The last time I visited Deer Tick Manor was this past November, just after the Thanksgiving holiday, for the annual rite of closing the place for the winter season. While Lee was alive, we would return at least once during the winter months to check on the place, a visit we typically dovetailed either with a short visit to see friends in Ohio or a madcap mid-Winter weekend getaway to dine out, gamble and spa.
I do not recall exactly the year, it could have been the first year after we had purchased the place, but on this occasion, we were fortunate to have stopped for a quick inspection just after one of the frozen water pipes had burst. As soon as we exited our car, we could see water streaming onto the driveway from underneath the back door of the kitchen but apprehensively entered anyway to discover a small flood underway in the kitchen and the adjacent bathroom. It turns out that we had arrived in the proverbial nick of time, pure serendipity, and so were able to minimize our property damage. Our arrival one day on either side of our actual arrival could have been catastrophic. So, despite the property damage, we felt that we had been lucky. Thereafter, the task of shutting off the water, blowing out the pipes, and leaving the thermostat turned up a bit became parts of the annual house closure.
I have timed this year’s grand re-opening for mid-April, which, based on experience, seems far enough along in the Spring to ensure that there should not be a blizzard. In making my plans I was not expecting to find balmy mid-May temperatures during mid-April, though one can always hope, I suppose. In fact, in advance of my Thursday departure for Deer Tick, yesterday had been a perfectly sunny day with a cloudless, robin blue sky, and an outside temperature approaching seventy degrees! Today is still mild, but the forecast calls for heavy rains and dangerous winds overnight and into Thursday. Naturally, the temperature on Thursday is predicted to have fallen through the floor by the time I arrive. So much for early Spring.
Given that my house sits on a cold slab and that the prevailing, often gusty, winds at this time of year blow out of north, I expect to be walking into an icebox. Nothing to be done for it, however, as I already have arranged for the water and hot water heater to be turned on, and for the plumbing and hot water systems to undergo a professional inspection mid-afternoon on Thursday. While this inspection is taking place, I will be removing and storing the Styrofoam insulation that I use to cover the windows before leaving for the cold season. It is now approaching 20 years since we bought Deer Tick, yet I have not replaced any of what I can only assume are the original windows. If I am right, then, given the age of the house, these windows are as long in the tooth as me. Sadly, these days neither the old windows nor I seem capable of holding off a penetrating cold. I must cross my fingers and hope that the furnace is not balky.
Indeed, with any luck, by nightfall on Thursday I will be in position to treat myself to a soothing whirlpool bath, should I decide to take a soak. However, on Friday morning, a 2-person cleaning crew is scheduled to help me rid the premises of several months of accumulated dirt, dust, spider webs and bug carcasses, so I am likely to postpone my tub until the crew has completed its work. Following a good interior cleaning, I will be ready to declare the house at Deer Tick Manor open for business.
This will not mean that my work there is finished. To the contrary, two and one-half acres of real estate, which includes Lee’s scattered, multiple gardens, must be prepared for the growing season, which already is showing small signs of being underway back at my city home. Of course, to my ears, referring to such tasks as “my work” sounds boastful. If there were ever the slightest truth to this statement, these days, certainly, it is a misnomer. You see, whereas Lee was a talented and enthusiastic gardener, who remained so even after the cancers started to take a visible toll on her health, I have no aptitude for it nor any interest whatsoever to learn.
The truth is that aside from riding a lawn mower or watering a bit I never performed much of the endless outdoor chores the place requires. These days I do not even pretend otherwise but prefer to hire out this substantial work at a substantial financial cost.
Despite my indolence in terms of the upkeep, I have sunk deep roots at Deer Tick Manor. I breathe deeply the freshness of the greenery, flowers and grasses that inevitably greets my arrival. I have learned to recognize the birds’ calls that echo through the woods in the quiet of an early morning. I know their feeding habits, too. I have had the privilege to observe the small and larger critters, who rightfully claim this space as their home. Over time I have stumbled upon a hidden community of large praying mantises, colorful orb spiders, fat bumblebees and fluttering butterflies — fantastic and other-worldly creatures—living underfoot among the plants, shrubs, and trees, in plain view, really, if one only takes time to look for them.
I can take in all of it from the comfort of a chair on my front porch, coffee or cocktail in hand (depending on the time of day), or, instead, simply watch randomly shaped clouds lazily pass Deer Tick Manor in ever changing patterns across an open sky. The choice is mine.
Sometimes in the middle of a dark night, I will stand upstairs by a picture window watching as the full moon slowly emerges from behind backlit clouds, illuminating a field of tall grasses in its spooky silver light. Every year, come late June and July, a million fireflies live and die in that same field in the span of just a few weeks. Then, in August, shy deer emerge from the woods to feast on my apple trees.
A large variety of trees gives the grounds the appearance of being a timeless place, but this is an illusion. All of them began as seeds, some of which sprouted and survived as seedlings. The fortunate ones grow into the thin saplings that pop up in the fields each new season. With the right conditions, these saplings eventually will form the next generation of tall, proud sentries that seem to protect Deer Tick. In mid-Summer, the foliage of trees in their prime creates a thick green curtain of leaves in which the birds can be heard but not seen. It is easy to spot their elderly brethren, which from year to year lose some more growth one their tops, like an old man with thinning hair. Rotting logs that once were trees complete this life cycle.
Although it all is become a part of me, I am most grateful for the innumerable happy memories of the shared life that Lee and I created at Deer Tick Manor. Yet, with each passing year, Deer Tick makes greater demands upon me, especially now that I am entirely on my own. The place tests me physically, mentally, even emotionally. It can feel exhausting to realize that these demands will only intensify over time, as the high standards that Lee and I set for it way back when become harder for me to maintain. I am beginning to sense an approaching day when I may have to part with Deer Tick and be satisfied merely to live with my memories of this special place.
The immutable land remains but I will be gone. It presents a quandary that I am trying to work through day by day.
