Living on Tulsa Time! (30-Dulcimer-Filled Years Spring Tour)

I arrived in Tulsa after a 5 hour drive from Mountain View, Arkansas that took me through a variety of climate changes!  The tornado-spawning storms that are native to Spring in this part of the world had me keeping a "weather eye" to the sky as I drove westward.  

Dennis Moran gave me "old fashioned" hand-written directions with the warning that my Garmin was going to try and send me on a big loop south of the city to try and stay on the 4-lane roads.  Sure enough, my Australian "guide" tried to get me to do just that...and I was very glad to exited the orange barrel express and drive outside of a construction zone!

I am so fortunate to have these opportunities to move across this big beautiful country of ours!  The driving gives me plenty of reflection and gratitude time, and in this posture of thankfulness I am delighted to find so much for which to be gratefully surprised.  Once again I am surprised by the beauty of a place that has existed in my awareness only as name, a tag-line in a song that I like.  This is my first time in Tulsa and Dennis and his wife Rosie are great tour guides as we drive through the city, in which he was raised, and I am the recipient of a native's hometown tour.

The oak trees are so abundant and verdant!  I am reminded of their deep green and cooling shade at Oaks Indian Center, where we took the kids from Fountain of Hope, my Kansas City church, on the final adventure of the Summer Youth Program in the early 1990s.  The shade was definitely needed in the dog days of summer back then, and will be needed soon here.  

My biggest surprise was the beauty of the fully-bloomed azaleas that were shouting to the world in brilliant colors of joy.  Dennis and I went to Woodward Park on Monday (in the cold spring rain!) to drink in some more of their beauty.

  Drinking warm Jasmine tea at the Chinese buffet was the perfect coda to the chilly trek through the park.  I learn that April is a busy month for weddings at this park in Tulsa and the upcoming Azalea Festival (next weekend) will draw thousands of people to this park and others.  We even see a bright red azalea hedge that rings a house a few blocks south of Dennis and Rosies!  

If one is selling a house in Tulsa, this is definitely the time of year to put it on the market!