Tag Archives: South Jersey

South Jersey, windfall apples

This Thanksgiving season I’ve been thinking about childhood summers at my late grandmother’s place. Remembering her too, of course, but my thoughts of her, while loving, are complicated and separate from my recollections of her South Jersey home. There are never any relatives in evidence when I revisit those summers; my life is private and free from anxiety or oppression. Even now, in my real life, I instinctively surround myself with those Jersey sights and smells. I was content there, in the quiet presence of typical country things: 

Windfall apples and a mulberry tree
Tomato leaves and pine needles when you rub them and smell your fingers
Dill growing in the sun
Sheep and hogs (I can recognize them by smell alone even today)
Horses, tack, and manure
Birdbaths surrounded by zinnias
Box turtles, and cattails by the lake
Queen Anne’s lace, rose of Sharon, moss rose
Decrepit barns and roadside hamburger stands
Footpaths through the woods with orange shotgun shells on damp mulch
Chickens and turkey buzzards, cardinals and blue jays
Monarch and tiger swallowtail butterflies, Japanese beetles, fireflies
A cement front porch

Okay, turkey, too. And a wonderful stuffing. 

Have a wonderful holiday.

MM

 

(NOTE regarding Worthy of This Great City: before buying the book please read the Reader Alert on the Home Page, then the full Prologue on the Excerpts page. Or else don’t blame me.)

Photo credits: Dianne Rosete, Thanksgiving Day Turkey CC BY-ND 2.0 / DSC01285 andrew leahey CC BY-SA 2.0