I Talk to the Trees . . .

My Trees . . . and some of their brothers

We went camping this week.

In the great Canadian back woods.

It rained.

Only once, though.

From Saturday through Tuesday.

We huddled under our tarp, pretending that we loved camping in the rain.

Finally, the torrential (and very loud) rains moved on, and, at last, we could hear the gentle wind through the pines.

I was instantly transported back to a special time in my childhood.

In 1938, as a young man, my dad planted two pines in back of the family's home on the Stringam ranch.

Twenty-two years later, those same trees, now behemoths among their lesser brothers, sat in the front yard of the newly-constructed ranch house.

The kitchen, dining room and garage faced those trees.

And my bedroom.

It was summer.

One of those special summer days of pure, clear air, blue skies and soft wind.

When living on the prairies is is a gift of inestimable value.

It was early. Mom had been stirring in the kitchen since dawn.

I was lying awake in my bed, listening to a sound that drifted in through my opened windows and was, at once, calming and intriguing.

I had never noticed it before.

A soft ssssssssssssss.

Mom came into the room and sat on the edge of my bed.

“Time to get up, Pixie-Girl.”

“Mom, what's that sound?”

She cocked her head to one side and listened. “What sound, Sweetheart?”

“Listen.”

She went still.

“There. Hear it? That ssssss.”

She smiled. “That's the wind in the trees outside your window.”

I stood up on the bed and looked outside.

The two great trees were there in the front yard, effectively screening the house from the rest of the ranch buildings.

They were still.

Then I heard it again. Ssssss.

This time, I noticed some movement in the huge branches. Slight. But there if you looked.

My trees were speaking to me!

Throughout the years, they continued to speak to me.

As we all grew older . . .

Sitting there in the great Canadian woods, surround by the massive evergreens, I was a little girl again, lying in her bed.

With my mom busy in the kitchen.

And my trees as whispering and murmuring to me from the front yard.

The sweet sound of memories.

Pudding on a String

Daddy, George and I

My Dad had made me a new toy.
It was a large - very large button on a string.
Intriguing.
You would thread a long, heavy string through the holes of the button and knot it. Then you would push the button to the centre and grip one of the two loops of the string in each hand.
Now you held something that resembled . . . a button on a string.
But then came the exciting part. If you wound up the button, you could pull the string out away from the button on each side and it would unwind and rewind the opposite way.
If you handled it just right, you could keep it going.
All day.
Which I did.
And it created a bit of a breeze if you got it going very fast.
Which I also did.
Enough background.
Mom had just made a large pot of pudding and set it on the cupboard to cool.
I was waiting, rather impatiently for it to be cool enough for me to eat.
That was when I got my, to date, greatest idea.
My button could generate a breeze. It would cool the pudding and I could eat it that much faster!
I pushed a stool over to the cupboard and climbed up.
Carefully, I manoeuvred my button over the pudding and pulled the strings.
It worked!
For a moment.
Until I relaxed my hands on the ‘rewind’ or maybe the ‘unwind’ stroke.
Then, it dipped and skimmed the top of the scalding hot pudding straight into my face.
And my hair.
And the ceiling.
The covering properties of a button on a string have never been fully explored. I think they should.
I believe Mom was cleaning up pudding from the most impossible places for months.
Long after I had healed.
P.S. I still like pudding. I just prefer it inside me