you’re not stranded on a cold day.
October: Buy B1 vitamins to ward off chiggers and ticks; drive north to see trees gussied up in their fall outfits; pick up colored leaves and laminate them; collect recipes and ingredients for holiday cooking!
November: Buy a turkey; learn to make Christmas package bows; gather candles, flashlights and Beanie Weenies for possible power failures; make sure outdoor pets have food, water and shelter; feed the songbirds; shoo away the sparrows; fry some green tomatoes.
December: Do shopping while school is still in session; watch “Christmas Vacation” at least once; buy a new calendar and label birthdays; observe the 12 days of Christmas by leaving your tree up until Jan. 6; create a recipe for sugar-free eggnog, please!
And we’re back where we started. A year progresses from new to old, just like the seasons and our lives. We often remember a past event by what season it was, or the season itself reminds us of the event. On New Year’s Day we have a chance to take an honest look at ourselves to search for needed improvements. You have 365 days, 8,765 hours, 526,000 minutes and 31.6 million seconds. Go!
A native of Conway, Vivian Lawson Hogue graduated from the University of Central Arkansas with a degree in art education. A retired teacher, she worked in the Conway School District for 23 years. She is editor of the Faulkner County Historical Society’s semi-annual publication, “Faulkner Facts and Fiddlings.” She can be reached at [email protected].
