It arrived in the mail: a birthday package of Belle Aroma® Cherry Noir No-Mess Fragrance Tarts® sent as a teasing reminder of my first crush…a story this friend knows all too well.

I don’t know about you, but the later we get into spring the more my mind goes to summer vacations! A few years ago, the phrase “staycation” was coined. While I love the idea of a few days at home where nobody makes any demands on you and you can stay in your pj’s all day if you want, I am talking about a real vacation. I have been to all but 4 states and have hopes of vacationing in 3 of them by Fall. But until then, I’ll be content reminiscing about some of my vacations from younger years.

Do you remember when it first dawned on you that water is a precious resource? We, in this country, are so used to turning on a tap and out comes pure clean water. That wasn’t always the case at my house. We were living in the foothills of the Cascade mountains in Oregon, and we had a crystal-clear stream in front of our house. But our well was rusty! It had a metallic taste and was discolored to the point that we couldn’t use it for drinking or doing laundry. This was long before the days of bottled water. What were we to do??

Our second summer in Oregon was in a word… sweet! My dad was a lineman for a small local telephone company. One of his customers had a mature Bartlett Pear tree that was loaded with the biggest, most luscious pears we had ever seen. The man told dad he could have all he wanted as his family didn’t want any. What kind of crazy was that?!?! Dad came home and asked mom if she’d like a bushel of pears. Of course, she said yes!