VOLUME TWENTY FIVE, NUMBER SEVEN
JULY 2011
In or out of the pond’s muddy deeps, it's all in a day's work for Dr. Snyder When the aerator line in the Beaumont pond broke last month, nobody much wanted to squish into the mud or dive into 10 feet of pond water to find the piece of pipe that fell in. Nobody much, that is, until word of the mishap reached the ears of our resident naturalist and veterinarian, Dr. Dean Snyder, tender caretaker of all growing things and also broken furniture. Before you could say “Eeuw!” continued on page 2
INSIDE:
Photos by Louise Hughes, who arranged a partial re-enactment as an aid to the imagination of our readers, who will find the above photo explained, along with others, on page 2.
Dining in the garden, Page 3 Laotian staff share heritage, Page 5 New resident profiles, Pages 6, 7
Remembering summer on a family farm By Carol O. Allen
At the end of World War II you could buy a farm in the country for the same price as a row house in town. My father had just changed jobs and we moved from a new house in suburban Delaware County to the farm two hours west of Philadelphia, six miles north of Maryland, 45 minutes east of the Gettysburg battlefield and 10 miles south of the last glacier. My mother and father loved the farm for its beauty and also for its isolation from neighbors, because their oldest child was often just this side of deep trouble. You see it in her sly smile outside the one-room schoolhouse in the school photo. My sister’s Marilyn Monroe
smile, my brother’s getting his second set of teeth, set the time in the late ’40s. My memories of the farm are a box of color photos, a jumble in a baked cardboard box from the airy attic. The farm was a small, perfect gem; the cost $1 an acre. The school was a mile from the house, “up the road a piece” in the local mix of country English with a slight Southern drawl tinged with Pennsylvania Dutch and heavy use of the word “ain’t.” To remember summer you have to start with Memorial Day, because the corn planted then would continued on page 8