Sue Blackburn told us a few weeks ago that she had a bunch of wood that we were welcome to at her parents home.  Her mother passed away recently so they were selling the home where she grew up.

Sue and her sisters were there cleaning out the house when we got there.  Meeting them and watching their emotions as they looked through some things we found in the attic of the garage brought back a flood of memories of us girls cleaning out the home where we grew up.  It's not easy letting someone you don't even know take your place in the home that holds a lifetime of memories. My heart went out to them as I remembered the feelings I had when we went through the same thing. 

I've never felt such a lost empty feeling as I did when we signed the deed to our house over to the new owner.  He told us all along how much he loved the yard and had big plans to make it look like it did years ago when mum and daddy were still taking care of it.  He said he really enjoyed yard work and landscaping.

  I think he could see how much we loved that place so he told us lots of things that at the time were comforting.  

We used to drive by when we were up there to see how he was doing on the yard.  The first year the yard looked pretty much like we had left it.    He invited us in to see the work he had done on the inside of the house and it really was great what he had done.  He had taken up all the carpet and exposed beautiful hard wood floors.

As time went on though, we could see that he wasn't interested in taking care of the yard at all.  He didn't water the lawns and they all burned up.  The flower beds were full of weeds and vegetable garden was all overgrown with weeds.  The fence around the yard was in bad shape before, but after a couple years of neglect, it was mostly laying down.  

I know it didn't belong to us anymore and we didn't have any say in what he did with it, but it really broke our hearts to see it like that.  

That place was a part of each of us.  

So...we stopped going by.  I'd hear comments from people who lived in Providence randomly about how  he had let it go to pot and it was better if we didn't see it.  Seriously makes me want to cry thinking about it.

I like to look at old pictures of the yard and house. Those last few years mum was alive, I would make a special effort to walk all around the yard, snapping pictures of all the little details that were so ingrained in my growing up memories...Under the big pine tree in the corner of the lot where we used to hide during kick the can, All around the chicken coop where we'd go with daddy to collect the eggs, the orchard...so many memories there.. picking apples, the crab apple tree, then the plum tree...macintosh, golden delicious...I loved the Jonathan apples the best though...when the grass would get so tall we would build houses in it, till daddy would come with the big scythe and cut it all down... looking over the fence into Oral Sterlings pasture where there was usually a couple ponies that we would feed.  The old tree house was back there too.  It had been up in the apple tree and was Bruces hideaway till a big windstorm brought it down to the ground.  Then us girls took over and it was our play house.  It had the cutest little kitchen cupboard and table and chairs in it...we had lots of fun times in there.  

 I'm not sure why but I've got lots of memories of the fence that divided the orchard from the back yard. There was always little violets growing in the grass there that were so cute and sweet pea that would grow curling around the fence poles.  I can still remember how lovely it smelled.  Daddy used to put the old metal slide up to the fence and fill up the little swimming pool so we could slide into it.  I spent a lot of time on the old swing set back there, but mostly I loved the rope swing daddy hung from the tall trees by the road.  He hung it so we could stand on the top of his old milk van and jump off and swing clear out over the road. There was a sand pile there too where I spent hours building and imagining.  I always loved the lilac bushes that grew at the bottom of the driveway.  The driveway was my speedway ...first on the tricycle, then on my roller skates, then the beautiful old schwinn bicycles (pink and blue) The driveway was also my favorite place for laying down after playing in the irrigation water to get warmed up.  The little helicopters from the maple tree would float down on the driveway and we would open them up and stick them on our noses.

At the top of the drive way sat the crystal ball.It sat up on a pedestal that was on a stone stand that was there for as long as I can remember...(till Jerry  L. ran into it in her car and it was replaced with a pot of geraniums)  It always seemed kind of magical to me.

The old house was always kind of creepy to me.  I remember my sisters having a spook alley in there that was really scary and going down into that root cellar warped me to where I was terrified even as an adult of that place.  Later, Bruce and his buddies took over the place and used it for their band to practice. It was never the same after that.

The old flag pole holds a lot of memories  for me.  Daddy would put the flag up in the morning and take it down at night.  I loved watching him attach it to the pulley, then hoist it till it was flying high. He taught me to love and respect the flag and what it stood for.  

In the winter, we would play fox and geese around the flag pole...I don't know if it was because I was small, but the snow always seemed like it was really deep when I was young.  We would  build igloos and forts and spent many hours playing in the snow.

Oh one other thing by the flag pole was the big oak tree...I used to like to pick up the acorns in the fall and pretend they were little people with a hat on. Ha!  There was always little violets growing under that tree too that I would pick and give to mum.

I loved the beauty bush that grew on both sides of the drive way in front of the old house.  In the summer  it would be so full of blossoms, it would hang over and make an archway to go through as you went down the drive way.  

The maple tree by the gazebo was always so beautiful too.  Mum and daddy had built a flower bed around the bottom of it and it was always full of impatients or little begonias. It was an ongoing battle,to try to get grass to grow there by the maple tree, but it was just too shady.

The gazebo had to be the favorite place to gather there in the yard. Lots of parties, showers, mums club meetings, church activities or just having a good nap on the glider swing.  People would drop by all the time in the summer just to visit or walk around the yard and look at the flowers. I like to remember pulling up the drive way and seeing mum and daddy sitting out there in the love seat. 

Oh great.  now i'm crying. Gosh I miss them terribly.

Can't finish without mentioning the rock garden and fish pond.  Sure spent a lot of time just sitting there on the little stool by the pond...surrounded by all the flowers, watching the fish, it was a peaceful beautiful place.

Oh and there's the dream house (aka the shack) where we would spend our summer nights under the mosquito net until years later when daddy put the netting all around the outside.  We would lay out there and giggle and tell scary stories with a flashlight under the covers.  It was the favorite place for sleepovers.

Our yard was a little haven from the outside world.  Just driving up the driveway, you would feel a quiet peace come over you. I really loved being there and always felt very thankful to have it...maybe that was why it was so hard to let go.

Well I guess I kind of got off track of what I started with here, but the walk down memory lane made  me happy and reminded me  that even though those places and loved ones are not there anymore, they will always be in my heart and soul...and that will be with me forever.

So anyway, back to Sue's moms house...we found a garage out back that reminded me very much of daddy's garage...this guy saved everything and everything was sorted into it's own special spot. 

He had tons of wood, (all sorted into sizes and type of wood) and we loaded up a bunch of it.

Sue is just the sweetest lady.  She told us we were free to take anything back there we could use.

There were a couple of horses in the pasture by the garage that were really friendly!  This one came right up and stuck his head in the truck window!

Then he went galloping around the pasture like he was just so happy to be there!  I've never seen anything like it.  He ran over to the other horse and nudged him, like 'come play with me' then took off racing around the pasture again.  The other horse started chasing after him and they were both just jumping and  running like they were happy as can be.  It was really fun to watch!

Kelley found some pretty cool old antiques in the attic of the garage that I doubt the sisters would have ever seen since that was their last day there.  I was glad they got them cause I know how much those things saved from my childhood mean to me.