In the cove, some of the old timers have lived here forever. On spring mornings, I like to hang out one of my top floor windows drinking coffee, the steam mixing with mist.
“Wadder yah doing up dere yah old trout! Trying to catch fireflies in yer gob?” Robert yells up, passing by on his walk.
When the house had a straight pipe, it ran into the brook beside the well, where it had drained out for decades. A priest once lived here, though he never complained about the taste.
“De ole bugger t’aught he were drinking holy water!”
This year, I’ve been keeping a wildflower journal of all the things that bloom in the cove, native and otherwise. The first entry, February: snow crocus. The latest entry, mid-August: Deptford pink. The tiny flowers of late summer are my favourite. You see them hidden in grasses: flecks and glints.
Most of Robert’s attention goes to critters that live in the cove, and how to dispense with them. “Seen de ole groun’ hog around? I’ll tell ye how to be done wit’ ’im. You takes a shovel, and just dish ’em. Right on der nose. Just dish him.” There is other advice for getting rid of skunks and porcupines, deer, and people from the city.
One day during the pandemic, I am sitting on an old chair on my front porch, getting my hair cut.
“Lorrr’ it’s hay-uh cuttin’ day is it? Hay-uh should alway be done like dis. Never has been a good reason to go to town more’n once a month. Covid set it back to rights.” It was hard to disagree.
Another time, years ago, I was trimming roses when an old man walked into the yard and told me how during the Second World War, the house stood empty, a place he could hide on the porch and make out with his sweetheart. Other things: The road used to be dirt. The ships would unload supplies on the docks along the river. Town was half a day’s journey. You avoided it, until you couldn’t.
In one of the upstairs rooms of the house, an old phonograph machine, with a copy of a waltz from the twenties. “Three O’Clock in the Morning.” You could imagine how it used to be. Night. Music drifting over the river. A summer party. The flowers closed up like stars that have winked out.
