Sunday, October 19, 2008

White Picket Gardens


My white picket gardens have become a symbol of my gardening, my writing, my who-am-I status in my small town and beyond.

However, my lovely old picket fence has been in great need of painting. Let me also make it clear that there are lots of picket fences in my garden...they are around my raspberry patch, my vegetable garden, they combine with trellises for morning glories and honeysuckle. Brides have blushed under these trellises...folks have told stories and spent evenings sitting out by the fire enclosed inside the picket fence. Jonah and Matthew play inside the garden as well as all the children in the neighborhood...so, it came down to the last moment when they just had to be painted.

I tried to get other folks to paint for me...you know Tom Sawyer/Huckleberry Finn stuff, but no luck. So, I decided this Autumn to just do it myself. Today I finished the outside perimeter as my neighbors cheered me on down to the last fence post. The sun was going down and I was freezing cold but I prevailed...a cheer went up in the neighborhood as I put down my brush!

Now all I have to do is the inside of the fence which probably won't happen until spring because of all the plants and such.

I actually found it very pleasurable to paint my fence, my mind could just roam about and dream as I painted picket after picket after picket.......

Lou Ann Homan is a storyteller, teacher, writer, and dreamer of dreams. She can be found writing late into the night under the light of her red fringed lamp in Angola, Indiana.

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