i’ve seen houses built, others stripped bare and then with their siding and windows replaced. a few times, on routes i take less frequently, entire buildings have disappeared in the short span between my visits, vacant lots left behind.
i watched a field fertilized with rank manure, saw the manure tilled in, then leeks planted. watched them grow to full size and get harvested in bunches, slowly, well into winter. there were still some blue-greened leaves standing there amid the snow, leaves that flop onto themselves like a dog’s ear, their stalks still waiting to be pulled. crab apples, from blossom to small fruit to windfall to round and sailing down the ditch on rainfall runoff during heavy rains.
last year saw a massive snowfall in st. john’s. it was also a very successful year for the rabbit population. stranded atop the snow and hungry, they stripped bark from the apple trees, the pin cherries, even mountain ash. spring came, and i would come upon scores of them foraging in the ditch. summer, and their roadkill pelts lay untouched by anything but crows for weeks until all that remained was random quilting-squares of fur.
always that feeling of stories half-told, stories that i will never fully get to the bottom of — a four-lane arterial with a splash of colour. at first, in summer, it was a colouring kit, crayons and coloured pencils, maybe pastels as well, strewn and then flattened by passing cars. the crayons lasted longest, or, at least, the waxy colours did. the paper was torn off, shred by shred, and a string of hot days and car tires annealed the waxy middles right into the asphalt. but where did they come from? whose were they? are they missed? were they a toddler’s open-window experiment, followed by a carful of tears and a driver who wouldn’t — or couldn’t — stop?