Grandmother's House, Part 3

Diagram of lot, drawn from memory

I’ve written a little about the yard around my grandmother’s house. The lot was quite deep and about 100 feet wide. There was perhaps one-third to half an acre. Behind the house to the west was the vegetable garden. I can recall driving the spring wagon into town from the farm behind Barney and Birdie bringing the walking plow in. Uncle Carl came in and plowed up the garden area where the vegetables were grown. Because of the size of the garden I’m sure that a substantial part was in potatoes and sweet corn.
My grandmother liked spinach so I’m sure there was that grown.

Along the east side of the lot was a gravel driveway leading to the southeast corner of the lot where there was a small barn. On the east side of the barn at the front was where my uncle garaged his car. Beside the garage on the west was an indeterminate area — perhaps it housed horses or a carriage at some time. To the rear of the barn was the chicken house and yard. I vaguely remember loading up the accumulated manure for transport for the farm. Why it wasn’t just put on the garden I’ve no idea. Perhaps one reason for remembering this was that while I was engaged in my task the preacher’s wife came looking for one or more of her small children. I hadn’t seen them.

Along the east side of the lot, beginning at about the back edge of the garden were various fruit trees. And along the west side of the house were the Concord grape vines. Among them were pie cherry trees — that was the only kind of cherry I knew as a child.

My grandmother liked flowers and there was a bed of tulips at the east end of the large front porch. She also had flowers (potted) in the bay window of the dining room. There was a large tree, species unknown to me in the northwest corner of the lot, and a birch tree along the walk leading from the street to the front porch. The latter expired for some reason in the late ’30s or early ’40s and was never replaced at least to my recollection.

On the back porch of my grandmother’s house was a pump and well. I’d guess that when the house was new that this was the source of water for cooking and drinking in the house. When I first became aware of it it was no longer operable. I remember trying to pump some water and was unsuccessful.