But the farmyard that was my husband’s childhood home is still a pretty nice place to spend a summer morning. We were there yesterday, Dennis cut grass with his riding mower, making business-like swaths around the grain bins. I waded through waist-high grass in what had been the house yard, curious to find if any rhubarb or berry bushes survived among the tangled shelter belt of caraganas and Manitoba maples. A blaze of red caught my eye. And there, on slender stems scarcely higher than the waving plumes of grass, were survivors of a flower garden. Maltese cross, they were called, a staple of prairie flower borders tended by Saskatchewan farmwives of the 1930s, ‘40s, ‘50s. Dennis’ Mom no doubt planted these one spring a generation ago. And sheltered by the trees she and her husband planted, they have somehow survived our negligence for all the years this yard has lain untended.
This was a place where children grew,
Lives were planned and music made.
Friends were welcomed ... coffee’s on!
Laughter soared and tears were shed.
But that was then. And this is now.
Fifty five winters laid siege to the trees;
As many summers remind them still
To shelter the memory of what once had been.
The Children are grown, the farmer gone.
The house no more, the songs all sung.
And yet in the springtime, birds still sing
And the fiery flowers dare bloom again.
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