Memorial Day 2022
Winning the Battle With Bermuda…(Click Here For More)
**Warning: Anne is going to talk about gardening again, you have our permission to skip this Blog, LOL.
Spring is the obvious time for most of us to be outside doing yardwork. If you can’t tell by looking outside, you can tell by all the television advertisements for yard maintenance stuff. The weeds already have a head start, and it seems by the time you notice one, there are millions of them everywhere! For now, I’m ignoring the milkweed and letting them grow. Milkweed is supposed to be good for butterflies and bees, but what I’m actually seeing on the milkweed is lots of ladybugs, and I want them to stick around to help me in the garden. I’ve started tomatoes and cucumbers, the lettuce and strawberries are going strong and I have lots of seeds and seedlings waiting for me to put them in the ground!
Most importantly, this is my 4th and (hopefully) final year in my plan to eliminate the Bermuda grass from my back yard. Oh you may laugh, ho ho, and say, “Anne, it’s impossible to eliminate Bermuda grass!” and you would be right. I will never totally eliminate the Bermuda, but now I think I can see the light at the end of the tunnel!
We have lived in this house for about 38 years. The Bermuda grass was there before we moved in. Someone probably planted it on purpose, Bermuda is a popular choice for a tough, heat loving, drought tolerant lawn. Over the years, any effort on my part to plant a garden or flowerbed has been thwarted by Bermuda grass running into it and choking out everything else. Bermuda is a survivor….it has 3 ways of spreading, and it spreads fast!
1) Seeds that blow in from other areas or carried by birds or other animals
2) Spreads across the ground surface
3) Spread by tough, thick stems that go deep underground.
I’ve tried many organic (and non-organic) methods of eradicating Bermuda. After so many years of trying, I got tired of waiting for my dream-garden-food-forest so I decided to start digging! I had to eliminate all of the stems that were underground because any piece of a stem left in the dirt can grow roots and start a new patch of Bermuda. The new seeds that sprout from the top are easily pulled out annually with the rest of the spring weeds, but what happens underground becomes a big problem!
Every year for the past 4 years, I’ve spent my “home time” (the very brief amount of time we actually are at home between concert tours) planting, harvesting and pushing back the Bermuda. I sit under my trusty umbrella (5 square feet of life-saving shade!) I push the Bermuda back, and I plant garden rows in its place, with a generous mulched area in-between so I can watch for new patches of Bermuda that might appear from below.
Looking at the picture on the left, Jim (blue shirt- working on irrigation) is standing by the tan-colored barn. The little red house on the left is a utility/laundry room. Bermuda eradication started at the barn, and now the only Bermuda that remains is the small patch in the foreground with the milkweed. The picture on the right shows how deep I have to dig to get the stems out from underground. So far I’m lucky, I haven’t found many stems going deeper than 1 foot (but google says it can go underground up to 3 feet! Yikes!).
I am happy to see the end of this chore. I would like to focus all of my time and attention on growing food and truthfully, at my age and into the future I won’t have the strength to be pushing around so much dirt! It’s good though, to set a goal and see it through. Even though it took a very long time to figure out HOW to do it, there is a lot of satisfaction in getting it done.
Are you working on a project that you’ve been dreaming about? Let me know about it in the comments!
Controlling the Nerds (Click Here for More)
This past month, we were honored to perform our John Denver tribute show with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra. This is the 2nd time we’ve been asked to perform with the BPO – and it was just as amazing as the first time (several years ago). Performing with a Symphony Orchestra has GOT to be the highlight of most musicians’ careers. It certainly has been for me. Anyone who has mastered their instrument to the level that they are in a Symphony Orchestra is someone that has worked hard, practiced long hours and sacrificed much to become a true professional at the top of their field. To be perfectly clear, we are performing WITH the Symphony, not IN the symphony…symphony musicians are on another level far and above what we do and we are lucky to have the opportunity to do a show with them.
It’s thrilling and intimidating! When I stand on the stage with the orchestra, I am a jumbled bag of emotions, it feels as if parts of my personality are trying to break out and take over, while I struggle to hold it together and ‘BE’ a professional. There’s no time for me to geek out and no room for fear or high emotions.
Here’s what’s happening with my personalities:
- The Music Nerd: I’m actually on stage with an orchestra! I love to hear the music swell all around me and feel it in my feet. In fact, I’d love to lay down on the stage and feel it through my whole body….is that weird?
- The John Denver Nerd: Hearing the orchestra play the exact notes that Lee Holdridge wrote for John Denver, brings such a strong sense of nostalgia as a John Denver fan. Knowing John himself loved singing with an orchestra makes me feel so happy and sad and wistful and joyful… I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
- The Hospitality Nerd: I know there must be other John Denver Nerds out in the audience enjoying John Denver’s Music with a Symphony Orchestra. It gives my ‘hostess’ side great satisfaction. I enjoying watching the audience enjoying the music!
- The Spiritual Nerd: This is magical, it’s surreal. I can’t believe I’m here!
- The Mandolin Nerd: Oh God, this is the most pressure I’ve ever had to keep my mandolin in tune!
Through it all, I must keep calm and be a professional. The job cannot be done properly if I let the ‘nerds’ take control. Don’t be scared, don’t be intimidated…deliver the BEST music with the BEST musicians to the BEST audience and everything will be okay. Oh, and don’t lay down on the stage….not cool.
I’m sorry that we are not allowed to take pictures of the symphony (a big union no no) or video (even bigger no no). We did get a surprise after the show when a group of young men approached us at the meet-and-greet and asked for pictures and autographs. We don’t see many youngsters at our concerts so we were very happy they stayed around to introduce themselves. They are a group of friends and pilots (some are pilots and some studying to become pilots). Some from Buffalo and some out of State. They took the opportunity to get together at our concert and hear music they love written by a pilot they admire…..
The More We Get Together (Click Here for More)
My friend Ann posted last month on the blog page that I’ll be in my usual cheerful mode when I get back on the road again, and of course she is 100% correct! All this month we have been doing concerts and making new friends. It’s like the song:
The more we get together, together, together,
The more we get together the happier we’ll be.
‘Cause my friends are your friends and your friends are my friends,
So the more we get together the happier we’ll be!
All I have to do is scroll through my facebook pictures for a few seconds to be reminded of how many smiling faces we have met, and how many fun adventures we have had. So many!
Sorry if I missed anybody, this was just a few seconds of scrolling and a small sample of the fun that we’ve had over the years!
Sharing music and making friends is an important part of living the human experience and something we all need to try to do to be healthy and happy.
You all know that….thank you for reminding me!!
Is THIS the END? (Click Here for More)
The month of January was pretty laid-back for us…..
Because of the Omicron surge, the only concert we had scheduled for January was cancelled. Jim and I mostly cooled our heels at home. We did some yard work and we worked on our taxes.
One thing we DID do, was visit some iconic So Cal tourist spots. We had some friends from Texas come and visit us for a couple of days so we did a lot of tourist-y things with them. One of the places we went to was the Santa Monica pier, a nice place to see the Pacific Ocean and the sunset. Santa Monica is at the end of route 66 – there is a marker there so we dutifully took our photos and continued on.
Today I’m looking at the picture and I notice something is missing. I looked at the picture of each side of the sign…..is this only the end? Shouldn’t it also be the beginning? The entire route goes all the way from Chicago to California – and it ALSO goes all the way back to Chicago. I think one side of the sign should say “end of the trail” and the other side should say “beginning of the trail…”
It’s very possible that struggle to get back to normal is starting to get to me. It feels like I’m looking at all the signs that say our professional road is at the end, yet I am waiting and hoping that there will be a new beginning here somewhere. A smarter person might have already started something new instead of waiting….jobs are plentiful so I hear, but I’m not ready to say, “Do you want fries with that?” I don’t mean to be depressing, I just want to be smart. If this is the end of the road, I want to find the beginning of the new road instead of languishing at the end of the old one. Languishing does not pay the bills!
Hopefully, the new road leads to more singing, more concerts and less Covid! We begin mid-February in Texas, then on to Florida. Once we get started again I know my spirits will rise, after all, this is just the beginning!
How Jim Almost Met John Denver – A Throwback Blog (Click Here for More)
People STILL ask if Jim had ever met John Denver…..it is one of our most frequently asked questions – so please forgive me for repeating an old story that has been repeated before. I originally wrote this story in 2012, but I updated it and posted it here so I can tell people to read it in the blog when they ask.
Jim and Anne Curry, 1978 – This is the oldest photo I have of us on my computer. I know there’s another photo from when we dated in 1974, but it’s buried somewhere I can’t find it….I’ll keep looking.
As long as I’ve known Jim (almost 50 years now) I’ve known that the one person in the world he most wanted to meet was John Denver. It’s a common question we get at every one of our concerts, and we’ve met so many people and heard so many stories of how they met John and how nice he was to them. Jim has never met John, but not for the lack of trying.
The summer after Jim graduated from high school, he bought tickets to see a John Denver concert near his home in Houston, TX. Somehow he obtained a precious backstage pass….this was his chance to meet John! Jim went to the concert with a girlfriend and two other friends from high school. Being a gentleman, Jim handed the pass to his girlfriend and said, “We’ll take turns, you go first.”
But she didn’t return to share the backstage pass.
Jim and his two other friends found themselves waiting for her in the parking lot after the concert. They were an hour away from home, and they didn’t know if they should leave her there, and how they were going to explain to this girl’s parents how they lost her in Houston. After about a half hour, she finally returned to where they were waiting in the parking lot. She was overjoyed and full of stories about how she met John Denver and the entire band, and how nice everyone was, and what a wonderful time she had…..
Not too long after that Jim moved to California to resume a relationship with me (we had dated earlier, before Jim’s family moved to Texas). The rest is history, MY history. I kind of think it’s possible that if this girl had not been selfish, Jim might have been able to realize his dream to meet John Denver. But then again, he might have stayed with that girl in Texas instead of moving back to California.
Thank you John Denver, for changing my life.
