This is the way we decorate our house

I am at my daughter's home in Riverside, California helping her house hunt, get ready for a move AND prepare for new babies. Note, I said babies (plural). Her boys are due the end of September/beginning of October.

I will try to offer her pearls of wisdom, but truth be told every parent has to learn for themselves and when it comes to parenting, new parents have to find their own way.

In the meantime we are sorting baby clothes and doing a little bit of packing. I may not be able to offer great insights to parenting, but I am an expert at moving. I stopped counting the moves when King and I hit number 22. We are a rather nomadic couple but neither of us led a nomadic lifestyle when we were children. Both sets of parents were steeped in the middle-class of the Greatest Generation. They didn't move and they didn't change jobs.

I grew up in a conservative farming community in West Michigan. Dad managed a dog food factory and Mom was a homemaker. Mom had a knack for decorating. She would come across a piece of furniture that would fit nicely with her Early American decor, bring it home and spend the next few weeks stripping, sanding, painting and varnishing. If she could find an inexpensive way to copy something she found in a magazine so much the better.

Teasel is a weed that grows mostly in wasteland.

It was Mom's penchant for decorating and the enjoyment she found in creating that led us to the joys of teasel weed art.

Mom saw a photo in the Christmas issue of some woman's magazine where wreaths and small Christmas trees were made from teasel stuck into Styrofoam forms and then spray painted green. It was the 1960's and  an occasional very modern, linear-looking accent was acceptable in her decorating scheme.

Apparently teasel was to become the replacement for pine cones in mod-era of decoration in the 1960's.  Mom liked the idea and started on the hunt for a teasel supply, which isn't difficult as it is an invasive species and pretty much an unwanted weed. If area farmers had a low spot in pastures it was almost a certainty teasel would be growing along its edges.

It was a  tradition in our family to visit relatives in Grand Rapids on Sunday afternoons. We were on our way home from one such visit when Mom spotted some teasel growing behind a barn near Overisel. The next day while we were in school and Dad was at work she hopped into her little convertible and drove back to the farm to ask permission to cut some of the farmer's teasel.

Mom later related to us that the farmer looked at her as if she were a little odd, but told her to go ahead and take as much as she wanted. So Mom proceeded to start cutting the teasel. It is rather prickly stuff and could not have been much fun, but Mom was determined. Then she saw another, larger patch of the noxious weed a little further out behind the barn. She turned the car around and started driving out to stake her claim. The car sunk into about three feet of mud. Not just a little bit of mud, but large swampy muck that sucked the car down and buried it up to the door handles. Mom waded through the muck and slime to use the phone to call Dad for help. She didn't need to that as the farmer used his tractor to help pull her out. And Mom came home with several large grocery bags of  her treasured teasel.

It became a family joke. Every time we saw a patch of teasel someone would comment, "Don't let Mom near it with the car, there's no one around with a tractor to pull her out."

I wish I could find some photos of the wreath and tree she made with the teasel. From shortly after Thanksgiving to a little after New Year's Day the teasel tree graced our dining room table. Mom decided she didn't like the green spray paint so she left it a natural brown color and added a few miniature red ornaments to it. We had it for years and it never lost its ability to leave teasel splinters in fingers if one was not careful when removing it from the box of Christmas decorations.

I think of that tree and the wreath every time I spot  patch of teasel growing along the highway. But I have no desire to get out of the car and cut some.