Seasonal Decoration Confusion (or SDC)

The girls and I have always laughed about a house up the street that has its Fourth of July flag, its "scary" witch and its Christmas lights all up at the same time. SDC, we say it is suffering from. Well, the syndrome seems to have hit 912. My Christmas cactus is mixed up. It is in full riotous bloom right now and not in Halloween colors. Long ago, when I was a new faculty wife and young mom, one of the highlights of my month was to go to the College Circle book club (once I got to working full time, I stopped going, but I still have a twinge of regret once a month). Also attending were several wonderful faculty wives (a dying breed these days in any case), a couple of whom were widows or whose husbands had already retired. They became role models to me of how to maintain an active intellectual life while still caring for my family. One of these was Katherine Ferre, (her last name might be familiar to those who know liberal theologians). She was also a poet and I can remember that she had written a poem about her Christmas cactus that has bloomed in July and she likened the blossoms to patriotic flags. I’d love to have a copy of that poem. And, yes, we have seasonal confusion as well. We took the pictures with our new digital camera, which we bought for each other as an early Christmas present when it went on too good a sale to pass up. But we did have one Halloween visitor, a sweet kitty named Aubrey, whose parents are in our church small group. Here she is in all her feline glory.