One house that lingers in memory

She still misses the old farmhouse where she and her family used to live.

from the January 23, 2008 edition

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I took a small wire fence and added it to the front of the porch and planted fall flowering bushes whose name I can't recall. They were on sale at the farm store though, and at the time that was all that mattered. The lawn was really a compilation of green weeds, but the ground was covered, so we wore flip-flops and thanked nature for covering up the sand and cockleburs.

The county workers cut down some trees along our county road, leaving big, hunking chunks of tree behind. I took our old pickup truck and drove around collecting the biggest and best pieces, and brought them back to our little farmhouse that sat in a three-sided shelter of trees. The hedge-wood, pines, and oaks stood proud, although they were as elderly as the century-old home.

I rolled the chunks of wood, one by one, down along the property line between the dirt road and our lawn of weeds, creating a sort of decorative fence for free.

The Angus cattle across the dirt road, held in only by a single strand of electric wire, watched me in fascination, while my husband reluctantly helped me cozy up the atmosphere outside.

"Who does this?" he asked.

"I do."

The effect the logs had on our home was instantly individual. Couple that with the new paint job, the flowering pink dogwood just outside the kitchen window, the porch swing, the greening of the weeds, and the two beautiful girls sitting by the flowering bushes, and I realized happily that, once again, we'd made a home.

We offered to buy the farmhouse with five acres, but our jovial landlord loved the property, too. He always thought he'd move out to the house from town, not realizing as he said the words that his wife stood behind him, in her appliquéd sweat shirt, drawing her hand across her throat in a fashion that let us know that they'd never live in the place.

Today, we live miles away in Colorado, in our own home, this time, but I often talk with a friend I made just down the road from that farmhouse. Barb says that two other families have moved in and moved out, but none have planted flowers. The log fence is still there, but the green weed lawn is back to sand and gravel, and the dogwood doesn't seem to bloom as much.

I guess the old house misses us, too.

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