May Day on Bucket Run

wild bergamot

It's funny how someone's comments can bring back the memory of a place visited many years ago, so vividly recalling it that I can even smell and taste how it was.

A friend asked on Facebook if anyone had cherished heirloom plants in their gardens. Her question immediately sent me back to 1977 and a late May afternoon when my walk in the woods wound up on Bucket Run.

Bucket Run is the hollow that runs along the bottom edge of our property. To get there I just walked along the little run (stream) that begins near the top of my driveway, all the way to its confluence with the larger (but still small) creek known as Bucket Run.

The day was warm and sunny. The dirt road dipped lazily in and out of the creekbed as many old roads used to do. Along the side of the road were level areas we call bottomland, and it was here that the houses stood. I will never forget walking along the road with the broken-out windows of the houses watching me--not in an unfriendly or unwelcoming way, but more, I think, like surprise that I was there.



The roadbank was lined with daylilies, sweetpeas, wild bergamot, black raspberry vines, and wild asparagus crowding the space between a sagging woven-wire fence and the ditch, which was home to a strong growth of wild peppermint. Behind the fence must have once been the kitchen garden for the house closest to me. The air was filled with the buzzing of bees and the heady perfume of flowers both cultivated and wild. I walked into the overgrown grass, gingerly stepping over rusty roofing tin and other debris. A well stood near the back door, and an apple tree leaned over the well's housing.

Irises were in bloom around the porch, the kind people here call blue flags. Long dark green daffodil leaves told of earlier blossoms, and fluffy white peonies bowed their heavy heads. Flowering quince bushes still had a few blossoms, as did the bridal wreath spirea, but the forsythia that sprawled along the walk had finished blooming a while ago. Another bush whose dark purple flowers had a strong spicy aroma was in full bloom--later I would learn that this was the oldtime Spicebush.

I sat on a broken chair on the porch and thought about how it must have been here, the house full of children, a mother in the kitchen cooking on the woodstove that now stood rusted and derelict. Maybe the father was in the hayfield higher up on the hill; there would have been chickens and pigs and a milk cow in the falling-down barn.

I left this place regretfully and walked up the road toward the ridge. Across the creek stood another house, further back and more foreboding. This I later learned was the Brown house, named for the family that once lived there. I continued walking until I saw another house, this one built of log, also across the creek. I wandered over and looked inside.

The Brown house was still standing in 2008, the last time I visited Bucket Run

Steep stairs led up to a low loft; against one wall was a rough primitive cabinet, and on the walls were newspapers dated 1956. A stone fireplace had crumbled into a pile of rocks and dust. Outside I could see the remains of a pigpen and a chicken coop, and a dilapidated barn stood right against the bank by the road. The only plant I saw that was not a native species was a curious shrub that seemed to spread by runners; it had small purple and yellow flowers that hung down from its thin branches.

Later I was to learn more of the history of Bucket Run and the people who once lived and farmed there. But only a few weeks later I retraced my steps, returning this time with a sack and a shovel. I dug up starts of peonies, iris, daffodils, spirea, forsythia, flowering quince and that odd little bush I later found out was called Pride of China by locals (I have yet to find its scientific name). I tried in vain to dig a start of the spicebush. I guiltily worried that it was stealing to take the plants without permission, but softened the thought by telling myself I had only taken a piece, not whole plants. Some years later I met the owner of the abandoned house where I dug most of my starts, and confessed what I had done. She laughed and said, "Help yourself!"

I was 26 when I dug those plants. Today they, or their progeny, still grow in my gardens. I sometimes forget where they came from. And then someone says something that takes me right back to that May day on Bucket Run.

Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.