From childhood I remember the house of dark wood and high, vaulted ceilings. The house my mother grew up in. To reach it, you had to pull up a long, narrow drive, past the garden on the left. In winter this was merely a large bumpy patch of brown dirt bordered by a low wooden fence. But in summer it overflowed, quite literally, with life—tomatoes of all sizes, cucumbers climbing wire cages, leafy squash, neat rows of corn, peppers alternated with chrysanthemums, sugar snap peas, zucchini. At the southeast corner of the garden grew a very old cherry tree. It shaded the space around it and produced the sweetest cherries on earth. The unbelievable taste of those dark red berries, whose juice stained our mouths and fingers, was tainted by the occasional little white worm already eating it from inside. Each new cherry had to be carefully inspected for round holes the size of pinpricks in its skin. If all seemed clear, you could chance it; but you’d be wise to split down the middle and examine inside first.
Raspberries lined the sloping green lawn and the neighbor’s white fence—a fence, and the house it belonged to, that wasn’t there when my mom was a girl. I’d spend the afternoon plucking raspberries without permission, eating my way through the prickly stems, later scolded by my grandpa for it. Further up the hill, adjacent to the front door, were blackberries and red currants. Those I didn’t like, but ate them anyway for the satisfaction of pulling the small, pulpy fruit from their stems.
At the top of the hill stood a walnut tree. You had to be careful walking barefoot beneath or risk stepping on the hard, round shells hidden in the grass. Around the corner: plum. Apricot in the back. Apple, peach, and pear. We ate fresh fruit out on the wide back porch, its trellis overgrown with concord grapevines, on special occasions atop a scoop of vanilla bean ice cream. Later in the season, when more fruit grew than could be eaten, each tree was harvested and the fruit sliced or halved, the pieces laid out neatly on screen trays and shut in the towering dehydrator for hours—maybe days. I carefully helped slide those bone-colored plastic drawers neatly into place. Pears and peaches were canned, and bags of dried fruit were gifted at birthdays and Christmas or stored in the basement alongside large canisters of rice, flour, and sugar.
The grass grew soft and long. You could see dewdrops sparkling across it in the morning, especially along the northernmost side where a tiny stream trickled all the way down to the sidewalk, breeding ground for late summer mosquitos. My sister and I counted more than 300 bites between us one summer. White hydrangeas surrounded the yard—”snowballs” we called them. But I loved most the white and yellow and pink honeysuckle that grew in a patch adjacent to the wide steps leading to the front door. The flowerbed itself was deep enough you couldn’t reach the house without stepping into the wild mass of vines, and who knew what lay beneath them. The prospect fascinated, intrigued, and terrified me. Perched safely on the steps, I’d pluck a flower from its stem, pinch off the tiny green cap at the end, and pull the white thread from the tube. Then I’d suck the nectar from the flower. It gave barely a drop or two. Just enough to taste.
Lilacs grew in bursts of scent and color. Roses too in yellow, pink and white. More flowers turned up nearly everywhere; peonies, dahlias, irises, sunflowers. My grandparents weeded early in the mornings, before the sun hit the tops of the mountains, wearing wide-brimmed hats of straw or canvas that covered their faces and the backs of their necks. Grandma in long sleeved blue gingham and light-colored cotton pants. Grandpa in white and pastel plaid.
On summer evenings we’d play badminton with racquets taken from their hooks in the garage, the ancient net set up across the driveway. We’d pause to eat a fistful of berries or a crisp slice of watermelon and realize only once it was gone that we’d missed the sunset.