The suitcase is unpacked and sits in its’ designated corner. 

Sister, Delores Ann, came on Tuesday and I returned to the little rappitpatch on Bonnet Street. It took a while to wash clothes and tend to the flowers, though the only one that complained was a young hydrangea.  Christian is a good housekeeper  and an outstanding friend to the boxer and the gray cat-but the small bed of “lily-of the-valley” were quite lonely, I noticed. 

The time that  I spent at Mamas’ was busy and rewarding . Mama trudged through her exercises, gallantly and impressed everyone.

Neighbors , family and friends came by dependably and helped out in various ways .  It was wonderful to visit with everyone. My own neighbors, at one time, cousins and an aunt and uncle, all came through out my stay making each day a sort of   reunion. 

April came and with it showers.  There has been wind, too.  I suppose March had to get in the last word.  With the weather having been unseasonably mild, there are flowers and trees blossoming all around. It is hard to top the pairing  of dogwoods and azaleas .  The spireas did not wait for Easter Sunday as their elders have always done-instead they took full advantage of the unusual conditions. and donned their delicate, but spectacular  flowers, early. 

For many years spireas were found in most every yard.  The bushes were well mannered and waited for the proper time (just before Easter) to bloom.  This allowed children with their “Easter dresses, patent leather shoes or coats and ties” to be photographed in a fairy land-like landscape. Mama remembers this tradition, fondly. 

The kids are coming  home for Easter.  I do not know now how an Easter meal, an egg hunt and a belated birthday celebration for Lyla will all fit in, but I am trying to convince myself that it will.  My Lyla turned 8 yrs old on one of  the early days of April.

She was a beautiful one and born on an Easter Sunday.  A young dogwood bloomed at the old farm  house, for the first time, on that day.  We brought her homes to quite a proper environment.  We played beautiful music, gave her candle light baths and spoke soft, beautiful words . . .she fussed anyway.. . a lot.  The only thing that comforted her was to take her outside, we discovered.  I spent a good deal of time under a crab apple tree in full bloom, with this child-til I declared her a fairy child . . .and a temperamental one at that.  Today, our Lyla is very artistic, bright and very compassionate. 

With a gathering in the very near future, Kyle helped me in  the yard.  Kyle is wonderful at yard work.  He enjoys it , from digging to mulching-and he doesn’t complain. We worked a day and a half and the yard looked like a young garden, when we were through.  I couldn’t wait for my children to see it.

I plant perennials that come back with their cousins and I prefer small blossoms, like pinks, thrift, candy tuft and the sweet dianthus- and   whimsical sages.  . . .Oh and roses!  I am quite a glutton when it comes to flowers.   I am just as bad about flowering shrubs.  I have a half dozen tea olives, seven gardenias and five azaleas-which bloom from spring to frost,  and several hydrangeas.  It is no wonder we are eating rice and beans!  

It was pouring rain, when they all arrived-it had been raining for hours.  The house was clean and the table was laden with dishes of food.  Grandmamas’ china with a dainty pale pink rose, was stacked and beside it cloth napkins.  What a lovely setting-just like the yard, they had all just dashed through-unaware of my pinks and dianthus! 

The meal was perfect and while Tres labored over the dishes, Sydney and the children decorated a cookie house with honeybees on it.   If I stepped in the dining room, shrieks rang out.  What an adorable little house they presented.  Each little face beaming with delight in their gift.  I beamed too. 

Brant hid eggs in the cottage, for it was still raining, while I read The Tale of Peter Rabbit” to the grand darlings and tied the easter bunny, eggs and Jesus together in a lesson.  Sydney had put  the scriptures’ account of the Christ, death, burial and resurrection, in numbered eggs, which we read together.  Lyla shed tears.  This moved me deeply.

 

 Afterwards, we all went to Mamas’ for the surprise party.  I had made an ice cream cake and Brynn presented Lyla with a bouquet of flowers. 

Through out the day, Baby Banks had been held nd adored by everyone of us.  He barely complained and smiled at every body til he was fast asleep in Mamas’ arms. 

That night, when the cottage was still, and Grandmas’ china   was back in the hutch, I replayed the precious details of the day and my heart was full.  Now, there was a beautiful memory that belonged to this rabbitpatch on Bonnet Street.  . . and suddenly the place felt more like “home”. 

All of my efforts to create a cozy, happy dwelling, paled in comparison to  our children building a cookie house at the dining room table, the drone of the male voices filling the air and the new babe cooing. 

I felt like ‘sugar plums were dancing in my head” as  I drifted off to sleep.  That was a good thing, for the next day was Easter Sunday at Mamas’ andI needed to be back in the kitchen before the robin sang. 

It was still raining, when I woke.