A Walk Down The Road.
I turn out of my driveway past the white house with black shutters I was raised in, turn left, north, for a walk down the road. I've gone down this way many times. I pass large Colorado blue spruce that my dad planted. They were to be sold for Christmas trees, but when he died, they were not trimmed, and as time passed the blues grew too big to sell. I'm not good at judging height, but they must be twenty feet high. Some are silver blue. They stand proud, each with their own personality. The heat of the day brings whiffs of pitch and needles. It was said that there is enough trees to plant a city. I sometimes think I could give them to a city and picture new housing developments with very tall trees placed to make you think that they had been there forever. I wish I knew of a city that would take them. They probably would be too big to dig and transport. So much for the city idea. Maybe one of them could go for the downtown Christmas tree. They would meet the size requirement and certainly would be a better shape than last years scraggly tree.

On the opposite side of the road, I miss the line of ancient maple trees that were along the edge ; the pavement getting closer and closer. The trees grew and the road became modern and wider. The trees are gone, cut down, because they were tapped each spring, year after year. Sometimes you would see three or four wire-handled buckets hanging off the spigots that were bored into the tree so the sap would drip out. The practice of tapping basically girdled the trees and they started loosing their top branches so the county marked them to be cut down.

I miss the field beyond the trees, lately planted to sunflowers. Mr. F or one of the boys would be out there working up that field with a rusty old tractor, going back and forth raising a big cloud of dust since the field was mostly sand, not even loamy sand. Just sand. Over and over the field had been planted to corn. Then maybe left for hay. But, I liked watching the sunflowers grow, their sturdy stalk, their tight flower bud, and then the field overflowing with sunflowers like my own Van Gogh painting. The year of the sunflowers, we saw flocks of turkeys crossing the road, sneaking past the tall spruce to get to a slight ravine that hid them from view until they reached the maple woodlot on the northwest corner of the property.

I'm almost to the farm's property line. I remember the field beyond the big spruce being planted to potatoes. Fred took the eight-tined fork out to dig potatoes for supper, but dug a ways without a single potato. It was then that he realized that someone had been there before him. Got the potatoes and cleverly replaced the top. That wasn't the first time someone had stolen from the farm.

I'm nearing Mrs. F's house. You could easily find it if I described her yard. I think I see two rabbits eating under her birdfeeder. I know what lies over the hill. I've gone this way many times before.