my favorite litte haunt

going though my old documents I stumbled over this.

My Favourite Little Haunt

by Lovisa Ingman 2009 September 12th

I found it hard to pick a particular place to write about. For me things like that come and go. Besides, in my opinion, what matters is whom you are with, not the place you are actually at.
A place can turn into beautiful; to your favourite, just for the reason of the company you share an experience with, at that very spot. It has to do with the memories you connect it with. On the other hand, I ought to agree with the ones who say they just love a place to be alone at, where they can have time of their own, and some peace and quiet. Why not combine those two? Who said one thing excluded the other?
Therefore I chose to write about the garden outside my fathers’ house, the garden that puts me in a good, relaxed mood, where I can breath freshly.

In summer, the grass is green, the flowers red, yellow and purple. The wild strawberries make the lawn dotted of red, and the raspberries and the currants grow juicy in their bushes. Swallows are flying high up in the blue sky. You can only see a few clouds. Far away in the distance, they look like thin cotton wads someone tried to throw away, but did not succeed completely.
In my sleep I can hear dad cluttering in the kitchen from below, but it does not awake me. What wakes me up is my little sister. She comes in with a smile all over her tiny round face and crawls up into my bed. She wants to play different games and we count her toes.
Barefoot I walk out in the garden, the grass is soft and smooth beneath my feet. One by one I pick the raspberries and put them in a colourful pot I brought with me. In the kitchen, I make them into a perfect milkshake, which I have in the morning sun at the veranda where the sun glares down through the foliage. I sit there, sipping my milkshake, a warm breeze sweeps by and makes me wonder why it is not summer all year around.
However, the autumn makes me understand that. It comes with a change in the wind that brings the scent of damp earth, leaves and fruit that have fallen to the ground. Someone is burning fallen leaves, and the pillar of smoke rises whirling to the sky.
The colours shift from all green into sparkling countless of yellows, warm oranges, reds and browns. I pick the apples by climbing up the tree. In the evening I make an apple pie whoes aroma of cinnamon fills the entire house.
When winter comes, and all the snowmen there is to do are done, and a lantern of snowballs is made and lit outside the front door, I recall the summer memories from the garden. I recall the smell of barbeque in the lukewarm evenings, the chatter and laughter of the guests, the calm mood and happiness of simply laying on a blanket in the garden with someone you particularly like, just talking. Moreover, if you have strength enough you can stretch out your arm to pick a redcurrant or a raspberry.
Maybe I like to have a garden so much because it reminds me of all my earlier summers at our summer place in the countryside in the archipelago, where I spent my summers when I was little. The summers when my cousins and me ran around in our great woods playing cowboys and Indians, building huts in the trees and castles in the sand on our beach. Or maybe it is because it reminds me of the crystal of mind I get when I wander in the woods, barefoot without getting any scratches on my sole.