Old Order Mennonite Memoirs

The great outdoors called to me all week so I was thankful for the three rows of potatoes to unearth while I basked in the late summer sun. Cricket songs in the raspberry patch had a calming effect on me, as the sound of my husband's harvester whined in the fields of corn over the hill. But when I stepped out of the milk house that evening, I stopped short. It did not matter that I was carrying milk in pails and bottles for my calves because the sight of the sun was too unusual. It was hard to believe that forest fires thousands of miles away was clouding the Pennsylvania atmosphere, but that is what my husband correctly surmised.

Tuesday's cool morning was strangely unclear with a bright red orb shining in the haze. Our windows closed but the house remained cool as the outdoors drew me again into my dying gardens. I cleaned up spent flower stalks and stored away garden accessories even as I shared flowers still blooming.

The next day I shared a bit of the great outdoors at the home of granddaughter Bella, age 23 months. As we lingered in the garden, I could tell she had grown to understand about her mother and grandmother in gardens. She seemed to accept the fact that they were inseparable and no amount of crying or whining would bring them away. She helped pick tomatoes for the length of her attention span then she wandered aside to her puppy playmates. But before we had arrived at the garden, we had spent time with her and books and the trampoline. And although she couldn't yet join in our discussion of flower bouquets and their colors, she was included in our little picnic on the deck beside the ferns and summer foliage before I had to go again.

At my dad's house, my sister and I made short work of his cleaning, even as we chatted away, strengthening sisterly twines of love. We biked together back out the lane where we used to walk together to meet the school bus on Hickory Bottom Road. "In sweet innocence no longer we meet cares and strife, but God is our guiding refuge on life's turpid stream......."

If my need for sky and air is a tank with a gauge, then the needle jiggled far away from "empty" till I was back in my kitchen for more canning and cooking and meal planning which reached into the next day. I enjoyed the little walk into my garden to gather tomatoes, peppers, onions and celery to make "End of Garden Soup" to can. Early darkness prohibits much lawn mowing after evening chores but the next morning I hurried to finish my task before undertaking the 'going away' list on hand.

The one destination was only a bit down the creek but the strong north wind didn't let me coast with my bike. When I shook hands with feminine family members of my husband's side, they commented on my cold hands. The invitation to gather because a Missouri niece was in the area for local weddings, was short and sweet like the sun shining in our eyes.

Like Monday evening's smokey sun, Saturday morning's temperature stopped me short. After four short months of intense growing in our gardens and fields we have arrived again into frost that kills and blackens. In the afternoon, I escaped the trap of weekly cleaning to meander into my garden to dig sweet potatoes and some carrots. I tore away some dead tomato plants and listened to sounds of summer's death.

Summer's demise is actually part of a dream fulfilled for two couples who eagerly anticipate the arrival of their autumn wedding days. In Windy Acres Lane, David and Marlene Martin are preparing for a wedding for their fifth daughter. Lord willing, Jordan Stauffer will claim Verna Martin as his bride on the 15th of October. He is the son of Eugene and Grace Stauffer of New Enterprise.

Andrew Zimmerman, son of Daniel and Naomi Zimmerman, of Cove Mountain Road, has a longer way to go to claim his bride on Oct. 22, but having a wedding in Lancaster County is not new. Jane is the daughter of James and Vera Zimmerman and granddaughter of Emma and (the late) Edwin Rissler.

So they were absent from the Saturday evening sing along Kelly Road and Sunday suppers have long since lost their appeal, the latter having been along Hickory Bottom Road for the single youth.