The Ghosts

 

Of tender house plants haunt the yard.

Mack barks frantically at the last of the Norfolk Island pines, shrouded in rose-studded white sheets and a length of gauzy red fabric. It's kinda tall and scary.

We brought the other big one in last night.

The little yellow cherry tomato huddles under a thin blue blanket, still making sugar bombs of cozy gold that never, ever, make it into the house before they are eaten.

Brrr.....

Ghosts of Ian sent us strangely brilliant, odd white clouds the other day. I couldn't stop looking up, except when accompanying rain showers were shivering down.

The ghost of summer past left behind its shawl of rich and satisfying purple asters and brilliant goldenrod for our enjoyment...if only it wasn't a reminder of what's to come...

And the ghost of my dad visited me the other night in a haunting dreamscape made of what their house is really like and of cold, lonely farm houses we lived in over the years before they bought it.

He was wearing a blue plaid summer shirt he liked that I wear now because I like it too and it reminds me of him. He warned me that we weren't charging enough for the Collier's Weeklies they left behind and started to help me price some other things around the house.

Then the boys came and he vanished and they thought I was a little crazy.

Until we went upstairs and found a piece of ghostly furniture, surrounded by piles of sawdust and wood curls where he had been working a favorite craft again. The haunting scent of pinewood filled the air.