​Sometime last winter, half a polycarbonate panel disappeared from the greenhouse. Note, the greenhouse is under my care, and has been since my husband and an employee of the Michigan State University Extension built the structure in April 2007.
     Considering the guys nearly suffered frostbite while constructing my dream come true, I appreciate this creative space where I once grew blooming things. Hundreds of lavender babies filled racks for eight springs and summers until I retired my lavender farm at the conclusion of the 2014 season.
     Since then, large rolls of weed cloth, terra-cotta pots, a potting table, beekeeping equipment, and garden stakes with miscellaneous spades have happily cohabited their dry, cozy home. Like vacationing in Florida, I overwinter several pieces of lawn furniture in the greenhouse.
     Several years ago, a top panel and most window panels began to mold within the plastic tubing. A local greenhouse owner explained, “That happens when the caulking at the ends of the panels corrodes. There’s nothing you can do but replace the panels.”
     Well, I decided to ignore the unsightly panels. It’s a greenhouse, after all. I’d rather spend money on plants than plastic.
     Then the wind blew out half of one cracked panel (never to be found) this past winter. One warm day, I fetched a ladder and removed the remaining moldy pieces. Indeed, the caulking along the top and bottom of the panel had corroded, and moisture molded the interior.
     Preoccupied throughout the spring and summer, I ignored the jungle emerging inside the greenhouse. If I hadn’t retrieved my beekeeping gear to open my hive, and tripped on a vine, I may have avoided the mess.
     At last, one fine day in June, I ordered a replacement panel from Hortmark in Capac. Last week, husband drove his Prius to the fetch it home only to find the 4 foot by 10 foot panel wouldn’t fit in his car.
     Chagrined at my oversight, and my husband’s needless errand, I considered Plan B. Call Roland, a congenial handyman and neighbor. I explained to him my polycarbonate panel situation.
     “I’ll call my neighbor Paul and see if he’s available. His truck bed is 10 feet long.”
     Within five minutes, Paul and I confirmed his drive to Hortmark and delivery to my house. Two hours later, he removed the panel from the truck bed and carried it downhill to the greenhouse around noon. Regardless of pesky mosquitoes, Roland completed the panel’s installation well before dinnertime.
      Oh, before he left, Roland also repaired a finicky folding bedroom closet door.
     Dear Reader, regardless of itchy mosquito bites, I slept well that night. Thanks to Paul and Roland, my belongings inside the greenhouse are secure from rain, and my closet door closes at last.
      I’ve since removed the tangled mess of weeds within my greenhouse. But they’ll be back next spring. For greenhouses live up to their name by growing things. Evidence of the power of nature, much like the force of neighborly neighbors who do what comes naturally.





​
     

​My mother’s intense concentration indicated not to disturb her while she held her icing knife. She smothered the middle and sides of her two-layer cake in either sweet buttercream, chocolate, caramel, or seafoam frosting. Then the top. Delicious perfection!
With each cake Mom baked, iced, and sliced, her patience, discipline, and joy in creating something beautiful and yummy seeped into my taste buds and memory. Sadie Lee O’Brien, my mom, became the first cottage caterer in one of the fastest growing cities in the country. She began with special-order wedding cakes for our neighbors in Warren, and eventually catered dinner parties for our family doctor.
Although I remember Granny took her home-made birthday cakes to her little church to celebrate the children’s birthdays, somehow I don’t recall Granny icing and decorating a cake when I visited her as a child.
I was a young mother the summer day I observed Granny ice a cake. Surrounded by my three daughters and a handful of nieces and nephews younger than my children, all elbows leaned on the table toward the object of temptation.
Well aware of their intent, and with Mom’s engrossed expression on her on face, Granny used a butter knife instead of an icing knife to spread the frosting.
That particular day, we gathered around the same kitchen table where I’d sat every childhood summer vacation. Then, Granny filled my plate with her fried chicken, fresh green beans boiled in bacon and onion, and buttery little new potatoes. And bottomless glasses of iced sweet tea.
Granny turned her back to the cake for a wink. A great-granddaughter swiped her frosting. Then another.
A matriarch with eyes hidden under the bun in the back of her head, Granny turned to the table, hands akimbo and dishtowel on her shoulder. “Now, don’t y’all skin my cake!” she said, belly jiggling under her apron.
Everyone laughed as Granny’s playful grace settled into our family history. To my knowledge, no one breached her trust to leave her cake alone until she sliced and served it to us that night.
There’s no family story of my children swiping my mother’s frosting from her cakes. That doesn’t mean it didn’t happen, particularly when my middle daughter, age nine, spent a summer month with “Nana” in Kentucky.
For Kelly roamed the McCoy Bottom with her boy cousins, sometimes with dirty fingers in wait to swipe the icing off the cake Nana baked for dinner’s dessert.
You see, as Granny, my mother practiced the same playful grace with her grandchildren when it came to skinning cakes.
Dear Reader, as my daughters now refrain from eating sugar, and so does my only grandchild, I’ve iced one cake in the past year: cream cheese frosting on a carrot cake.
How very thankful I am for friends who appreciate the intense concentration of holding an icing knife while spreading frosting over a cake. For that blessed example of playful grace in Granny’s kitchen.