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Celebrating the Fourth of July on Saturday will likely include a hamburger from the Weber grill, Mom’s tart potato salad (perfected by Gwen), and seeing how many of last year’s bottle rocket purchase will still rocket, report, and sparkle. During celebration lulls, perhaps a book will be embraced. An hour or two may be lazed away on the patio swing counting the patriotic colors of Angelkeep. They’re plentiful.
Red. White. Blue.
Cardinal males proudly display their red. They rest behind summer leaves, on dead, leafless, branches or on pine boughs boisterously singing so they will not become unnoticed. They zip across Angelpond, reflecting a blue sky-white cloud quilt-like pattern on its waving ripples. Red bird sorties from tree to feeder and back are as quickly done as the bottle rocket flights. Cardinals prove more accurate and reliable.
Apples on the orchard’s trees are not yet red. Red buds turned to white blushed bloom about Mother’s Day. Their next red will arrive to coincide with that of the oak and maple tree change, at that point not timed with any political holiday.
White abounds all year at Angelkeep, beginning with January’s snow cover and carrot nosed sculptures. Snowballs streak across the Angelkeep air when grandkids nudge Papa outside.
Independence Day snowballs grow on several bushes. Snowball bushes. They grow preformed, just as white, much softer, and are reusable. Successful shots bouncing off summer snowball combatants can be picked up and sent flying for another harmless head collision. Snowball fights on July Fourth are four times as much fun.
After the battle, Gwen will call all to a Boston—oops, Angelkeep—tea party served on the patio. Perhaps with patriotic colored M&Ms or Peeps.
And Saturday’s July holiday might be topped with an Angelkeep favorite white spotting. Fawns with rows of bright white spots on their flanks are already making occasional visits. Will we get lucky and see them across the Angelpond water? Will they race, leap, & kick with their tiny spindly legs?
Fawns remind me of Mabel Leigh Hunt’s book titled “Better Known as Johnny Appleseed.” Appleseed John freed a motherless fawn which had gotten snagged in woods growth. He’d nursed it back to health and eventually gave it to Megan, sister to Andrew, of Paint Creek. It became her pet till old enough to be a wild doe.
John Chapman was partial to red apples. Johnny’s buried in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Mabel was a Hoosier author. The book was illustrated by James Daugherty (no close relation). Seems like it would be a good read for the Fourth of July.
Chapman/Appleseed carried a Bible and tracts along with his seeds. He was known to have preached in remote areas that seldom heard a circuit preacher. He was surely in demand, for sharing of Bible passages, on the Independence Day celebrations in the Midwest wilderness.
The blue of our country’s flag can best be represented at Angelkeep by birds. Across Angelpond is a blue bird box that once again became homesteaded by a pair of Wells County blue birds. It was not opened for a peek, but we assume from our patio vantage point that offspring survived.
A mother robin reused a nest built on top of a garage downspout elbow first constructed two years ago. At that time four “blue” eggs (the reason robins got into this Independence segment) hatched. Three of the fledgling youth survived the neighborhood prowling tomcat who sat often, gazing at the noisy active nest, salivating at the thought of a baby robin falling out. And then there were but three.
No cats benefited from the hatching of “blue” robin eggs in that nest this year. Today they’ve flown and gone. The mama American robin likely has a new nest some where near Angelkeep and sitting on her second set of blue eggs for the season.
From the deck over the patio the Bluffton fireworks can be seen. They will cease after a red-white-blue finale and white stars will fill a black/blue sky. Only frog and cricket sounds will disturb the peace. Because of the sacrifice of those before us, we live in a country free. God bless America.
The Lipton tea Gwen serves, being a food product, is not sales taxed in Indiana, Hoosier duty free.
by ALAN DAUGHERTY
Mr. Daugherty is a Wells County resident who, along with his wife Gwen, enjoy their back yard and have named it “Angelkeep.”
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