It was often like having just moved into a dwelling on Earth, after having lived for 7 years on another planet.
The Language, the Look of it, the Sound of it , the Smell of it !
All totally foreign and different from what we had grown used to .. what used to be home was suddenly different, nowhere we had been before ..
Home was South .. where we still had trouble understanding what they said ..
Summer was a good time to see it .. lush, overgrown, untended gardens that tempted those 2 people who were stunned with the greenness, the possibilities, but not the work, cost and poison ivy and deer.
That would come later.
There was a perfect in- ground pool, we never opened it.
There was a nice hammock, rotting over the ivy there, mixed with masses of poison ivy .. we never used it ..
We had to hire someone to do the mowing and back breaking work, my husband got all excited about the riding lawn mower but then it became a pain in the neck ... but he liked doing it.
The city boy grown up and finally getting to mow the grass on a riding lawn mower ..
I have photos .. big grin .. I shake my head at the memory .. delighted to mow the grass.
After he was gone, there was no way I was going to get on the lawn mower ... go near poison ivy and snakes.
So the yard man was hired. They were worth the money, Autumn in Upstate NY is gorgeous .. fall leaves .. falling leaves .. raking while they fall .. call someone to come help !!
I remember wishing we had bought the old falling down house with tons of charm , that made my imagination go wild, House Beautiful , Traditional Home, my reading material ..chatting with the men at the garden shops about fertilizer etc.
The trees were so massive in the summer, there was a meteor shower and we had to walk out into the corn field so we could see the sky .. it was a good shower ... the sky was so black ... no glow from city lights there !
And the quiet .. Going from the city of Buenos Aires to this quiet bit of peacefulness, kept us awake at night ... it was SO quiet !!
I miss it.
We had poison oak out in the country in N. California. Even the damned leafless branches were like ticking time bombs. We cleaned out a bunch of brush in the winter and I unwittingly carried a bundle of poison oak branches in my unprotected bare arms. I was in agony for days. I would take a blue ice pack to bed with me and put it on my arms at night in an attempt to quell the burning/itching. Not much helped. I had scars for a long time. When my brother-in-law visited us he would keep the car windows rolled up and not set a foot on any dirt or grass because when he was a kid in the Boy Scouts he was exposed to campfire smoke that had poison oak oils in it. He had a terrible reaction to it with face swelling and breathing trouble. That made a believer out of him. Can't blame him. Out in the country it's beautiful, but there is the downside of snakes, etc. to contend with.
ReplyDeleteI have a scar leftover from those poison ivy days too .. I agree, it is agony and horrible.
ReplyDeleteNorth Carolina poison ivy :)
It was hard to comment but I was touched. Such an apt description of the transitions we make from place to place. Dismay at times, loss, later appreciation of what we had - too much to put into other words. It can be hard to remember that there may be equally fascinating, scary, beautiful places to come in the future. I tend to live in the past but am trying to appreciate the present, knowing that it too will become the past.
ReplyDeleteI feel that way about our last home on three acres in the country in Texas; we too had a lovely pool we never used, but I liked to skim the leaves, and I was the one who loved to mow the yard with the riding mower! The big sky, the sunsets, the little red barn, morning coffee on the back porch, the total peace and quiet. I miss it dreadfully, and it makes me very sad to think I will never have a home quite like that again as, now that I am middle-aged and on my own, I probably should not live in a place quite so isolated and that requires so much upkeep :(
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