Flowerbeds in the yard had been flattened by heavy snow drifts during the winter and were now bleak and washed out from the recent heavy run-off when the ice melted. Apple trees in the orchard were naked, with gnarled branches reaching in every direction. A cool breeze swirled around me. It carried the scent of the nearby barn and the sound of a calf bawling and the mother’s long-winded answering moo.

All my siblings were at school. Next year, I would be attending school, too. Today, for the first time in my life, Mom was allowing me to wander around our farmyard by myself. Not sure what to do or where to go without having my sisters or brothers to shadow, I glanced around. I spotted Mom peering out of the kitchen window, checking on me.

I loved the cows, calves, and even the smell of the barn. They all reminded me of happy times I’d spent with Daddy following him around as he did his daytime chores. However, Mom said I couldn’t be in there today, though. It would be too dangerous. Daddy had to let the bull out of his pen. I shuddered, thinking about the huge, nose-ringed monster being on the loose. I once stood close to his pen, and he snorted and bellowed, acting as though he wanted to break down the bars to get at me.

Walking away from the farmhouse toward the garage, I spotted an intriguing sight. Just beyond the garage was a small grove of wild plums. Despite the dreary day and all the other bare-limbed trees, these had limbs tipped with clusters of small white flowers. As I got closer, the swirling spring breeze carried their sweet, spicy perfume to me.

Last fall my sisters gave me some plums to eat. Thinking about them made my mouth water. These plums were small-only the size of a big marble. Although the reddish yellow fruit looked amazing, their skins were bitter beyond description. What I found irresistible was the sweet, yellowish-tan mush found inside the bitter skin. Unfortunately, each plum had a big seed in its center and the fruit clung to it.

Last summer and during the winter, I’d walked past the plum grove with my brothers and sisters, but I’d never really looked at it closely. Staring up at the clouds of sweet-scented blossoms overhead, I walked into the center of the grove. Stopping, I looked around and realized that all the plum trees were growing in a circle. “No.” I decided, “One end of the circle was open. The grove was shaped more like a horseshoe.”

For the next hour, I played under the blossoming wild plums, with Mom carefully checking on me from the kitchen window. Wildflowers like trout lilies, grass flowers and Dutchman’s breeches, were starting to poke up through leaf and fern litter under the plum trees. Then I discovered that someone had laid rocks to define the open horseshoe space between the trees. I mused, “Mom must have done that.” I had certainly seen her working in flowerbeds many times nearer to the house. She liked using stones or bricks for a border.

As I grew up, and Mom stopped being so nervous about me wandering around our farmyard alone, I made many other discoveries of wonderful, exciting places for me to play in. I found my family’s old house-turned into a granary, trees to climb in the orchard, a roof-top hideaway above the silo room, a breezeway connecting the barn to the milk house and many other places.  

The plum grove felt like a magical place. In the years following that first discovery, I visited the place often to play under the falling white petals in the spring or in the fall when the fruit would fall to the ground with a plop. By the time I was in high school, the grove had disappeared. Now a shed stands where the plum grove once stood.

My sentimental attachment to these long gone places on my childhood farm may seem silly, but my discovery of each one as I grew up, and how much I enjoyed visiting these destinations during playtime, formed the fabric of who I am as an adult.