“Grandma’s home backed up to a large pumpkin field when I was young, and that pumpkin field extended all the way to the main road in our city, State Street. Once a year, on Memorial Day, we were allowed to open the back gate and haul large buckets full of Iris and Peonies out to the road front and sell bundles of flowers to those heading to honor their loved ones. The rest of the year, the gate stayed firmly shut, and nearly hidden from view by the enthusiastic Virginia Creeper vines that grew all along its’ face. The vines were our weather vane in a way, telling us what season it was. When they were mostly grey sticks, it was winter of course. We knew spring was coming by the bright green leaves finally showing. Our view of the pumpkin patch was entirely obscured when summer was at its’ peak, and fall brought the leaves to a delicious blazing red. Grandma kept those vines “to hide the road” she said, and later when a strip mall went in behind her house, they were even more welcome.”
love,
April