Some Observations from the Hill
by H. H. "Hub" Brown

 You know even after you get to be old enough so that other people should be able to decide what is the best thing to do. Back quite some years ago, I planted a hedge of Japanese Quince. It grew so that it was a row of bushes until Ag, my better half, persuaded Dan, Jim's younger daughter Jamie's husband, to come with his chain saw and make it look like a hedge. 

 But now, they've moved to Troy, New York. So now the hedge looks like a row of young trees. My son-in-law Fritz, who pastures cows and salves on the inside of those trees and who'd built a sturdy fence to protect them, now tells me I should take the tractor and pull them out. 

 Jim tells me I should tie a strong rope around one at a time, so that you could get near enough to cut them off about a foot from the ground and then as they grew, shape them into a hedge. 

 Fritz's reason was that the cows and calves and Monica's horse is in there too, would lean on the fence when they were cropping the hedge. So now all I have to do is get someone to cut them off.

 I'm worried about my sister Lutie. Her daughter's husband's mother in France is old and sick enough so that they told the family that she would not get well enough to come home. So Kim and Nicolas went over to France and just where my sister is I don't know. I wrote her a letter but haven't hear anything back.

 We've had a strange winter, with several false springs warm enough so that some people have had their bulbs start growing. Now that we've had the first day of spring, winter has returned. Billy Welch, who used to live here, said, "You always get six weeks of damn, nasty weather in March!" This morning when I got up and looked out the window, every twig and branch of the lilac bush in front of the house was outlined in white. What a beautiful morning, but it didn't last. Soon blew off or melted.

 Laurie, Norma's oldest daughter who was working in Antarctica, got a trip to New Zealand and liked it and was staying a while. Where she is now I don't know. Where her daughter Jess, who pilots a rubber raft or a dory and cooks for and manages a camping party summers on the Yellowstone Park, is I'm not sure. 

 For the winter, she took a job in Yuma. They were removing one kind of tree and replacing them with cottonwood and willow on the river there. Hope she don't get involved with any of those Mexicans crossing the border. 

 You know I used to blame Jess for not getting married and getting me a great-grandson. But she was too busy I guess. And now all at once I have two. Laurie's oldest son is the father of a boy and Norma's oldest son's son who went to Iraq with the Army last Thanksgiving. The Army let him come home for the birth of his son. It's about time. 

 My granddaughter Karen, who I rode with to Portland, Oregon, one time worked for the telephone company, retired at 50, and bought a big Harley. It tipped over and she had so much trouble getting it back on its wheels she traded for a smaller one. Summers she and her husband, who has a big Harley, ride all over. One time when she was 2 1/2 years old and had fallen in love with Pat's riding horse, Fleet, her father Ray who had been in the Navy in the South Pacific and loved boats, wanted to teach her to water ski. But she was all for horses. One weekend, Norma told her, "We're all going to Oquagua Lake and ride in a boat." Karen said, "Good. Me go farm."