Daffodils sprouting

I heard from my friend Joan Ashley last week that she stopped at Saco’s Laurel Hill Cemetery to check out the lovely daffodils there. They were a few inches high, but were not in bloom yet.

I have written about them each spring, and some of our readers get out to see them, too. So we’ll have the pleasure of seeing them again soon. I may call the cemetery office before driving out there. It is a gorgeous sight, once they are all in bloom, at the back of the cemetery, overlooking the river.

Duck returns

We were pleased to read that Pack, one of the eight bronze ducklings in the Boston Public Garden, was found under a tree near the sculpture, from which he had been stolen – cut off his base. We love that exhibit. We were delighted that it was intact, too.

In my Aug. 13, 2003, column, I had written about the death of Robert McCloskey, the author and illustrator of “Make Way For Ducklings,” the famous book on which the sculpted ducklings are based. McCloskey won the 1942 Caldecott Medal for his book, awarded each year for the outstanding children’s book.

In 1987, sculptor Nancy Schon created the bronze Mrs. Mallard and her eight ducklings, closely patterned on McCloskey’s wonderful illustrations. It is a very popular place to visit in Boston. Children delight in sitting on the backs of her ducklings. Residents out walking at 2:30 a.m. discovered the stolen duck, the day after a guard in the park had discovered it missing. It was intact and will be put back in its place. Other ducklings have been stolen in the past and have had to be replaced.

Also, we recall that copies of the same bronze ducks, donated by our country, are now in a park in Moscow.

Surprise visitor

Did you read the article about a huge boulder, 10 feet wide, tumbling down a hillside and into a house in Provo, Utah? It bounced through the second story was of the house before crashing through the floor into the basement-level garage. Luckily the four-story house was for sale and was empty. A neighbor working in his yard heard the sound and looked up to see the rock rolling down the hillside and crashing through a wall of the house.

What a shock. And how lucky that the house was empty.

Stunning shot

We were pleased to read the one-page article in the recently arrived Winter 2009 edition of the Bowdoin magazine, about our good friend John Rich (Bowdoin ’39). John, as we have written before, is hoping to get a book published of his recently rediscovered 1,000 color pictures of the Korean War, taken during his three years as a war correspondent there. He snapped them as souvenirs. The pictures are now considered the most extensive color photographs of the war. Black and white prevailed then for all press coverage, and that is what the pros were shooting.

The Bowdoin magazine published one stunning shot as a two-page color spread on its Pages 2 and 3, a lone GI manning a machine gun at his sandbagged post overlooking a rugged valley and sparsely wooded hills beyond. John, now 91 years old and still keen and able, said, “I was not a photographer at all. It was just a fluke that I got this camera and used it in Korea.”

Rushing the season

Today’s recipe is from “From the Highland and the Sea,” a cookbook I bought in 1989 when on vacation in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. It isn’t quite time for blueberry picking, but this is a good recipe to try when it is blueberry time.

BLUEBERRY CRISP

4 cups fresh blueberries

1/3 cup white sugar

2 teaspoons lemon juice

4 tablespoons shortening

1/3 cup brown sugar

1/3 cup all-purpose flour

A?3?4 cup oatmeal

Place berries in greased 11?2 quart deep dish. Sprinkle with white sugar and lemon juice. Cream shortening and brown sugar, add flour and oatmeal. Mix well. Spread on top of berries. Bake 40 minutes at 350 degrees. Makes 8 servings.

Ramblings