View From a Prairie Home

by Hege Hernfindahl, Columnist

It is not a secret. I love winter. And fall. And early spring. When life begins again, when even I am tired of winter. When the tulips first appear. Little leaves venturing forth in the cold air; Sometimes with dirty snow still lying around.

If I think of a perfect day, I will think of that day of spring or a fall day when the air is clear and cool and the leaves are turning to yellow or red, even though here on the prairie, the maples rarely turn red. I also think of the first day of snow. When the snowflakes almost remind me of butterflies gently fluttering. When the fall chores are done and we light the fire and enjoy the sight of the falling snow from the comforting view of our porch with its heated floors.

I don’t want to say I don’t like summer. Of course I do, everyone loves warm weather and the ability to sit in the shade of a tree and read or just be. I love the flowers of summer, especially my roses which will sometimes, with proper care, bloom all summer and into fall; even after the first light frost. I do care for my roses. It requires a lot of work; the pruning and fertilizing and spraying for various diseases. The weeding and putting down mulch. The watering; especially now when it has barely rained since the snow stopped falling.

But I don’t like the bugs and heat of summer. We have had, here on the prairie, unusually huge swarms of deer flies. They attack the minute I step outside and whirl around my head. I have a hat lying next to the front door and if I don’t put it on, I will have four or five huge deer flies in my hair. They also go for my hands and bite through my gloves. They don’t respond to mosquito spray, even those that claim to prevent deer flies. I love nature but don’t see God’s purpose in those flies and mosquitoes. And loving nature, I want to be outside in the summer, but now it is so hot, I can barely breathe. Grant got heat rash from shingling the new gazebo. Both his arms are covered in huge open sores that has to be treated with prednisone. I get so overheated working in my many gardens that my head hurts and I have to go inside. Luckily, we have a very good air conditioning system that manages to cool all the many rooms in our ancient house. But even being inside is not enough to cool me down; I have to take a cold shower to get my inner temperature to the point where I can breathe again.

When I heard a story about a stay in Alaska with temperatures in the 50s, I was jealous. That was the summers of my childhood. A summer day with high in the 70s was rare. Which is what I was used to. I have lived here much longer than I lived in the Norway, so you would think I was used to the heat and the bugs. But it seems this summer so far has been the worst for me. Maybe it is also that summer now, for our family, is difficult, because of the losses of our two sons; June 6 and August 6. You must be tired of reading about that, but that is my reality now and I don’t believe in denying who I am. I have always wanted to write honestly, from the heart. Which leads me to think of the seasons of one’s life. If we don’t die young, we grow older. And I have always heard that growing older is painful. With my perfect soulmate by my side, I didn’t think this would apply to me. But it did. We will all experience pain. There is “a time to weep, and a time to laugh.” “a time to be born, and a time to die.”