To all those serving our country now and in the past, at home and far away, during peacetime and war, we thank you. As for those of us who haven’t walked in your boots, may we never take your bravery, your selflessness and your sacrifice for granted. Let’s honor our veterans this day and every day.
Today, we’re back to sunshine. Yesterday’s continuous rain failed to wash away fall’s colors; it simply spread them around with an artistic flair. The weather is mild. It’s a perfect day to be outside, enjoying October.
It’s a day that makes me a bit nostalgic for my daughter’s younger years. If she were seven or eight, we might be heading to Cox Farms after school. This family-owned farm puts on a fall festival that really is fun for most ages. It’s one of our favorite local traditions. We discovered it with a group of friends we met through D’s preschool.
If you live in a suburban or semi-rural area, you probably have a place like this nearby. In Princeton, there was Terhune Orchards, which my husband and I enjoyed. If something similar existed in Atlanta when I was growing up in the 70s, we didn’t know about it. Lucky for me, I didn’t know what I was missing. Lucky for my daughter, she didn’t have to miss it.
Cox Farms is a low-tech, homespun, rough-around-the-edges place, just as a farm should be. As a preschooler, one of my daughter’s favorite “rides” involved rolling down a hill inside a big pipe. There are mischievous goats to feed, various baby farm animals to admire, a cow to milk, and lots of hand-painted folk-artsy plywood signs. Naturally, there are pumpkins, apples, cider and kettle corn. On weekends there might be a bluegrass band.
There’s lots of hay: hay mountains to climb, hay bale forts to explore and tunnel through. Of course there’s a hayride, during which aliens and assorted odd but non-threatening creatures appear. There are many slides, some of which are quite steep. When we first started going to Cox Farms, D was afraid to attempt any of the slides on her own, so we went down them together. That’s when I found out how much fun a fun slide can be. Apparently, I was slide-deprived (as well as fall-festival deprived) as a child.
Our daughter’s first-choice activity was the rope swing with a drop into a foam pit. One doesn’t often get a chance to brag on a child’s rope swing skills, but I must say she had excellent form and always managed to sail to a far corner of the pit. The two photos above are from consecutive years, the first in 2006, the second in 2007. Evidently D’s fall festival uniform consisted of a pink shirt and blue jeans.
For several years when our daughter was in elementary school, we had an annual fall festival meet-up with former preschool friends, a brother and sister, and their dad. It was one of the highlights of the season.
Our every visit to Cox Farms ended with the careful picking of a “free” patch pumpkin. D has always delighted in the perfect pumpkin.
It’s been several years since we’ve done the fall festival. But our daughter is now a regular attendee at “Fields of Fear,” held at Cox Farms on weekend nights for older kids and adults. It includes the Cornightmare, the Dark Side Hayride and the Forest: Back 40. As of this year, she and her friends can even drive themselves.
But at the end of the night, D still picks out a little patch pumpkin.
It’s happening again. Another season is flashing by, like a series of blurry images from a train window, beyond the grasp of my full appreciation.
Summer and its dark green humid beauty came and went, without leaving much of an impression. Was it hot? I can’t really remember. Now it appears I’ve almost missed fall. I noticed today that the leaves of our little sassafras tree are past their yellow-gold prime. Some branches are already bare, and dry leaves litter the lawn.
Yesterday morning we awoke to a heavy frost. Even though I had the presence of mind to search out most of my cold-weather dog-walking clothes, they weren’t sufficient. Around noon, Kiko ventured outside and settled in a patch of sun-drenched pine straw by the fence. He didn’t last long. Soon he was back inside, in the warmest spot he knows, beside a heating vent beneath a sofa. Like me, he seems perplexed by, and unprepared for the sudden cold snap.
I’m not sure what has captured my complete attention recently. Nothing of substance, apparently. Mostly, I’ve been distracted by life’s tedious minutiae, which seems even more Byzantine than usual. Passwords need to be changed, credit cards updated. Familiar web sites are suddenly “new and improved.” (I don’t want new and improved; I want old and understandable.) Pin numbers, unnecessary before, must be created. In my volunteer work, simple emails are being replaced by drop boxes, google docs and Excel spreadsheets I can’t access. At every turn I need my daughter’s tech help. She’s rarely here, due to her junior year course load, drama commitments and social life. A trivial task that should take a few minutes somehow eats up most of an hour.
I’m surprised to look out the window and see the sun low in the sky, the lawn in shadow. I could go finish some project or other. I should probably start dinner.
What I’d rather do is cuddle up with Kiko, now snoozing warmly among the sofa pillows. Maybe it’s a good thing that winter is nearly upon us. Winter is the time for hibernating, and that strikes me as most inviting.
According to the Farmer’s Almanac and calendar no-it-alls, it’s still summer, for one more day. The autumnal equinox occurs tomorrow, September 23, bringing with it the first day of fall. I’d thought the summer had slipped away, but it hasn’t quite. A couple of months ago, I’d intended to write several posts on summer places. But the days passed, filled with other preoccupations. On this very last day of summer, I’ll try to make up for lost time. First up, Coney Island.
I was about five years old the first time I heard of Coney Island. It sounded magical and exotic, an ideal, seaside summer place. Neighbors of my grandmother in Kentucky had just returned from there, and they spoke of it in glowing terms. It was way up north near New York City. There were roller coasters, carousels, and a huge Ferris wheel right on the beach. I’d never seen any ocean then. I’d been no farther north than Ashland, Kentucky, and no farther south than Waycross, Georgia. (Daddy’s job in public health occasionally took him to Waycross, and Mama and I went with him a few times. While it sounds like small peanuts, I remember it as a very cool place, home of the Okefenokee Swamp, a great Holiday Inn pool, and crumbling antebellum mansions.) Anyway, that family’s Coney Island experience made quite an impression. I vowed someday I’d see it for myself.
By the time I was living in New Jersey, twenty-something years later, Coney Island sounded decidedly less magical. But I was still intrigued. One Saturday in June before I moved back to Atlanta, H and I drove up for the day. 
We were in H’s enormous 1968 Chevy Impala SS (last car on the right, above). I’d gone with him to Trenton in the spring to buy it for $450. Battered and well past its prime, it was the perfect car for Coney Island in 1993. Like the faded amusement park, it could be seen to possess an inimitable air of tough deadbeat cool. We parked right next to the old Thunderbolt roller coaster; there were no vast, well-maintained parking lots as at a typical Six Flags. The Thunderbolt, opened in 1925 and out of use since 1982, sat decaying behind a rusted chain link fence. At first I thought it was the famous Coney Island Cyclone. It didn’t look safe at all. But, on the bright side, there was no crowd.
Then I spotted the Cyclone, across the way. In comparison to the decrepit Thunderbolt, it looked positively spiffy.
The above photo shows the Cyclone from the top of the Wonder Wheel. The classic white wooden coaster dates from 1927. It’s not especially tall. It doesn’t look particularly impressive if compared to sky-high roller coasters of the twenty-first century. There are no full loops. The cars don’t hang upside down. It doesn’t go backwards. It’s associated with no blockbuster movie franchise. But it is one memorable, absolutely thrilling ride.
On that sunny summer Saturday, the queue for the Cyclone was surprisingly short, almost nonexistent. At H’s insistence, we waited out one run so we could get the front car on the next one. As a little boy at Seabreeze Amusement Park in Rochester, his grandfather taught him that for the complete coaster experience, one must ride in the first car. We got in. When the safety bar came down, I thought there must be some mistake. There was way too much room between the bar and my lap. In fact there was space for someone several times my size, or for me and a couple of friends on my lap. I was afraid I’d fly out on the first dip. I anchored my elbows forcefully into the worn vinyl padding of the bar.
The cars lurched, and we were off, chugging slowly up the first hill. At the top, there was that suspense-filled pause, and suddenly we were hurtling downward. Thrillingly, alarmingly. The first descent is banked precipitously, and I hunkered lower, dug my elbows in harder. We were back up, rounded a turn, and then we were headed down again, screaming, laughing. It was exhilarating.
At the end of the ride, when the little train arrived at the platform, we were laughing and wind-blown, like all the other riders. H’s shirt had become completely unbuttoned. My bra had come unhooked. We had been warned to secure all valuables. According to the attendant, false teeth, glasses, jewelry, wigs and even underwear had been found on the tracks. I can see why.
Back then, you could stay on for another ride at no cost if you chose. We both wanted a repeat, but we needed some time to collect ourselves, to button up, to recover from the thrill. To prepare to be thrilled again.
Reliving the memory, I think, as I have many times over the years: we’ve got to go to Coney Island with our daughter. Not surprisingly, she’s a roller coaster fan.
Next: More Coney Island
Four years ago, I wrote my first Wild Trumpet Vine post. Like the plant for which it’s named, Wild Trumpet Vine perseveres. There are dry spells, but it hangs on. It’s grown deep roots, and it keeps me rooted to the real, keeps me on track in a world of smoke, dead ends, and mirrors. Life is fragile. Let’s look, live, and love while we can.
Thanks for reading! For more on why I write, see here.
It’s happened again: another summer has vanished in a blur. It doesn’t seem possible that nearly twelve weeks have elapsed since the school year ended on June 18. My daughter’s homemade chalkboard hasn’t been updated since then. It still looks like this:
But it’s September 7. While the weather remains hot and humid, it’s beginning to look like fall. Yellow-gold leaves are fluttering down from our neighbors’ cherry trees.
Here in Northern Virginia, it’s the first day of school. My daughter begins her junior year. Junior year! Really? She, my husband and I all feel unprepared.
If I were a kid, faced with writing one of those dreaded first-day What I Did Last Summer essays, I would sit, staring blankly for a while, wondering, What did we do? Seems like I wasn’t paying attention.
I remember the last half of May, however, with a sort of surreal clarity. My father had emergency arterial bypass surgery, and I flew to Atlanta. One minute I was dawdling contentedly over a late breakfast and talking easy nonsense to the dog. The next I was amidst a teeming crowd at Dulles Airport waiting to board a plane. Waiting. Anxiously waiting. Still waiting. If you’re in a real hurry to reach a sick loved one, you can count on extra-long airport delays. I arrived at Piedmont Hospital late that night, just after Daddy was wheeled to his room after several hours of complicated surgery. He had a nubby cotton blanket loosely draped around his head and shoulders, giving him the appearance of an old shepherd from a live nativity scene. His face was frighteningly pale and drawn, but already he was talking, joking. He was lucid, he was funny. He was my sweet Daddy, upbeat and happy. What a relief.
Mama wouldn’t leave Daddy’s side, except very briefly, to get a bite to eat or take a quick shower. She slept on a narrow pull-out chair beside his hospital bed. Evidence of the truest of true love, after nearly sixty years of marriage, doesn’t get any clearer than this. I spent days with my parents in the hospital, and nights alone in the house I grew up in. What an odd feeling. I can’t remember spending a night totally on my own there before. During those rare times in my teens and twenties when my parents left town without me, it was a good excuse to have friends over. There may have been one night when it was just me and my childhood dog, Popi. He’s been dead far longer than he was alive, but I still hear his soft footsteps, or his nose pushing open a partially closed door. I heard him last May. As the old, familiar house creaked and groaned around me, I wished he were there with me again.
It was slow, slow going, and very scary at times, but Daddy got better. For a couple of weeks before the surgery, he’d complained of leg pains. Turns out he’d had almost no blood flow in his lower legs; he was lucky he didn’t lose one foot, or both. He left the hospital after nine arduous days, still quite weak. Being home was a great relief to my parents, but it meant Mama would be mostly on her own to care for Daddy. There would be visiting nurses and physical therapists, but her duty would be full time, non-stop. A daunting prospect. Fortunately, kind and loving neighbors made it possible for me to return to my Virginia family, who were missing me by that point.
Maybe because Daddy’s surgery and ongoing recovery has loomed so large in recent months, other events have seemed less substantial, less deserving of my complete attention. When I look back over my calendar, I see proof that we were busy: there were neighborhood parties, doctor appointments, church meetings, Friday night dinners out, a first-time ever solo trip to Florida for my daughter to visit a friend, our annual Cape Cod vacation, a busy week of Vacation Bible School, and the transformation of our little-girl playroom into a more grown-up TV/entertainment room. In late August, my daughter had all four wisdom teeth extracted, much against her will. Given her choice, she would have preferred to postpone indefinitely and take her chances with future pain and inconvenience. She felt far more miserable than I had expected. I went through the same thing at fourteen, but have forgotten my level of discomfort. It couldn’t have been too extreme, because I recall being out with a friend’s family and attempting to eat a Varsity hotdog only a couple of days later. Once my daughter was feeling good again, summer was over.
And now, the last minutes of this first day of the new school year are ticking down. My eleventh grader will be home before long. I know better than to ask about her day in a cheerful tone. I’m bracing for a litany of hardships and grievances. Maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised.
By the spring of 2013, four years after planting, the red double-knockout roses along the fence had grown quite dense and bushy. In early May, they were bursting into explosive bloom.
By late May, the same was true for the pink trellis roses.
The trellis roses had become our favorite photo backdrop. Above, our daughter poses in a high-low dress, a style that enjoyed a longer period of popularity than it merited. At this point, D’s blink-and-you’ll miss it middle school career was nearing an end. It had been an enjoyable and satisfying two years. With her involvement in drama, she’d found her niche. She loved performing in two musicals, both pretty good for middle school fare: Thoroughly Modern Millie (ensemble) and Guys and Dolls (at last, a small named role as Agatha the Mission Girl). While she’d never been exactly shy, with all but her closest friends, she’d been more reserved than outgoing, a characterization that was no longer consistently accurate. As for her core group of elementary school buddies, she’d drifted apart from some and strengthened ties to others. Despite her ongoing tendency toward extreme procrastination, she managed her coursework. She was on the cusp of high school. At thoughts of the new school year, she was understandably a little anxious. But she was ready to leave middle school behind.
Before the eighth grade dance (an event of far lesser significance than the sixth grade dance), our daughter sits with Kiko, who exhibits his typical nonchalance.
In 2014, the roses were still denser and more luxuriant. This is despite the aggressive pruning my husband gives them every year in late summer. If he didn’t do so, the fence and garage might well be invisible by now. They could, conceivably, pull a Sleeping Beauty’s castle number on us if we got very lazy. Otherwise, these hearty, disease-resistant roses need little care. From now on, the challenge will be reining them in.
As for our daughter, as with any teenager, we face a constant choice: when to pull the reins, when to let her run free. Like our roses, she’s easing quietly but speedily toward maturity. Once she began high school, it’s been one milestone after another, toppling like dominoes in quick succession. I remember very vividly her concerns as the first day of high school approached. Could she learn to navigate the confusing corridors of a much bigger school? Would the coursework and homework be overwhelming? She second- and third-guessed her decision not to go out for field hockey, as so many of her friends did. Try-outs would have interfered with our sacrosanct vacation time in Cape Cod. Would her participation in drama be enough to give her a sense of belonging? All those worries proved unfounded. Her freshman year brought many firsts. She took them in stride.
The summer after freshman year, right on schedule as she had hoped, she got her driver’s permit. On Day 1 as a new driver, she attempted the most notoriously narrow, winding road in our neighborhood. (I was cringing.) She was determined to drive as often as possible so she could get her license on the very day she became eligible.
Soon she was a sophomore. There were more firsts.
On April 1, right on time, she became a licensed driver. The day fell during our spring break visit to Atlanta. D was able, at last, to take my parents’ iridescent gold PT Cruiser out on the streets legally; she’d been circling the church parking lot in it since she was eleven.
That day she drove us to Callanwolde, an arts center housed in one of Atlanta’s several historic mansions associated with the Candler family.
Now sophomore year is over, too. Our daughter is halfway through high school.
This summer, more often than not, she’s out with the car, among friends. It’s just me and Kiko at home. His day is as full as he wants it: a morning walk, followed by sleeping in the sun, moving to the shade, then back to the sun.
And while our dog loves a ride in the car, he’ll never require his own vehicle.
By early May of 2011, two years after planting, two of the three climbing roses had reached the trellis. The shrub on the left lagged a bit behind. Narrow vines were bursting forth with bright green leaves, and buds had formed.
The red double knock-outs by the fence and the porch were nearing peak bloom in the photos above. They had filled in considerably and surpassed the nandina in height.
This view from our neighbors’ yard shows the dense barrier formed by the red roses along the iron fence.
At this point our daughter was twelve and nearing the end of sixth grade. She was more than ready to be free from the annoying constraints of elementary school, with its hallway stop signs and arbitrarily awarded stickers for standing quietly in line and not acting the fool. That April, she and I had accompanied my parents on a Danube River cruise. She’d been more like a sister or friend than a daughter on that trip, a capable, fun companion with whom to explore Budapest and Passau while my parents remained aboard the ship. She’d certainly seemed older than twelve. Somehow it’s comforting that, at least in the photo above, she looks much as I think of her today.
Kiko was five then. His appearance remains unchanged. 
By mid-May of that year, the pale pink roses were in full bloom.
As for our daughter, she’d decided to cut her hair, which had grown longer than ever before. (I hadn’t been in charge of her hair for several years.) After great deliberation, she’d made the change, just in time for the sixth-grade dinner dance. In our area, this is a pivotal event that heralds the end of elementary school. It’s orchestrated in minute detail by tireless PTA committees, highly anticipated by parents and sometimes even enjoyed by students. The theme that year was “A Night in the Tropics.” For the girls, the dance meant the need for a new dress, one closer to semi-formal than Sunday School, despite the school’s insistence that it adhere to strict school-day dress code regulations. Many girls, like my daughter, appealed to parents to let them try out higher heels than those to which they’d been accustomed. Photos from that night show her and her friends in that slightly uncomfortable coltish stage: all bony shoulders and long legs, little girls teetering in big shoes on the verge of growing up.
By 2012, the following year, three years after planting, even the climbing rose at left had attained trellis height and begun to wind its way across. In late May, all the roses, red and pink, were in lush, abundant bloom, turning our courtyard into a cozy outdoor room.
Our daughter had made the jump from tween to teen, from elementary to middle school, and we could all breathe a big sigh of relief. Just as she’d expected, she reveled in the greater freedom: changing classes, her own locker, electives like shop, news team and drama. And once in a while, the opportunity to walk into town after school with friends. We’d read and heard much about the minefield of the middle school years, a life stage fraught with angst and peril. While I understand that not all kids are so fortunate, for D those worries were overblown. No doubt it helped that she entered seventh grade with a solid group of long-term, likeminded friends and an attitude that helped her forge new friendships.
And then there’s Kiko. Lying in the cool grass of three summers ago, he looks exactly the same today. A dog can be a big help toward denying the passage of time.
During the month of May, our back courtyard is the site of a rose explosion. First the red roses along the fence pop. Then the pale pink climbers on the garage trellis follow suit. Each year our family marvels. We can’t believe these roses. I’ve written about the evolution of the space behind our house from cement wasteland to cozy enclosed garden. See Up From the Concrete, Roses. When I looked back at the photos from that 2012 post, I was surprised to see just how much the roses have multiplied in three years.
On the last Saturday in May we hosted a gathering and hit the weather just right. The evening was pleasantly warm. We were on the porch or in the courtyard from beginning to end, surrounded by roses. Several friends asked how quickly they grew. How long did it take the pink roses to reach the top of the trellis? Seemed like two years, but I wasn’t sure. So I looked back. The changes were dramatic.
This is the way the roses grew.
The porch addition, the courtyard and lawn panel, and the changes to the garage were completed in May 2009. Most of the plantings were in just before Memorial Day. The climbing roses, each shrub almost two feet in height, were planted at the sides of the garage and between the doors. The above photo shows the porch without screens and the yard as yet unfenced.
Along the fence line, we alternated red rose bushes with taller nandina. We didn’t realize then how quickly the roses would overtake the nandina. When the plants were first in, the transformation struck us as spectacular, a vision of instant lushness. Six years later, we’ve grown more accustomed to our leafy flower-filled courtyard, and I’m amazed at how relatively bare it all was back then. Hardly spectacular. So much of the iron fence plainly visible, the unadorned white glare of the garage and the stark, naked trellis.
I also forgot how young our daughter was when we began the project. In this picture, from July 2009, she was ten and just out of fourth grade. Goodness, she looked like a little kid. Maybe because she’s our only child, and we tend to talk to her more or less as we would an adult, she’s always seemed relatively mature. I’ve never wanted to rush her growing up, but I generally think of her as older than she is. Yet on that summer morning in her PJs six years ago, she sure looked like a ten year old, with little-girl bangs and short hair. That was back when I still laid out her clothes every morning, when I could shop for her easily, when my mother would sew full-skirted Sunday dresses for her. Back before pierced ears, make-up and high heels, before she developed her own unique sense of style, very different from mine. Way before she needed a steady supply of long gowns for drama events and prom. That was my little girl. Wow.
Kiko was nearly two. With relief I note that he looks exactly the same now as he did then.
A year after planting, the climbing roses had nearly doubled in height, but were still a long way from reaching the trellis. The vines were spindly and thin. In this photo, taken in April 2010, our eleven-year old daughter models her classic (she would now call it old-fashioned and babyish) Easter dress.
By July of that year, the red rose bushes were considerably denser and as tall or taller than their neighboring nandina. Our daughter, eating a homemade popsicle, wears the tie-dyed shirt she made for her fifth-grade production of Alice-in-Wonderland. Her hair still slightly wet from the pool, she was a typical, somewhat scruffy rising sixth-grader. I don’t remember it ever entering my mind that she was in an awkward stage. Hindsight is bracingly clear-eyed. Still, compared to the less than stellar preteen me (with glasses that evoked the cartoon character Morocco Mole, braces and an unflattering short hair cut), my daughter at eleven was a personification of tween elegance and beauty. Much like our roses during their pre-adolescence.
To be continued. Next up: Flowers and girl continue the climb.
One sunny, breezy day last week I was out on our back patio talking with my mother on the phone. There was a near-constant clatter as winged maple seed pods hit the gutters. They drifted down on the porch steps and onto Kiko, who was sleeping peacefully on the top step. Although the sound of the seed shower was far louder than rain, it didn’t phase him. For some reason he didn’t associate it with the approach of his fearsome nemesis, the thunder creature. See here and here.
I held the phone out so Mama could hear the clickety-clacking. She asked if I remembered how the maple seeds rained down in such abundance every spring at my grandparents’ house. I don’t exactly remember the flight of the maple seeds there, but I certainly remember the big old trees. The enormous silver maples that frame our Virginia house were a major reason the place felt immediately like home. See here.
That was about a week ago. The seeds continue to fall, in greater numbers than I can recall. There are many more yet hanging on; from the look of the branches, it would appear that none have fallen. Yesterday evening my husband spent a while shoveling the thick coating of seeds off the driveway. That hasn’t been necessary since we lived here.
If there are many more seeds than usual, is that bad or good, or of no consequence? I haven’t been able to find a clear answer. One online source suggested a larger seed output may be a reaction to stress. Sending out more seeds is an effort toward ensuring the survival of the species. Sort of a maple tree insurance policy. I hope this doesn’t mean our last two old trees are singing their swan song. It’s not only the maples in our yard that are overproducing; all those around us seem to be doing likewise. Whatever the reason, it looks like the helicopters will continue to swirl through the air and pile up on the ground for a while yet.
The accumulation of the seed pods around the bases of the trees reminds me of the cicada spring of 2004. See here.
The design of the maple seed pod–a delicately veined, elongated angel wing, and its flight–are among nature’s awesome little marvels. I love it that in the concrete base of our front porch, towards the center, there is one perfect imprint of a maple seed pod. Every spring it finds plenty of company.
It’s hard not to track the maple seeds into the house on our shoes. To bring them inside in a more pleasant way, this year I painted a floorcloth that depicts the seasonal output of the trees. There are buds in various stages, including their first appearance as tiny nubs on bare winter branches. Of course I included seed pods and silvery green leaves. Because the floorcloth is in a heavily trafficked area in the kitchen, it usually wears its share of three-dimensional debris, maple and otherwise. Art, like life, tends to be messy.
