Hi Everyone! I am back from my trip to Michigan and can't wait to share it with all of you. Thank you Sara, for posting in my absence! I think you are going to have to start up your own blog again! We all are so interested in what you are up to out in the country with your chickens and winemaker.
Our sister Mary from Wisconsin met us at the airport, and it was as if no time at all had passed since we all had been together last. Mary had the unenviable duty of chauffeuring Andrea and I all over the place, and did it with grace, and pretty much calm, except when we shouted at her from the back seat. "Turn LEFT! You missed it! Make a U-Turn". We were like a demonic GPS system.
The first thing I noticed when I got off the plane and away from the airport was that it was really Spring. Not the kinda sorta gateway to summer thing we get for a few weeks here in California, but a true Thank God Winter Is Over Let Us All Rejoice In The Glories Of Nature, Hallelujah experience instead. Look at that bush in the photo above. That is a lilac bush. Just growing in front of a rather mundane apartment building we were driving by. "STOP THE CAR!!" Andrea and I both shouted at our poor sister Mary. She soon got used to slamming on the brakes and screeching to a halt at our command.
Just look at that. It smelled good too. I need that in my yard, but it just won't grow. I swear I might consider tolerating four months of cold and snow if I knew that was coming.
It was dusk when we arrived in Belleville, the town in which I spent my early childhood. That is Belleville Lake above. Quiet, peaceful, pretty much unchanged.
We spent some time at my Aunt Gerry's house, which has an amazing garden. Her garden is so pretty, it was on the Belleville Garden Tour! Everything was neat as a pin, not a weed in sight.
That is her little garden shed at the back of the yard there. Do you suppose my garden would look half that good if I spent any time out in it? See that weeping cherry tree with the lighthouse and green ball?
That green ball is an image of my Uncle Doug, who used to collect lighthouses, and now lives in the Belleville cemetery, enjoying other vistas. One thing you can say about my relatives, is that they do have a sense of humor.
These are peony buds coming along nicely, waiting for a few more warm days before they open. Meanwhile we appreciate other blooms such as this one.
Don't ask me what it is--all I know is I can't grow it in California.
We drove by my childhood home, which was a towering structure that has inexplicably shrunk dramatically. Seriously, it used to be really big. What happened? How strange it is to go back to your youth. Everything seems smaller and much farther apart. Back in my day, the house was white with green shutters and a 57 Chevy in the driveway. And four times bigger, in my perception anyway. The upper left window was my bedroom until we moved when I was 10. It had lacy white curtains that would billow in the breeze. The little addition like thing on the left used to be a sunporch where my grandfather would sit and sip beer and listen to the Detroit Tigers baseball games on the radio.
Across the street, this is the field where we neighborhood kids would play softball until our moms all called for us to come in because it was getting dark. Seriously, I could hear Mrs. McLaughlin in my imagination, calling "Sharon, Janet, Billy, come on home now". Sometime in the past 50 years, Mr. McLaughlin must have got the notion to put a barbecue in the middle of our baseball field. What was he thinking?
Belleville is still a small town, changed and modernized with ugly strip malls here and there, but pretty much the same as it was when I was a kid. Gravel roads, shady trees, big green lawns, kids playing outside in their yards without fear. Small town USA.
No visit to Belleville would be complete without a visit to the
cemetery, so that was one order of business for our second day in town. If you end up in the Belleville cemetery, you will have a view of the lake and be surrounded by all the families that have made up the town since it became part of Van Buren Township in 1847. We wanted to say hello to Grandma and Grandpa, but before we found them, we ran into all sorts of other relatives. Aunt Gurtha and Uncle Orin McMullan.
No, not them, but look close--see the goslings? There are two sets of them--the other one is in the upper right hand corner of the picture.
Look! Here they are! Grandma and Grandpa! I wonder how they think of the way things are in Belleville now? Gosh, Grandpa's been gone for 30 years and I still think of him often. And, Grandma? They don't make 'em like that any more. She had words of wisdom for every occasion. In my case, most memorably, "Honey, no man's worth getting that upset over".
Tomorrow I will tell you all about our drive up to Marine City to celebrate Aunt Donnie's surprise birthday party.
