Hanging Baskets

Our neighborhood has a 1920s style to it...Vintage...Vintage Township actually. For the first two years we lived here, I looked out at the old fashioned lamp posts thinking how nice it would be if there was a way to hang baskets of flowers on them.  Then last summer my neighbor Rick, told me he would get the hanging brackets from another lamp post in the neighborhood and put it on my post..which he did. I had beautiful flowers blooming and drooping from the baskets all summer.

A week or two ago I took the long dead baskets down, and replanted them for another season of blooms.  Today they had started to bloom and it was the day to hang them.  I got the ladder and carried it around to the front.  As I was opening it a huge gust of wind came up and almost sent the ladder over on top of me.  I reposistioned it, firmer on the ground, placed one of the hanging pots on the painter’s shelf and started up the ladder.....just as I got to the top, one of Lubbock’s  50 mph gusts whipped around the corner.  I had just gotten the basket in my hand when the wind ripped it from me, and grabbed the ladder from under my feet.  I grasped at the air as my arms went around the top of the lamppost, my legs wrapping around it what seemed like three times.  I could see the toppled ladder and all I could think about was whether to slide down...or to just drop to the ground.  “Hey Jan!!”  I looked around.  There sat Matt in his car at the stop sign.  “Are you really thinking about hanging those baskets in this wind?”  I smiled, and looked down at the baskets in the wagon.

“Well yeah I had been sort of thinking about it....the wind is pretty high though.....maybe I will wait until this afternoon now that I think about it. How are Betsy and the kids?

“Oh they are fine....how’s Jim?’'

“Good, good.”

“ You take care...and let the wind die down before you get up on that ladder.!!

“ Will do Matt, will do.”