A good send-off

Just got home from Lydia Willits Bartholomew's very well-attended pre-Hunt social at Plumsted, her West Marlborough farm. It was great to see the Cheshire hounds and horses in action after such a long layoff due to the bad weather, and just as nice to greet some friends and neighbors I hadn't seen for ages. We were glad to see lots of kids, both as riders and spectators. The hospitable Mrs. Bartholomew set out quite a spread for her guests: urns of hot coffee (the Jameson's was optional), subs, pastries (loved the sticky buns!) and desserts. The muddy parking area claimed one victim, a Lexus that had to be extracted by a cheerful guy with a tractor. The non-participating horses at the farm were very curious and excited by all the unaccustomed activity, poking their heads out of their stalls and running around their paddock.

Prom time

The red carpet is very far from my natural habitat, but I had a fine time anyway on Friday evening watching Unionville High School students strut their stuff at the annual fashion show to raise money for the After-Prom party. The formal wear was stunning: the girls looked happy and beautiful in their tasteful, classy, glamorous and vividly colored evening gowns and cocktail dresses, with their hair elaborately swept up or in braids or long curls, and the boys--what good sports to serve as models!--were handsome, well groomed and dapper in their nicely tailored classic or modern tuxedos.
I recognized several of the models from the recent production of "Grease" (they have obviously mastered the useful skills of time management at a young age) and one poised young woman, who looked ravishing in green chiffon, I've known since she was an infant.

Spade and Trowel

My belated congratulations to my friends in Kennett Square's Spade and Trowel Club for their prize-winning exhibit at this year's Philadelphia International Flower Show. Not only do the dedicated club members have to design, create and install the exhibit, but they also have to maintain it in perfect condition throughout the show -- which entails daily predawn trips into the Philadelphia Convention Center.
"Unionville in the News" reader Marcia H. wrote to me recently and said she wanted to pay special tribute to her fellow Spade and Trowel member Alice Bucher, who lives in Kennett Township. She describes Mrs. Bucher as "fun loving, creative, organized, dedicated, energetic, enthusiastic, and well known and respected in Garden Club circles... She has been a master judge with the Federated Garden Clubs of Pennsylvania for 35 years.  The Philadelphia Horticulture Society is lucky to have her as the chairperson of Competitive Classes Committee for the Philadelphia Flower Show.   

"Each flower show requires a full year of planning.  As Chair, Alice has the responsibility of all amateur classes, which include horticulture plus nine design classes.  Her committee recruits exhibitors and helps to guide them in the planning and executing of their entries.  The rewarding part of the process is being on the show floor seeing the Philadelphia Convention Center being converted into an oasis of creative horticultural interpretations and design.  Alice enjoys the challenge of assisting with the set-up, troubleshooting and supporting all exhibitors as they prepare their exhibits. Her job is key to the success of the show, her enthusiasm is contagious as she delights in ways to keep, attract and inspire exhibitors."

Marcia summed up her friend with the lovely words, "Where you find flowers, you may find Alice."

Red Clay Valley clean up

My friend Charles Shattuck, owner of Wild Birds Unlimited in Hockessin, reminds me that the annual Red Clay Valley Clean Up will be held starting on Saturday, March 29. Volunteers are welcome; assemble at 8 a.m. at Anson Nixon Park in Kennett or the Ashland Nature Center in Hockessin to get your gloves, bags, t-shirts and road assignments.
"We're picking up trash on over 65 miles of roads and stream beds from Kennett Square to Greenbank Mills in Wilmington," Charles says. "Last year over 700 volunteers collected 13 tons of trash and since its inception, those many years ago; the cleanup has removed over 342 tons of litter. Discarded trash is not only unsightly to you but is potentially harmful to fish and wildlife."
Also the same weekend (I've mentioned these two events before): a free Hadley Fund concert by pianist Thomas Pandolfi at London Grove Friends Meeting at 7 p.m. Saturday, March 29, and the 69th running of the Cheshire Point-to-Point Races on Sunday, March 30.
  

Wall of Honor

You will read plenty more about the Unionville High School Wall of Honor inductees in the March 27 Kennett Paper, but I want to add my congratulations to Helen Martin and Ray McKay, who were honored on March 20 along with Ray's late wife, Mary, and the late Sam Wilson. Excellent choices, and they join an already stellar crew of alumni/ae whose photos are displayed on the wall outside the high school auditorium.

A shadow of her former self

Total strangers share the most amazing stories with me. I was sitting in a waiting room this morning and the West Grove woman next to me started telling me about her hugely successful gastric bypass surgery. She used to weigh 449 pounds and suffered all kinds of healthy problems; now she is just over 200 pounds (she looks even lighter than that). She was an excellent storyteller, full of great quotes ("I'm limited with what I can eat, but hey, I'm alive"), and she even provided illustrations: her driver's license photos before and after the weight loss. The change in her face was so dramatic, from morbidly obese to normally shaped, that a police officer who pulled her over soon after the surgery almost charged her with carrying someone else's license.

Township meeting

Looking ahead to the first week in April: West Marlborough Township will hold its monthly meeting on Tuesday, April 1, in the township hall in Doe Run Village. The township planning commission meeting starts at 7 p.m. (if they have any business to handle), followed by the supervisors' meeting. Come out and see your supervisors in action, meet the hardy residents who show up for each and every meeting, and get an up-close-and-personal view of the road equipment that kept your streets clear.

Surprise

If you're in the mood for a good pub crawl/robot movie, try "The World's End." I saw a trailer for the 2013 movie and immediately put it on my Netflix queue. What's not to like for this Anglophile? I thought it would be a bittersweet, nostalgic British comedy about high school friends getting back together for a lively evening of drinking in their home town, resolving old differences and regaining some of their dormant sense of fun.
Which it was, until about 45 minutes in, when a fistfight ensued in the men's room of a pub and the group's leader punched a surly teen. The boy's head came off like a Rock-em Sock-em Robot, revealing that the lad and his mates were all alien (that could sober you up quickly).
I checked online and found that I had stumbled into a sci-fi franchise called the Cornetto Trilogy, also comprising "Shaun of the Dead" (2004) and "Hot Fuzz" (2007). The summary on IMDB says it all: "Five friends return to their hometown to relive a pub crawl they never finished in their youth; however, they find their town has been invaded by interstellar beings 'Blanks' and the crawl could literally kill them. ..  As they attempt to reconcile the past and present, they realize the real struggle is for the future, not just theirs but humankind's."

Breakfast

A Cochranville friend who lives near the SECCRA landfill reports seeing a bald eagle just across the road from his home on Thursday morning. "Took a dead possum that was in the field across the road," he said.

Three highways

Loyal reader Joan S. answered my question in last week's column about how Unionville got its name, quoting from Edward Pinkowski's 1962 book, "Chester County Place Names":
"Unionville (pop. 400) was first called Jackson's Corner when in 1750 John Jackson built a brick inn at a crossroads four miles north of Kennett Square. As the first storekeeper of the village, Jesse Buffington had much to do with changing the name to Unionville. The fact that three highways united at the village suggested the name. On Dec. 5, 1821, Unionville post office was put on the Chester County list with Charles Buffington as postmaster." 
Joan says, "I can't vouch for the accuracy of this, but it is what Mr. Pinkowski says."
Now I'm left wondering what the three "highways" would be: Route 82, certainly; but did Routes 162 and 842 exist back then? Or maybe Doe Run Road, or Wollaston Road?

 

Frustration

An exercise in futility: I saw someone trying to make a left turn onto Route 82 from East Locust Lane at 5:30 p.m. this afternoon. It's a tricky intersection to start with, and as far as I could tell there was rush-hour traffic coming in both directions all the way from Willowdale to the bypass. I wonder how long it took the poor woman to pull out?

70s flashback

Driving home tonight on Route 41 was a bit mind-blowing. Coming the other way was a convoy of tractor-trailers whose every surface was outlined with bright red lights, kind of like a movie marquee. Add in the rain, the fog, the puddles, the flashing traffic light at Route 841 and the Chatham streetlights and it was as if there was a disco ball somewhere overhead, sending random colored lights bouncing every which way.

Spring?

With most of the snow melted (I liked the message on the sandwich board outside the Kennett Square Inn: "Say No to Snow"), I took a hopeful look around the yard yesterday afternoon. Sure enough, a few clusters of brave purple crocus are in bloom. The daffodils are pushing up through the earth, along with a few early tulips and a very late hellebore. In one especially sheltered nook I even saw the beginning of some phlox leaves.