Scenes from Tulipwood

At Tulipwood, everyone since my great-grandfather has left their mark. This is the summer of birds — wild Guinea hens with their keets, domesticated keets a day old that we picked up from a lady in Pennsylvania, so small and fuzzy, they fit into the palm of your hand… rapidly growing chicks, turkeys that loiter outside the kitchen door, a rooster named Buster and a white hen named Lucy who took some time adjusting to each other since before Lucy, Buster hated white chickens… and there are the small pleasures and first times, like the first blueberry of the season, seeing my grandmother push forth with the important task of summer gardening despite wobbly legs, weeding the new garden with its very tall deer fence, seeing the chickens play outside in the grass for the first time…and the anticipation of robbing the honeybees for the first time this year. These are some of my favorite scenes from Tulipwood.