I was driving to an appointment yesterday morning - driving west on the street next to ours, straight toward the Rocky Mountains. A little jump over the houses down below, and I could be right there! Usually by this time of year, all the snow is gone from the front range, melting quickly in the hot weather, running down the ditches, and spreading out on the plains below. But not this year! It is the middle of July, and there is still snow on the mountains.
When I was a little girl growing up in Africa, I could not remember seeing snow. I remember one time we somehow got an apple. I wasn't used to apples, and I didn't much like them. But I remember my dad wished he could figure out how to grow an apple tree, and thinking to help him along on that, we carefully dug out the seeds from the core of the apple and planted them in a little can. After a while, a little green shoot came up, and we carefully watched and tended it until one morning, to our great dismay, we discovered that one of the cats had snacked on it overnight! This was a huge disappointment to us, but Daddy did not seem too upset. He said it would not have made apples anyway, because apples need frost.
I puzzled about "frost." Even though I had seen lots of pictures of snow and people wearing coats, I could not imagine it. The coldest thing I knew was the little tray of ice cubes in the little freezer compartment of our kerosene refrigerator. This is the same refrigerator that
struggled and
groaned and
smoked its little kerosene wick trying to freeze one little tray of sweetened powdered milk into ice cream! I thought surely one little exposure to those ice cubes, and an apple tree should definitely be as cold as any apple tree needed to be! So I made the helpful suggestion to my dad that if we grew an apple tree and wanted apples, then we could take the tray of ice out and spread it around the bottom of the tree so that the tree could make some apples. I still remember the grin he gave me, just like it was yesterday!
If you had asked me what "snow on the mountain" was, I would have told you it was the hedge outside the bathroom door! Most of the little round leaves were a mottled green and white, but all the tiny young leaves on the top were delicate pink. Remembering it now, it was one of the most beautiful hedges I have ever seen.
No apple trees for me. But if I had the seeds and a can full of dirt, you know what I would be trying to grow! A "snow on the mountain" hedge of my own!
(I look at this picture of me, and I can't recognize myself in that face. I don't remember that red dress except for seeing this picture of it. But I know it is me because of the hair! Check out those waves carefully coaxed into shape with a comb dipped in water! But the
real giveaway is the end of my braid. My mother never let loose ends hang down. She always wrapped the end of the braid around and clipped a barrette on it to hold it! And that is how I know this is me!)
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Hibiscus
