Remembering my Favorite Scope of Woods

As I sit here on this front porch and look across the dirt road at the woodland, my mind drifts back to years ago.  Health issues prevent me from walking in this scope now, but occasionally we do go there in the golf cart.

When I was little I made playhouses in these woods by raking up pine straw for the walls/petitions, etc.  Pine straw also symbolized the bed.  My dishes were broken pieces of dishes from the house and Daddy made my churn using a fruit jar —  made a hole in the top and a dash with handle (the working part of the churn).  The woods in those days had huge pine trees growing, but when my brother had to go to the service during WWII Daddy promised when he came home the trees were his to build a house.  It was sad to see the trees cut and hauled off to the mill; however, Daddy always kept his promises.

These woods were where Daddy cut our wood way back when, too.  Many times I’ve ridden on the wagon loaded with fire wood to use in the fireplace or wood cut in another length to be used in the old wood stove.  These stove wood pieces were brought here to the yard and split into useable sizes to go in the cook stove. First the short logs were cut in halves, then quarters and sometimes even more.  Daddy would bury the double-bitted axe blade in a three-foot log turned up on end and then the wood pieces were flung down against the open ax blade and broken into the size that would go in the stove — called splitting stove wood.  Now the stove wood pile was always under the clothesline and that caused much frustration from the lady of the house, who did the washing.  We had a wood box in the kitchen behind the stove where armloads of wood were deposited.

These same woods had/have a wagon road  which I’ve walked many times.  In my very early school days there were no school buses and I had to walk to school in Geraldine — two miles away.  This wagon road was a shortcut which saved quite a bit of walking.  It was here that we used to pick  blackberries, too.  About this of year the berries were ripe and I remember how hot it was and how many chiggers we brought home with us.  Not only that but I remember those luscious cobblers.  Always there would be enough berries to make juice and then blackberry jelly.

In  later years this is where we had that wonderful shade garden, but those memories are for another time.

My favorite scope of woods — the best of country living!