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September 13, 2008

ANDY LASKY | Donna’s garden

Anonymous The Tribune-Democrat Sat Sep 13, 2008, 10:43 PM EDT

Donna has a wildflower garden that is right around the corner from my house.

While I don’t know Donna well, she is one of favorite neighbors. Almost every morning I start my day with a 35-minute walk.

I walk past Donna’s garden, situated strategically in the corner of her backyard and right against the street.

It’s separated from the street by a modest wooden fence.

Unfortunately for Donna, it is too modest to stop me from walking around it to put my nose directly into the blossoms releasing their fragrance to the world.

The two reasons I am fond of Donna are that she cultivates this beautiful corner of her yard every year and she never calls the cops to report the strange man bent over in it every day.

What Donna probably doesn’t know is that I’m a bit of a hunter and gatherer on my morning walk. In the last couple of weeks, I’ve been picking up various acorns. If you’ve not looked carefully at an acorn lately, I’d like to recommend you do so.

An acorn is a piece of design perfection and beauty. This perfect nut is topped with a little lid connected by a breakaway twig that knows exactly when to detach from the tree branch and leaf cluster that bore it, falling to the ground to feed squirrels in enough abundance to last the winter.

Their texture feels really good when rolled about one’s fingers. With its little protective point at the bottom and its beretlike cap, you can see a small Frenchman’s face and imagine his accent.

But like Donna’s garden, you can enjoy this pleasure but a few weeks of the year.

There is a wild cherry tree that grows in these parts. We had one in our front yard as kids. We always called it a Chinese cherry for some reason. Perhaps that is its real name, I don’t know.

I do know we were warned from a young age by our mother to never eat the cherries because they were supposedly poisonous. This might be classic urban-mom myth.

The other morning, on my walk, I noticed “Chinese cherries” had begun falling to the ground so I naturally had to pick some up to feel their texture and break one open to smell it.

Having done so, a rush of childhood memory returned to me. Mom always told us we couldn’t throw them. And throw them we did. We used to hide alongside our house and pelt unsuspecting cars driving by 922 Sunnehanna Drive.

Harry and Paul Ambs, Jeff Platt, myself and a revolving door of neighborhood ne’er-do-wells would live for the sound of screeching brakes.

Better yet – that rare and silly adult who would get out of a car and attempt to chase us.

But like Donna’s garden and the marvel of the acorn, you can enjoy this adrenaline rush for only a few weeks a year.

On my way to Pittsburgh the other day while passing through Waterford, I got smacked in the eyes by a hedge-tall row of sunflowers – big, bold and all standing at attention, staring straight at me as I drove by.

Sunflowers would be a great nominee for most magnificent flower on the planet honors.

They are so childlike and yet bigger than life. They always make me smile and they always make me happy. What a gift they are – but, alas, one of those gifts you receive but once a year and even then only briefly.

I know there is a certain melancholy that comes with the end of summer and the arrival of fall. But I wouldn’t have it any other way.

The change of seasons and the gifts – all of them fleeting

– that each one brings is one of the great experiences that makes living in the mountains of western Pennsylvania a lifestyle to be envied.

I believe it shapes our character. We come to know and appreciate the cycles of life.

Obscured by all of the abundance in Donna’s garden this time of the year is a one-word sign that is there year round.

It reads simply “Dream.”

Andy Lasky and his wife, Katie, own and operate City View Bar & Grill and Westwood Plaza Theatre, both in Westmont.

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