Terrace Talk

Notes for April

April Shower and May Flower

Actually, we already have had quite a few flowers, considering the lovely camellias that graced us with abundant pink blooms last month. Daffodils and forsythia bushes lit up the grounds with yellow.

For those of you who miss gardening, St. Anne’s has two unique features that you might enjoy. The garden boxes are lovely additions to our outdoor area and make strolling along the back sidewalk much more interesting. Merrill Ellis, Head of the Gardening Committee, reports that we have five boxes available. Please sign up on the second-floor bulletin board or see Merrill.

Another opportunity for a small gardening project will be on April 1st, called Renata’s Pot Planting Day. The terrace pots need replanting. Merrill will have the plants available, so sign up and report to the terrace to help. Lunch is included! their efforts.

-Karen Waitz

I Remember Group

Music On The Roof At Our Pennsylvania Farmhouse 1944

My eyelids got heavier and then flickered. Before I knew it, I was sound asleep. The hours passed as the thunderstorm rumbled on and on into the night as if to say it commanded the clock on the wall. The rain pounded out a beautiful tune on the roof above. Here is where my brother and I slept during our preteen years. I remember it well, and it is one of my fondest memories of growing up. The music is ringing in my ears – wait, I can hear it now!!

In less than two seconds, my mind turned to eighty years ago when I was growing up on that Pennsylvania farm. The old farmhouse was very spacious, with enough rooms for my grandparents to have their own private area on the west side of the house. There was a very small screened porch, a tiny kitchen, living room, and dining room. Grandma Deimler entertained on most Sundays after church, with her daughters doing the cooking and cleanup.

The main house had an attic, very sizable with lots of treasures to explore. On rainy days, my brother, sister, and I often wandered up to the attic, where we could hear the soft sound of rain on the roof. How fun it was a tune I still remember.

Our kitchen was rather large and had been built to add to the house. In it, you could find what I recall to be a sizable wood stove. My mother cooked three hot meals a day, beginning with breakfast at 6:45 a.m. every day. At the side, close to the stove, was a large box that I had to keep filled with wood cut to just the right size to fit into the stove. In the winter, the kitchen was the only truly warm room in the entire farmhouse.

Above the kitchen was the bedroom where my older brother Bill and I spent our nights and specifically where the sounds of music I have described could be heard. A grating in the floor with the heat rising through it warmed that bedroom. In Pennsylvania, winters brought lots of snow, with much of it coming during the night. If you listened very closely, you could even hear the soft musical sound of the snowflakes hitting the tin roof. In that very spot, the most harmonious sounds originated. The rest of the house had shingles on the roof, but this and only this part of the roof was made of tin and brought more magic to my youth than anything else.

A large percentage of the rain storms came in the evening and during the night. The sound of thunder in the distance would awaken me, and waiting for the rain to arrive was an exciting moment in time. First, I could hear the almost silent drops to hit, and then the tempo increased like the sounds of a symphony orchestra.

The pounding rain instrumental had a rhythm like no other. In many ways it was so soothing it calmed my soul. Soon I was back to sleep again. Morning came quickly and before long the sun peeped over the hill and a new day dawned.

More music on the roof was yet to arrive on another night!!

-Tom Deimler