No more parades, and the veterans in our family died out with Jim’s dad but the guns going off in the silence of a cemetery will always stay with me. I pray for other families hoping they don’t have to hear it too soon. War and death are inevitable and the feelings of anger mingle with pride; despair a bridge towards hope.
Another tradition for me has always been putting in the vegetable garden. Just a matter of a few miles and altitude changes have taught me to be patient with summer. This year I’ve finally decided that the garden had to be moved from its spot because the trees have grown so tall that it gets little sun. Since the pool’s been taken down and was in a sunnier spot, that’s where I’m working this weekend.
Three bags of peat moss, three of humus, and ten of organic gardening soil (got too tired of digging out some from the woods) and I’m still hoe-ing up sand that I suspect is not just the base of the pool area but Burlington soil itself. See the neighbors told me after we moved in that the topsoil was scraped off and sold. What they left would drain straight through to China.
Lot of work and I’m out of shape and don’t move as easily as I once did. Though I’ve got to admit that I try. At least behind Agway’s this morning I loaded the car myself off the pallets with 40 lb. bags rather than wait for the guy to appear. Next to me, two burly guys in a pickup truck stood and waited for their guy to show up. I used to be able to pick up my own weight–100 lbs. at the time. But that was a couple decades ago.
And the man is away. A last visit to a buddy in PA dying of cancer.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology