So many pleasures in our rural life - From the Cluttered Desk with Keith Roulston

We had relatives drop in for lunch recently before they attended a Blyth Festival matinee. As we chatted before the meal, the woman looked out the window and asked about the strange flower growing in our garden. I explained they were “Naked Ladies”.
That’s a name that requires some explanation. Naked Ladies are fall crocuses. They grow leaves in the spring like regular crocuses but don’t bloom until fall. By then the leaves have died off and blooms are “naked”, with no leaves.

 

We bought these fall crocus bulbs from John Gaunt years ago. I’d met John through my coverage of the Huron County Federation of Agriculture; he was one of many significant farmers I met by attending their meetings (more names I could have added to last week’s column on significant people in my life). John had found out about “Naked Ladies” somewhere and began growing them on his farm. We bought a few bulbs from him and they have multiplied since.

 

John is dead now, but we understood that the flowers still bloomed on what had been his farm. We made a trip, recently, to go up and see them.

 

To get there, you go west from Belgrave a few miles on the county highway to reach the farm. When we arrived, we saw that the flowers were blooming in the field east of the farmhouse. We also realized that the current farm-owner had pots full of the blooming flowers for sale. I imagine a trip there soon can still offer a view of the flowers.

 

“Naked Ladies” are among the many treats that living in Huron County offers. Although we should sell our rural property, which we’ve lived in for 50 years, and move to town, we just enjoy life here too much to sacrifice it.

 

This time of the year we also enjoy scarlet phlox, which were given to us years ago by our neighbour Marie Toll, then retired as principal of the Walton Public School and working part-time as proofreader at The Citizen. She also gave the plant to neighbours and now, long after she’s gone, they brighten the neighbourhood come late-August and September.

 

Although I’ve lived all but a few years in the country, I’ve seen two insects this past summer that I never remember seeing before. One was a large bug which we saw at the flowers and that we first thought was a baby hummingbird.

 

Then there are the animals. A couple of times Jill has seen a fox run through the yard this summer. I remember when we weren’t allowed to walk to our neighbours’ houses on Halloween because rabies had broken out and foxes might attack us because they weren’t of their usual temperament. For many years, foxes almost disappeared as a result of the disease before the Ministry of Natural Resources dropped meat patties laced with an inoculant from aircraft.

 

Sightings - like  the fleeting fox - depend on looking out the window at the right time. Being retired, we have more time to look out the windows, these days. We’ve also seen a doe and her two fawns passing through the yard. I’m hoping they find a secure hiding place before hunting season later this fall.

 

I remember, as editor of The Rural Voice, covering the reintroduction of the first wild turkeys between 30 and 40 years ago. The birds have prospered and we often see hens with chicks walking through the yard or, especially, on the nearby sideroad where they are often crossing the road. 

 

And so we are entertained by the usual (foxes and deer) and the unusual (plants we’ve only encountered thanks to others). Such are the pleasures of a long life in the Huron County countryside.

 

Not so pleasant are the night-time howls of coyotes we used to hear in years past but haven’t heard recently. These small wolves were never part of rural life when I was growing up and have only moved in more recently.

 

I sometimes feel sorry for those who live in cities, or even those who live in towns, who miss all these rare experiences of living in the country. When I see our Premier ordering new four-lane highways to feed new suburbs that will make rural life less a part of southern Ontario, I think of the reduced terrain for foxes and wild turkeys and deer, and experiences that all those urbanites who move to the former countryside will miss.

 

These days I’m rereading a novel I wrote years ago about people in Huron County around the time of the 1837 Rebellion when the first farm families were clearing a few acres a year of the forest that covered this land. I imagine they’d have seen far more wildlife than we do today.

 

Such are the alternatives. We’ve gained so much with our modern life, but we’ve also lost something that nature brought. Still, we have such rich lives.