Reminders of an August Long Ago
Poke berries are poisonous to people, but birds devour them.
August in North Florida brings with it certain special beauties–blue morning glories, jewel-like poke berries, puddle-loving smartweed (which I always called “bead flowers” as a kid), purple muscadine grapes, and butterflies galore. Whenever I see a ripe poke berry or a wild grape, it reminds me that it’s August, and it makes me think, inevitably, of another August, when I was 12. That year many bad things were going on in our house, but that summer ended up being my very favorite because my brother and sisters and I practically lived in the woods behind our backyard; we made our own, better life in the woods.
Nowadays the little wooded area I’m talking about is choked with ardisia and other invasive species, but back then, 33 years ago, it wasn’t yet. It was bigger–much bigger–and it was clean and park-like, the ground relatively open between the trees. The summer I was 12, Kris, Bunny, Jacob, and I set up housekeeping in the woods, in a “cave” under some wild muscadine vines. We carpeted the floor with hay and decorated the shady rooms with our collection of figurines–porcelain bunnies and kittens and such. We used sea shells for dishes, and Bunny (who was two) slept in a laundry basket. I remember hanging up necklaces to create a beaded curtain separating her room from the rest. She was always “Aunt Jane” in our games, even before she could talk.
We’d play all day long in our “scuppernong house,” as we called it. We had all day to play and observe our woodsy world. We’d swing on Tarzan vines and sit on the sandy banks of the “stream” (really more of a drainage ditch), pretending to fish with bamboo poles. I remember the big sweetbay magnolias around our stream (their trunks were smooth and silvery), and I remember the crayfish and water skaters. Wearing checkered aprons (mine was pink and hers was yellow), Kris and I would pick bead-flower bouquets and make elaborate meals out of mud and mushrooms for our dolls. Our granny was sick that summer, and we’d often picnic by the stream on ham sent by well-wishers.
Yesterday I spent most of the day weeding, crawling around on my hands and knees among the bushes, discovering poke berries and black-swallowtail caterpillars and other fruits and nuts and creatures that filled me with a sense of the season, of where we are now in the year. And they also made me strangely nostalgic for that other August, when I was 12 and completely free to play and watch water bugs all day, to retreat to my own, kinder world. I had the dirtiest feet, stained semi-permanently with poke juice, and sticks and tangles in my hair; it was truly a terrific way to be.
Today I dug around in a trunk and found my “day book” from 1978, and I was actually able to find the entry that describes the making of the famous scuppernong house:
Friday, August 4, 1978
At 10:00 we made mud cookies and mud bread. Then at 11:30 we went out and played in a big hay pile in the woods. We made hay beds out of hay-stuffed burlap bags. We rested on the big fallen tree in our burlap beds. We looked at the beautiful sky and rested. Then we found candles and a basket and a cutting board. We played in the hay and then we invented a house under a big bush thing. We put hay on the ground of it. We put our hay beds in there, and then we made a box table and chairs. We found some spoons and a glass and a pitcher. We cleaned up our house and played in it till dark. Then we found a lantern, and we lit it in the dark, and it sparkled.
I will try to explain this passage a little bit. When I say we “found” things, I mean we found them on trash piles around the neighborhood. And when I say we found a lantern, it was an old kerosene lantern, and we were playing with matches, lighting it in the woods, lighting up our little cave-house. I can remember doing that. I was terrible about playing with matches. And another terrible thing: The “hay pile” was the beginning of a construction project that would soon eat up most of our woods. Very soon, the scuppernong house and the Tarzan vines and the hills and the sweetbays and the sandy banks would all be gone forever.
Right now, the bronze fennel is overrun with black-swallowtail caterpillars.
