Happy Memories...

These are lilacs a whole flower bed full of them and they are blooming pretty purple and cheery. These lilacs make me happy and bring back memories of my childhood.

When I was very young and my great grandfather was still alive (he died when I was 8 and in 3rd grade) I used to spend a great deal of time at my great grampy's house, he had this fabulous garden across the street from his house with a lily pond that was normally empty and my little sister, my cousin E and I would run down one side and up the other and sing childhood songs and laugh and play. There was a small grove of apple trees and we loved to climb them, and fell out of them sometimes too but we all survived unscathed. There was row upon row of Christmas trees in the back and we would play hide and seek in there for hours.

In that garden were giant round beds filled with lilacs and I remember how pretty they were. Well my great grampy died in the fall of 1978 and his son my grandfather kept the house for another 6 years or so before he sold it, he came up on weekends and while the place didn't seem quite as magical I always loved visiting there. When my grandfather sold the house my mom transplanted some of the lilacs into a ditch area at her house where the continued to multiply until 2 years ago when they decided to thin them out and gave me a whole bunch of them. I planted them in the fall of 2007 and had hoped for pretty purple flowers last summer but only got a bunch of green leaves. This spring they started blooming.

It makes me smile and if I wasn't suffering from the croupy cough (also reminiscent of childhood) it would make me want to run and play and sing songs like ring around the rosie. Maybe I'll bring my 5 year old nephew over this weekend and run and play and sing with him. My great grandfather has been gone for over 30 years but this week I remember him vividly.