August Is Yellow

September 13, 2016June 20, 2017 / Apple Hill Cottage / 9 Comments

Part One
the august sun shines like a spotlight on the ten year old
joyfully riding her new green bicycle (without the training wheels) 
down the gravel driveway.

like a pro, not even braking,
she leans to the left and whizzes onto the dirt path
packed down through years of truck tires.

through the trees she rides, slowing now, for the pull of the dirt
is harder on bicycle tires (though easier on knees).
the trees bow to her, the queen of the bicycle.

the sun glints through the leaves and the air is
saturated with the sweet scent of ripe peaches
and the hum of satisfied and satiated bees.

she pays no attention to the glorious around her
because she is ten years old and not yet aware
that her childhood Augusts were golden.


Part Two
the grandfather is waiting for her to tire of riding circles 
in the orchard. he figures it will take twice (maybe three times)
and she’ll be ready to listen to the lesson that peaches teach.

he has the ladder ready when 
she drops her bike next to the dusty green farm truck.
“Help me pick some peaches?” he asks.

he steadies the ladder and guides her small hand as they reach,
touching the fuzz gently, gently, every squeeze will bruise these 
peaches easy as you bruise those knees.

gently gently she places the peach in the basket looped over her 
      skinny arm.
he moves her hand to another hanging low on the branch. 
see this green? see this fuzz? peaches have to ripen on the tree.

their juices have to be warmed by the hot August sun. they take 
their time ripening and can’t be hurried. you can’t pick the tree 
clean, you have to go again and again to the same tree. 
       peaches teach patience.

together they fill the basket, moving the ladder around the tree
taking their time — savoring the tree-ripened juicy chin-sticky 
sweet yellow sweltering August patience-teaching peaches.

patience is not his usual shape, this short round man in the straw 
hat and farm clothes teaching peaches to the skinny girl with bruised
      knees. 
she learned peaches. she learned love. she still stamps her foot at
      patience

and she can’t abide sickly grocery store peaches.

For the next few weeks I’m taking an online poetry course over at Monna McDiarmid’s place. This first week we were asked to write about childhood, and if we wanted, to use the color yellow. I probably won’t post all the poems, but this one I liked because it was such a good memory of my grandfather, who built Apple Hill Cottage. And my sister sent me this photo just as I was writing the poem…It’s a work in progress. Comments welcome.

137. Critter Wars: they shoot groundhogs, don’t they?

June 21, 2015June 21, 2015 / Apple Hill Cottage / 11 Comments

The long, gentle summer evenings of my childhood were sometimes pierced by the crack and zinging whine of a twenty-two rifle.

It was my grandfather, defending his country sweet corn patch from the groundhogs.

His main garden was in town behind his house, where he planted and tended and grew enough vegetables to feed us and his entire neighborhood.

But oh how he loved his sweet corn. And in the country below our house, there was plenty of room for as much sweet corn as he could plant. It seems we had corn on the cob every night for dinner in July and August.

Pa wasn’t a cussing man — he was a school teacher — except when it came to the groundhogs who ate his corn. For awhile when I was a kid I thought damgroundhog was one word.

I feel his pain.

He would sit in a yellow lawn chair in the back yard above his garden with a glass of sweet tea and his twenty-two across the aluminum arms of his chair. Waiting.

I’ve been suggesting to Mr. H. C. that he do the same with the deer. Of course, we aren’t allowed to actually shoot them, but he could aim above their heads… (Or he says shooting in front of them on the ground is the safer way). Perhaps they would think it was hunting season and disappear into the deep woods.

He didn’t seem to be interested, so I got out the yellow lawn chair and the twenty-two rifle for him yesterday. This evening, I saw him cleaning it, and there is now a clip sitting near the back door. I suppose I could try it, but I think I am such a bad shot, I could accidentally hit one when I’m aiming over their heads.

Can you be arrested for poaching the King’s deer on your own land?

Yes, you can.

waiting for a groundhog

136. The Mail Came Bringing Me Old Photos…

June 16, 2015January 20, 2016 / Apple Hill Cottage / 15 Comments

Not much exciting comes in the mail these days.

Yet hope springs eternal, and I always walk out to the mailbox with an anticipation that is rarely fulfilled.

Until yesterday — the mail came bringing me an unassuming envelope with a hand-written return address from Texas. I knew immediately what it was and who it was from: my second cousin, Buzz, who visited last October had promised me some old photos of the cottage, taken when he was a boy visiting the farm.

Precious old sepia photographs spilled from the envelope. Carefully numbered, he had labeled each one with names and sometimes a date. The cottage is older than we thought.

I wish I could tell what kind of flowers and shrubbery that is. When we first started work on this side of the house, I pulled out a sad looking, old-fashioned thorny white shrub — bridal veil I think it’s called. The pump is long gone, but the well is still there. Mr. H.C. is forever mad at his mom for selling that pump…

Buzz is hanging on to the pump handle, and that’s his older brother Jack next to him. This is circa 1936 or 37, and those are the kitchen windows we lovingly restored. The landscaping around the house makes me think that the cottage is at least a few years old when these photos were taken. That puts it considerably older than the early forties, which we had estimated.

Here’s a shot of what the windows looked like after Mr. H.C. put up the storm windows. You can tell the window on the right was not quite finished. I guess I should take another photo…

I love the simple trim around these windows. If you look carefully at the old photos, you’ll notice all the windows were trimmed like this.

This is the front door of the cottage where the living room windows are now. There’s no way to bring back that charming little entrance with the lattice and the vines — at least in that spot. But I’m thinking on it…
buzz mariam mom

I especially love this photo because that’s my mom on the right with her cousins, Buzz and his older sister Mariam. I knew right away it was my mom, because, I have a photo of myself at that age, and oh my goodness, we could be twins. Mr. H.C. took one look at the photo and said, “That looks like you!” My Mother, My Self…
buzz Jack Mom
In this photo, if you look very hard, you can see the awning that is decorating the kitchen entrance. That’s Buzz, and his brother Jack in the wagon, and the little giant girl next to them is Mom. Mariam is in the background, and you can also tell that there aren’t many trees in the side or back yard yet, and the huge sycamore in the front yard is not yet planted.

Old folks at the cottage

That’s the old folks sitting out in the front yard by the road. The fence was gone by the time I was a girl and playing in the front yard. My grandma Carrie is on the left, then her mother Laura, sister Edna and her husband Jim (who I always heard was in the circus) and sister Ethel and her son Buzz are on the right. He dates this photo ’36 or ’37 also. It’s hard to tell where in the front yard this is, but again, there aren’t many trees…

So one of my secondary categories on this blog is 40s houses. I guess I’m going to have to change it to 30s houses.

Here is a painting that Joe and Clara had done of the house when they bought it in 1974, before they started renovating. Painting of Apple Hill Cottage, ca.1973

And here’s what it looks like today — still under construction. We haven’t really gotten to the outside of the house yet. But we hope to have the gray cedar shakes all painted white by the end of the summer, as well as replicating the trim around the front windows.