04/27/2025
Once upon a time, our original homesteader, my 2xGreat Grandma Nancy Girard, had replaced a single, long, tall, narrow window in the living room of this house with a fancy Italianate-style box bay window.
I think about how, near the end of a long day cooking and cleaning around farm, she might have positioned her chair near that gorgeous window so she could appreciate a dappled sunset filtered through the leaves on the locust trees in the side yard.
I imagine she would have planted flowers and mounted bird houses in the gardens along the edge of the lawn. I bet she spent many quiet moments admiring the view she'd created beyond the expanse of glass.
Granny Nancy was ninety-two years old when she passed away here at the house in 1933.
Many years later, when my family moved to the abandoned farm in December 1972, the box bay window was long gone, lost in a fire that destroyed a fair-sized chunk of that wall. However, come spring, we soon realized the side yard was still filled with Nancy's flowers--large orange poppies, daffodils, honeysuckle, grape hyacinth 🪻 and more! They had continued to come back year after year, her tangible, living legacy left for us to appreciate.
Dan just captured this picture of the morning sun warming some of Nancy's hyacinths in the side yard.
Now, I can imagine her smiling through the wavy glass of an old box bay window as she wonders at the generations of perennials to come and the seven generations of her own family still here to welcome their return each spring.🌅
--Robin
