This pecan tree makes everything around it seem small.
When I was a girl a picnic table sat to the right of the tree and we had a garden beyond the ridge of rocks.
Now, the garden and the table are gone.
But the tree still reaches into the sky and over the barn giving plenty of shade.
In response to the Daily Post’s prompt Vegetal.
This is the first Summer living in my childhood home since I moved out 24 years ago. It’s special to get to be here. So many memories to be remembered that would stay forgotten if I weren’t here.
When I was a girl summer weekends meant hard work. The yard would be mowed, the garden tended, and the house cleaned. Then the best part came in the evening.
A good meal and enjoying our rest after the day’s work. If a late afternoon thunderstorm rolled in and cooled the air, Dad would prop the screen door open. If not, the small air conditioning unit in the window would keep us cool.
I walked around the house today enjoying the unearned beauty all around me. The ivy growing in the cedar tree. The day lilies in whites and yellows and oranges. The fruit trees and blackberries and muscadine vines. The Rose of Sharon and gardenia and the magnolia.
All the work of those before me.
Summer will always be lightning bugs blinking, cicadas humming, mosquitoes biting.
Tomato sandwiches, homemade ice cream, vegetable dinners.
Afternoon thunderstorms, long days, hot nights.
God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end. Ecclesiastes 3:11
We’ve been here a month now. The entire house has been renovated except for one room. The room holds sentimental treasures….Dad’s pipes and briefcase and shoe shine kit, Mom’s rocking chair and her favorite trinkets. Some old furniture. Old letters and cards and photographs. Hundreds of photos in boxes and bins and old photo albums.
I started moving things around in the room. Trying to make space for when my sisters come and we go through it all. I accidentally started looking at some of the photos. Remembering moments I’d forgotten.
There are lots of old memories here. Good and bad ones. The good ones we treasure.
But mixed up with all those treasured memories are painful ones. Sad ones too. And some that made their mark on us forever. But God redeems those. He uses them all for our good.
And then we can help others who are going through trials and painful circumstances.
Because whenever He changes us or heals us it’s never just for us.
Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. 2 Corinthians 1:3-4 NIV
An unseasonably warm day of winter here in North Alabama gets me outside to explore the yard. The sun shines through the leaves of this beautiful magnolia tree. I can’t remember when Dad planted this tree. It must have been a long time ago because magnolias are slow to grow and this one is a good size.
I do remember the day I pulled up for a visit and Dad was about to cut the tree down. I asked him not to and here it is now….filtering the sun through its waxy green leaves in a beautiful pattern onto the ground below. It will stay here and grow taller, slowly taller and wider.
And I will think of Dad often because of this magnolia tree.
In response to the Daily Post’s Weekly Photo Challenge Seasons.
The renovations on the inside of my childhood home are complete. The guys we hired to do the hard stuff have done a fantastic job and it’s beautiful.
Tomorrow we’ll begin to move our life from one place to another. I’ve already moved some of the small stuff. Boxes of old pictures, books, and wall hangings are there at the new house.
But the old house still holds most of our things. And memories. Lots of memories……13 years worth. It’s been a good place to us. Lots of good times have happened here. We 
have the best neighbors in the world and the most beautiful country roads you’ve ever seen. The people here are hard working people. The kind that stop to talk to you when you’re walking on the country roads. They’ve heard we’re moving….so they stop and ask about it.
I’ll miss that. The community I’ve felt here. I’ll miss Mr. Billy and his wife, Brenda, stopping by in the fall and blowing the horn for me to come out of the house to see if I want to buy 25 lbs of sweet potatoes or some collard greens. We always visit awhile and I look at pictures of his sweet great grandchildren.
I’ll miss Mr. Jimmy. His 30 plus acres are right beside our place. He let the kids stomp and romp all over that land. They fished in his ponds, climbed on his hay bales, rode his horses, borrowed anything from his barn (as long as they put it back), and built forts there, too. They’ve long since outgrown all that but they will remember 
it forever.
I’ll miss our Christmases here. Our live tree took up almost the whole living room but it was okay because it was Christmas. And we barely had room to open the gifts when extra family was here.
I’ll miss the walks on my country road. The quiet and beauty. The cotton growing, the horses neighing, and the cows grazing. The sound in the summer of the crickets and frogs and cicadas. The pecan trees and blackberry bushes.
We’ve grown in this place. Not just older, but better. Along with the good, there’ve been hard times here, too. We’ve laughed and cried here. We’ve been healed here and loved here.
It’s all been so good to us.
I’m so thankful for the years in our little home in the country.
In response to the Daily Post’s Neighbors
There’s something special about getting to renovate the house I grew up in.
In the process of removing the existing floors I’ve discovered the floors I walked on when I was a little girl. The brown and gold flecked linoleum in the kitchen and the solid hardwood in the bedrooms.
In our attempt to remove the wallpaper in the back bedroom I found the green and yellow flower patterned paper that decorat
ed my older sisters’ room when they were teenagers.
And I found pink walls underneath the wallpaper in my dad’s office which used to be the room I shared with my younger sister when we were in elementary school.
I’d forgotten the floors and the yellow and green wallpaper and the pink walls. These discoveries have unlocked a flood of memories.
Like the time I was sitting in my sisters’ yellow and green bedroom listening to Elton John’s Tiny Dancer on the radio one Saturday morning.
And now I remember sharing our bedroom with my grandmother for a while. She slept in a hospital bed beside our bed and I was scared.
And when Mom cooked oyster stew and I only put the milky part in my bowl to eat with oyster crackers because I don’t like oysters. Or when Dad showed me the way to eat cereal so that the little Krispies wouldn’t stick to the sides of the bowl. I sill eat my cereal that way.
I know other memories will come. Sweet, sad, and joyful ones. Maybe some scary ones, too. I am who I am because of the life that happened in that house and the people that loved me there. Those that taught me there and cared for me there.
Mom and Dad struggled there and forgave each other there. Dad took care of Mom there. We all learned there.
Learned to live and care and forgive there.
We all learned to love there in our house.
But I am like an olive tree flourishing in the house of God; I trust in God’s unfailing love for ever and ever. For what you have done I will always praise you in the presence of your faithful people. And I will hope in your name, for your name is good.
Psalm 52:8-9
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