Ellie & John

I finally had my more-like-a-sister cousin and her 2 kids out to see 'the new house' (a year after it was new to us). Chalk it up to busy work and life schedules... skating lessons, skiing lessons, girl guides/boyscouts and gymnastics or ballet on her end, work and snow plowing and gardening on my end. So, Sunday (me hung over and tired for a million reasons) she brought the kids and the dog out for a visit.
It was more of a joy than I could have anticipated, to show them around and to see the kids REVEL in the 'countryness' of our life ... helping to water the container plants and the newly-planted perennials, chasing each other with watering cans (filled from the rain barrels), taste-testing the herbs. Offered TV, they elected to only watch 20 minutes of "Prank Patrol" and then came up to help me harvest (and clean) the radishes ("too hot!"), some salad and miscellaneous leaves. I divided the 'bounty' in two, and they took their half home to share with their dad.
Then the dog... running with abandon, smelling the smells of the neighbour sheep and horses, the smells of the recently-visiting dogs, the uncity smells of country life (the rabbits that eat my raspberries, the moles that make holes in the garden, the feral cats that roam the county), uncatchable and so dog-like.
It reminded me (and my sister-cousin, no doubt) of what it was like to visit our grandparents as children - pulling peas and beans and raspberries from their kitchen garden, helping to turn the compost pile, internalizing the smell of the 'workshop' (the dirt-floor basement under the summer kitchen).
Watching the kids amuse themselves made me so happy -- to have her kids associate our house with 'the farm', the place of growing edibles and new mysteries, of wildlife and wild living. To know that my other nephew eagerly awaits "Strawverry day" (when they make the 2 hour trip to our neck of the woods to handpick strawberries at Murphy's), to anticipate how his sister (only 6 months old on our last berry picking day) will react to picking then eating fresh strawberries.
I think that, for all that this place means to us, it is a blessing to provide memories to the children in our lives... memories that will stay with them and that they may be able to recreate with their children.