Wheelbarrow

Wheelbarrow

The Blogging Lounge

#2 Picture Prompt
Hosted by the talented Ariana Browning

Walking past the old house, I couldn't tear my eyes away.  The two story was sorely in need of some repair.  The front porch, once supported with intricately detailed vines and flowered wrought iron, now was held up by two weathered two by twos which seemed to sag in the middle. 

The gnarled old mulberry tree just off to the side of the house told a tale of many pies and jars of jelly. I recalled my Grandfather feeding the chipmunks.  Almost as soon as he sat in the old rocker, they would scamper around him like bees to a flower.  He would pull mulberries out of a pocket and hand feed them.  If the mulberries weren’t ripe, he had other treats.  He always had treats for the little people stored away in his shirt pocket.  

I could nearly hear the laughter of children on a tire swing, as I spied the scarred limbs on the maple tree in the back yard.  Close enough to the garden plot to keep an eye on and far enough away to keep the children out of trouble.

Grandmother would want to see each of us as soon as we arrived at her home.  Marched through the front door and into the parlor, past the formal dining area filled with lace and good china, into the kitchen, handed a ginger-snap cookie and then whisked out the back porch and told to stay away from the pies cooling on her rack. While she didn’t actually pull ears back to check for cleanliness, it was obvious we were being “inspected”.  One of us was always a little “wanting” of what she called “a lick and a promise.”  I suspect it was a lick to clean up whatever dirt was there and a promise of a good scrubbing to come!  I smile remembering the aroma and the look on Grandmother’s face as we stopped, usually a little too close to the pie, to breathe deeply.

Out the back door, around the wooden boat with the hole in it that Grandmother planted petunias, under the mulberry tree, and around the wheelbarrow with today’s haul from the garden.  The scare-crow closest to the house was made up as a man.  They had even hung pie tins from the outstretched arms to clatter together and frighten the birds out of the garden.  Whatever was ripe, that’s what we had for dinner that evening. 

I kept walking and gawking.  The repair crew was there, taking down the gray shingled siding.  I could see the piles of aluminum siding to be put up.  There was still an old wheelbarrow standing off to the side of the house.  Someone’s Grandmother must have lived there too.

leigh