One of the trees in our backyard broke out in leaves on Sunday and another shows great promise. The forecast is for rain the next few days and that might just green up the grass a little bit. Spring is definitely breaking out all over.

The cough suppressant has done it’s job. While the cold hasn’t gone away, I got a very good night’s sleep and actually feel like doing something. That something was pretty much in the home office or in the recliner snoozing. Late in the afternoon my cousin Cheryl in Boise told me about a great deal on printer paper from Staples. By using a couple of coupon codes I was able to buy two boxes of paper (20 reams) for a total of $6.58, including free shipping to my house. That was pretty amazing.

Cousin Cheryl is one of the shopping queens … particularly cheap shopping. She brings home amazing quantities of things at incredibly low prices. A couple of times she’s actually been paid to buy stuff. She has an incredible wit about her and some of the exchanges between her and my daughter Jaelene are just priceless.

I like flowering trees. Pretty soon the willows whose name I always get wrong will burst out in yellow flowers. They’re either wisteria or forsythia or something like that.

The most fun with flowering trees, however, has happened in Japan. The cherry blossoms are revered all through Japan. They start blooming in the south and march northward to the top of the country as winter turns into spring. The news reports showing where the cherry trees are blooming probably take precedence over all other news items (except maybe something drastic happening to the Emperor). As the trees came into blossom around Tsukuba when we were living there in the late 1990’s, my department would always schedule a “hanami” (literally means ‘cherry blossom viewing’, but in reality was a great excuse to have a party with lots and lots to drink) in a park where the trees would all be in bloom.

Since it would always rain on the party as well, they were usually held in tents set up by companies who provided these parties and venues. We would sit at tables grilling little pieces of food, some folks drinking copious amounts of beer and others, like me, not-so-copious-amounts of soft drinks, and just having a great time. It is a beautiful Japanese tradition. I miss it each year and am reminded about these parties when the trees here burst out into bloom.

TTFN!