Tax Day

Pity the poor CPAs who had to spend this glorious pre-April 15 weekend on deadline in the office, finishing up and compiling clients' tax returns! I went to pick up my Tolstoy-thick envelope of tax paperwork on Saturday afternoon and my accountant said she had been casting longing glances out the front door all day.
The only thing making taxes tolerable this year is sticking Harry Potter postage stamps, the evil and/or nasty ones like Bellatrix Lestrange, Professor Snape, Draco Malfoy and The V-Man himself, on the payment envelopes. HAH! Take that, Department of Revenue!

 

Tally ho!

Next time you're on the brick walkway next to the Genesis headquarters on State Street in downtown Kennett, take a moment and gaze down into the deep sunken garden that brings light to the Genesis employees who work on the bottom floor. You'll see life-size statues of a hound chasing a fox; no riders in sight. We noticed the creatures for the first time on Saturday, while we were on our way to Fran Keller's Eatery to celebrate National Grilled Cheese Day-- an excellent holiday.

Spring things

A few wonderful spring firsts this week: eating a dish of coffee ice cream at La Michoacana; cutting daffs from the garden instead of buying them at the store; no need to strip off jacket, leggings, hat, scarf, boots, etc. and cram them in the locker before going to gym class; hanging laundry outside on the line and hearing it flap in the breeze because the windows are open; the mouth-watering smell of BBQ smoke outside Hood's; purple hyacinths blooming in the dividing island at Unionville High School; the marsh marigolds covering the banks along the Brandywine (especially wonderful on Route 842 going toward West Chester); sitting outside with a glass of iced coffee in front of Philter and watching the passersby; and just across the street at the Half Moon, my first seasonally appropriate Hendrick's and tonic.

Off course

It looked like the driver of a horse trailer had a spot of bother at about 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 9: he or she turned off northbound Route 41 onto Hood Road a little too sharply and got the rig stuck in the muddy ditch alongside the road. When I drove by, the police were on the scene and a wrecker was standing by ready to pull the leaning rig back to safety. I was on my way to a class at the Y and was already running late; otherwise I would have stopped and gotten all the details for you.
Once a reporter, always a reporter!

That's him!

Perhaps, while watching "American Idol," or the Kimmel or Letterman shows, you saw an Intel tablet ad featuring a ruggedly handsome wildlife photographer and some elephants, and thought, I wonder if that's Tilda's award-winning photographer friend? Yes, it is!
If you missed the ad on TV, you can watch it on YouTube; just search for "Intel" and "Paul Souders." It's pretty cool to actually know a talented guy who has become a celebrity for a good reason and deserves every bit of his success.
For my online readers, here's the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJbIF8LG9yQ

A Tangled Web

I've spent several recent afternoons this past week in London Grove Township, cleaning up a friend's long-neglected garden. This has involved pulling down grapevines that had climbed three stories high into the trees, uprooting dead shrubs, carefully clearing out pricker bushes (with my trusty old Smith & Hawken leather rose gauntlets), and gleefully destroying thick, hairy poison ivy vines that had actually worked their way inside the house's siding.
Yes, OK: I have some scratched legs and I've managed to contract a little bit of itchy poison ivy rash. But it's a small price to pay for the intellectual satisfaction of restoring order to an old garden. I've found swaths of long-forgotten daffodils and periwinkle hidden under the dead vines. And it is serious fun doing battle with grapevines so thick and enmeshed in the trees that I could use them for TRX suspension training.
I've loved every minute, as I knew I would. In fact, I volunteered for the task as soon as I saw the overgrown garden. The garden's owner is baffled by this. He wasn't aware that a few summers ago, on what turned out to be the hottest day of the year, I drove all the way out to Carlisle just to work on a friend's mother's garden (I got to uncover an old brick sidewalk!).
Come to think of it, that garden owner was pretty baffled too.

Parking hours

Should you find yourself in downtown Oxford, you should know that starting on April 1, Oxford Borough Council extended the parking meter hours from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Saturday (except for holidays). They've also raised the cost of parking tickets from $10 to $15.
In Kennett Square, you need to feed the meters from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday, again except for holidays. Parking in Kennett's parking garage is free on the weekends.
West Chester's meters are in effect Monday through Wednesday 8 a.m. to 10 p.m., Thursday and Friday 8 a.m. to midnight, and Saturday 5 p.m. to midnight.

Friends

A group called the "Friends of South Region Parks" is being formed to support Nottingham and Wolf's Hollow county parks. There's a startup meeting in Nottingham's Pavilion 5 from 7 to 8:30 p.m. Tuesday, May 20, with dessert and beverages served. For more information call Nottingham County Park, 610-932-2589.

(A hiking pal who receives the county's parks newsletter spotted this item; thanks!)

 

Brandywine Hills

Last week I wrote about how cold and muddy it was at the Cheshire point-to-point races. This weekend it was just the opposite at the Brandywine Hills races at the Brandywine Valley Association on Route 842 in Pocopson Township: it was sunny, warm and just plain beautiful.
Starting off the day were two pony races and a lead-line race, in which a little girl or boy was in the saddle while Mom or Dad trotted along, leading the pony. It's superfluous to say they were extremely cute; we saw one little boy still wearing his helmet the rest of the day.
Then the day's grown-up races started in earnest. We wandered all over the place socializing and taking advantage of Radnor Hunt's refreshments, but we managed to be at the right place to see a couple of really exciting moments.
In one race a jockey almost came off at the last fence but kept clinging on for a number of strides before he finally tumbled off. Photographer Jim Graham was on the spot and shot a very scary sequence of the jockey underneath the horse's hooves; it's hard to believe he got up and seemed OK (I'm told the horse was fine too).
The second exciting moment we saw was the next-to-last race, where we were at the finish line and saw Almarmooq win by three-tenths of a second -- literally a nose.
After that race the course ambulance apparently thought the day was over and headed out the driveway. The course announcer called out, "Stop the ambulance!" and one of the outriders -- literally an ambulance chaser -- galloped after it and caught it before it departed.