Let the Sun Shine In
The day is getting off to a slow start ramping up to its anticipated mid-80s temperatures, but the sun is breaking through as the morning crests its half-way point. It’s a Saturday so the traffic patterns are not following the normal Cornell commutation cycle with cars and trucks heading down Warren Road into Forrest Home in the morning and flowing up and out of Forrest Home in the late afternoon. Instead, I can hear a random toing and froing of cars up and down the straightaway that is Warren Road and runs from Fall Creek out well into Lansing, passing the airport as it goes. I am no longer used to seeing so much green around me as I do here. They say its been a dry summer, but you wouldn’t know it from the amount of lush green on all the trees, bushes and grasses. The blend of coniferous and deciduous trees is quite broadly arrayed with spruce dividing this property from the nextdoor neighbor. Clover Drinkwater lives next door and I doubt I could make up a better, more New England, name than that if I tried. I like to say that Winston is the best neighbor name I’ve heard, but I think Clover Drinkwater trumps Winston. Like Winston, Clover has been a good neighbor for the past twenty-five years and I suspect she feels likewise. She says she is sad to see us go even though she pursues her many interests and is likely to continue to do so.
This back yard was nothing but an overgrown clump of bushes when I found this house in 1996. I conceived of this back deck with its stainless steel barbecue and the three steps down to the flagstone pool deck with the pergola at the far end where the old rickety barn used to stand. There is a red awning out there with red cushioned chairs which will last through this summer and then find their way down to the Delaware shore to my oldest son’s house. The pool is that light blue that was more common twenty-five years ago and is now replaced by a darker shade of grey-blue in most pools. This is a vinyl-lined pool that has more than run its useful life and will either need to be replaced soon or else, as some suggest is more likely to happen, see the pool filled in and eliminated. Pools are somewhat of an optional item here in the Northeast since the season runs no more than four months, as opposed to SOuthern California where you can probably get eight to nine months use out of them. When you see Zillow aerial shots of the area, you only see a few pools in Cayuga Heights and there are precious few pool service people available if you want the pool managed for you. So, this may be the last season for this pool but only time will tell.
I am very proud of the wisteria that climbs the outer posts of the pergola and lives in great flourish over the pergola and its red awning. The flowers are only somewhat out at this stage of the summer, but I can tell that cutting back the wisteria last year has done little to dampen the enthusiasm of the plant. It’s trunks are perhaps sever or eight inches in diameter and they have thoroughly wrapped themselves around those white pillars such that removing either would spell the end of the other I imagine.
Along the southern end of the pool beyond the white picket fence that surrounds the pool and keeps it all legal, is an elevated bed of flowering bushes that are already two to three feet higher than the fence. Those bushes need annual pruning just to keep them from overtaking the fence altogether. They sit in the elevated bed defined by a stone wall of stacked Ithaca stone. When the landscapers put that in those many years ago, I was told that I had gotten the last of the product out of the Ithaca quarry. I had just enough for those low flowerbed walls, a few flagstone pieces at the side entry and a stacked stone fireplace in the living room. I recognize Ithaca stone when I see it because it is all over the campus grounds and I’m glad I got some for this property.
The backyard is as verdant as I’ve ever seen it with all ten or so of the trees I planted over the years prospering quite nicely. They were set in a manner to simulate a fairway, given that the yard is perpendicular to the ninth hole of the neighboring golf course. We long ago stopped mowing the back yard like a fairway and rough since that visual joke only goes so far. I had also put in a sand trap right before the kidney-shaped “green” with the gravel path around it, but that got filled in years ago since its maintenance was not worth the humor of it. One can still see the shape of a green and what could look like a fairway, but one needs more imagination today than before. Meanwhile the two weeping willows at the end of the back yard have grown from medium-sized trees to stately older trees. I’m sure one or both of them is just one big thunderstorm away from a lightning strike that could split it like the old black walnut tree in front. So goes the natural progression.
The kids are now in the pool and lunch on the deck is just around the corner. The girl’s usual lunch these days are PBJ sandwiches called Uncrustables. They look like large raviolis or pierogis and they are filled with peanut butter and jelly. They come in strawberry and grape and the girls only like the strawberry ones, so guess who gets the grape ones. Yep, I am getting addicted to grape PBJ Uncrustables. So much so that Kim has bought some for the drive home. They seem like perfect road food since they are neat and seem to travel well.
This last day at Homeward Bound (technically no longer called that since the only sign declaring it such has been removed and sits in bubble wrap in the back of our SUV along with all the other items we decided to carry back in the car) is being spent just enjoying the kids and relaxing before a nine-day drive across country. By the way, Kim and I already packed the car and our estimated were right on. Everything fit together perfectly like a big jigsaw puzzle with space to spare for a few extra items we will fit in at the corners. We will spend a lazy Saturday afternoon enjoying the pool and generally walking around the property for a last time. It is now a sizzling hot Ithaca summer afternoon and it will be equally nice to be outside by the pool and inside in the cool of the air conditioning.
We will go to a local restaurant called Antlers, which is about as local a place as there is up here. I can remember going there with my Aunt Aggie and Uncle Art who spent their entire lives in Ithaca. They died younger than my mother, but both made it nine decades more or less. They passed away twenty years ago and yet I still think of them when I think of Ithaca. They are part of what keeps me connected to this part of the world. But the real connection for us has become Pete and Nancy Massicci. It is because of Homeward Bound that we have become lifelong friends with my first cousin once removed and his wife. We have spent many holidays and cations together and will do so again down the road. In fact, they are coming out to our hilltop for Labor Day, so the very next holiday we will be together.
As we wrap things up here, I like to think that we are more letting the sun shine in that shutting down and going dark. There will be more and interesting places to go and things to do and Ithaca will never be displaced as home to me. When i get back to my hilltop, I will take the brass plaque and drill it into a large rock outside my office window and will remember that as the sun rises over that rock, Homeward Bound will always be there and all I have to do is let the sun shine in on my memories to enjoy it.