Summer

Dreams of a Four-Year-Old Forest Ranger

Dreams of a Four-Year-Old Forest Ranger

Not that it’s easy now, but being a forest ranger was hard work in the 1940’s.  Being four years old is always hard work.  Combining the two experiences was especially challenging—at least that was the way I saw it.My uncle was a forest ranger during the summers of the mid- to late-1940’s. My aunt was the “chief cook and bottle washer” for the dozen or so rangers stationed at the Big Smokey ranger camp/station in Idaho.Located north of Fairfield and upriver from Featherville, the camp was close to neither.  In fact, as with many ranger stations in those days, it was not easy to get to.  Always winding, the miles of narrow dusty gravel roads included steep mountain passes.  Each turn had its own surprises. Dodging wildlife or boulders, punctured tires from dead porcupines, vapor lock, steaming radiators, the infamous “red-ants-at-the-side-of-the-road” dance and getting carsick were considered normal, if not…

Continue ReadingDreams of a Four-Year-Old Forest Ranger
Climbers

Climbers

I hadn’t planned it at all. In fact, I was surprised when I looked down and realized how high I had climbed. It just sort of happened. I was visiting my son last week in Texas and I was admiring the magnificent old tree dominating his front yard. No one was around, so.....I took the first step. The tree had obviously been waiting for me, because its branches seemed to reach down and lift me up, foothold by foothold. In my tree-climbing days, I would have rated this one an easy climber. Now, I will use the category “geriatric climber”. I climbed to a suitable perch and carefully settled myself in. As I leaned against the trunk, I felt secure, at home among its branches, the texture of the rough bark and the woodsy smell, all subtly familiar. It had been a long time since I had actually climbed a…

Continue ReadingClimbers

Die-Hard Gardener

Like a benevolent Garden Goddess, I find myself bestowing—OK, forcing a blessing of fruit or vegetables upon all who visit my home. It actually started early in July. Rejoicing over the first of the harvest, I was eager to share my abundance. “Here, please take a container of raspberries home with you,” I would say as I magnanimously held out an offering to my visitors. Then the plums started dropping in generous quantities from the tree. Ripe and ready to eat or preserve, they would not wait. I made plum sauce, plum muffins, plum bread, plum turnovers, and we had fresh plums for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. “Just a minute”, I would call to my unsuspecting visitors as they were leaving, “You will want to take some of these plums home with you.” Undoubtedly touched by my generosity, they would happily leave my door, clutching their sacks of plums. Then…

Continue ReadingDie-Hard Gardener

Finding the End of the Rainbow

(First Honorable Mention (fourth place) in “Published manuscript category in the Reader’s Digest Magazine contest, 1995 It was still early in the afternoon, and it already had been a long, rainy day. It had been raining for most of three days, which was unusual for this area. For my two sons, ages 3 and 6, all entertainment options had been worn out by the end of the first day. The novelty of saving drowning worms, stick and string puddle fishing, and rowing plastic tub boats had lost appeal. The “Rainy Day Olympics” had worn out even faster, due to the inevitable altercations that occurred after each son proclaimed himself the winner of every event. We hadn’t fared any better with indoor activities until we decided to bake cut-out cookies. As we were taking the last batch of dogs and stars out of the oven, things were looking up. Was that…

Continue ReadingFinding the End of the Rainbow

Garage Sales

“How much do you want for the plant stand?” A lady was holding up the white wrought iron plant stand that had cradled my favorite old fern in the living room years ago. “Two dollars.” “Will you take one dollar?” “Sure.” “If I buy all of the games, will you take less?” A man with a beard and a baseball cap was pointing to the large box full of games that my boys had outgrown. “Okay.” Why not, it saved me the effort of unpacking the box. “Mom, does the coffee pot still work?” A young woman with a toddler wanted to know. That was 7:30 A. M.; the garage sale wasn’t supposed to start until 10:00 A. M. Even so, Mom and Dad’s yard was full of people, and more cars were pulling up to the curb. We were just starting to set things out; it already looked like…

Continue ReadingGarage Sales

Gardening Twilight Zone

Garden? Did someone say “garden”? I don’t know what happened, but somewhere between “getting an early start” and “I think it’s too late now,” I got stuck in the GARDENING TWILIGHT ZONE. Thanks to El Niño this year, I got the earliest start ever on my flowerbeds and garden. Remember the warm February and March? Energized and motivated by the premature spring, I ordered the specialty seeds from my seed catalogues, much earlier than usual. Anticipating their arrival, my husband even got out the rototiller and started turning over the dried vines, compost, and weed sprouts in the garden. Then, because my perennials had to stand on tiptoe to see over the fast-growing weeds, I started weeding and pruning—much earlier than usual. I even pinched off sprigs of parsley and mint a month before Easter! Not much later, weed sprouts required my husband to rototill again. It was not long…

Continue ReadingGardening Twilight Zone

Golf, the Addiction

Please note the following precautionary statement: You may want to skip this column if you are offended by the following four-letter word—GOLF. There it is. I’m sorry if I have offended anyone. Golf is a chronic seasonal affliction for which, in past years, I seemed to have a natural immunity. I have always been an outdoor person, enjoying hiking, fishing, camping, skiing, etc. But golfing never entered my mind as a worthwhile sport. When asked if I played golf, my response was quick, proud and derisive, “I have other things to do instead of chasing a little ball around with a stick. Besides, I’m not old enough to play golf.” So, when the golf scourge hit me, no one was more surprised than I. I was minding my own business one summer evening about five years ago, when my husband asked if I wanted to go “hit a bucket of…

Continue ReadingGolf, the Addiction

Backyard Grape Arbor

There is a time portal in my back yard. It looks deceptively like an ordinary grape trellis arched over the wooden gate leading to my rose garden. However, it harbors the magic to transport me back through time and space to my grandmother’s grape arbor—the way it was when I was five years old. Grandma’s grape arbor was a mystical green tunnel. It spanned the distance between the bottom steps of her back porch and the gate that led to the vegetable garden. My childhood memory tells me that it went for at least a mile. I know now that it was about 15 feet long. Each year, I watched with awe its transformation from a wire archway lined with brown dead sticks to a green leafy passageway of graceful vines and grasping tendrils. And, when the clusters of tiny green pearls swelled into huge clusters of purple balls, it…

Continue ReadingBackyard Grape Arbor

Waving

From my air-conditioned car, I could see glistening beads of sweat run down the flagman’s face. As he took a swipe at them with one hand, he directed traffic through the construction zone with the other. His was not an easy job; I waved. He waved back and then he smiled. It was still a hot day, but maybe it helped to be appreciated. I also wave my appreciation when other drivers stop to allow me to pull into traffic. I wave from my yard to neighbors who pass by, even if we’ve never met. I like to wave to people. But, I am concerned that, over the past few years, the number of those of us who wave is diminishing. Are we becoming an endangered species? When I was growing up, waving was practically a national pastime. We waved to each other, friends and strangers, from our porches, our…

Continue ReadingWaving

Worm Holes

I was standing on top of the ladder trying to push aside my disappointment along with the heavily laden branches of my apple tree. “What a shame—so many worm holes this year,” I grumbled as I examined the almost-beautiful apple cupped in my hand. About four out of five apples I picked had at least one worm hole. We had been too busy to keep up the spraying this year and now we were reaping the results. Even though sorely neglected, the apples had filled out well because of the perfect timing of the extra rain and strong winds we had at blossom and small fruit time. The result had been a thorough job of thinning! I hadn’t had time to start picking the apples until after our first frost, but that in itself was inadvertently adhering to my Grandma Smith’s advice of letting the first frost “set the sugar”…

Continue ReadingWorm Holes