Dear Group, When you were a little girl did you ever have a tea party under a spirea bush? Or, for that matter, do you know what a spirea bush is? Well, to refresh your memory they tend to be bushes with drooping branches that were planted many years ago and in the month of May around these parts, they blossom out into glorious bloom with tiny white flowers and the many flowers tend to weigh the branches down almost to the ground. And it was the best spot in the whole world to have a tea party with your very best girl friend Mary Ellen. There is one special memory that I have when I was around five years old when Mary Ellen and I knew that it was time for a tea party. As I recall, I instigated it and between the two of us we gathered together the necessary items for it. They consisted of one of our doll blankets to spread on the ground under the spirea bush as a table cloth and I guess that between the two of us we gathered together our little girls ' cups and saucers and plates and who knows but what we brought our doll babies to it. Of course it was a warm sunny May day, we crawled under the spirea bush, set up our tea table on the ground and in my memory I remember the joy of just the two of us hidden entirely from the whole world by the drooping branches of the flowering bush. I doubt that we had anything to drink out of our tea cups, but I'm sure that we at least pretended to be either grand ladies serving each other tea or pretending that we had our babies with us who occasionally needed our attention. But MOST certainly we had a very sophisticated conversation during our elegant tea party. Who knows but what we pictured ourselves in big flowered hats and lacey gloves, being the most ultimate ladies in the whole world! Our very own world under a spirea bush. But do you know what else? My mother (1903-1974) also wrote down a memory about spirea bushes. This is a brief comment she made in her book of memories, "There we had a large yard all fenced in with lots of shrubbery and flowers. I would often sit under a spirea bush that dropped its branches almost to the ground, forming a curtain of white where I could be all by myself." Who would have guessed that spirea bushes were made especially for little girls who wanted to be in their own little world? vee