Yesterday, in a garden

Yesterday exceeded perfect. I went to see my friend Deb and take her up on her offer of new potatoes, kale, garlic.

I’ve never been to Deb’s house. I knew she had it, and she and potter husband Steve had gutted and renovated the almost 200 year old house. It’s nearing completion and when I pulled into the farm yard on the perfect day, Steve swung down through scaffolding from the old metal roof he is repairing.

Steve pointed out some barns and gave me history, as I stood planted in one spot, adhered to my cane. The fine, beautiful weather had kicked in my allergies and plugged my ears long since, and I felt like I was floating through images of my surroundings.

Deb led me to the garden. “Be careful, uneven. A hole in the ground. A little downhill here. You want to wait while I go harvest?” as she opened the gate and took down the top of the Dutch door style deer detractor.

Delightful, like a mother hen, one of whom laid an egg and was announcing it to the world. “And the raccoons and fox!” Deb said. I followed her in, and we chatted while she turned up taters and snapped kale leaves. Just a perfect sort of day.

“I’m  looking everywhere I go; I’m lookin’ for a home in the heart of the country. I’m gonna move; I’m gonna go, I’m gonna tell everyone I know, lookin’ for a home in the heart of the country.”

Then she led me through the house. My god, ten inch plank floors, refinished. “This used to be here; we moved that from there. We found the old church window that had been incorporated in the house.”

My favorite: Deb said there were no footers in the original house, including the two story bit that began as one. Some of the second floor was grounded on the old ceramic crock that was the chimney. The stairs were built on a stack of field stone, and held a hundred or more years of children thundering up and down their steepness. “The stone was dust,” she said. A contractor told her the house was held together by tradition.

We drank iced coffee in the sun room, petted the dog and talked about bits of things. I only remember looking up Gallipolis. How long will anyone remember old horror and atrocity?

When Laura came home, she found the produce, draining on the counter. This morning I find she has rearranged it.

Charlottesville has not dispersed. Former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, a Trump supporter, said of Trump’s non-response, (an air ball to the Third Reich, said Jon Oliver) “I would recommend you take a good look in the mirror & remember it was White Americans who put you in the presidency, not radical leftists.”

School starts soon. I sat Laura down and discussed the attitudes she might encounter soon, in her radical right school district. “I know, Gramma. Don’t worry. I can handle them.”