Daffodils and memories

I love to be outside. Working in the yard, taking walks through the woods, playing outside with my babies (my nieces and nephews), or just sitting on the front porch listening to my one little wren who nests near us.

I guess I got my love for the outdoors from my dad, Kenneth Stepp, and my poppy, James “Rabbit” Tipton.

Dad was a wild crafter by nature. He would go walking up the creek to look for agate, or up on the mountain to dig ginseng and yellow root. He was a trapper, a hunter, gardener, and most of all he was a lover of nature.

I can remember being little and following daddy around the yard and when he’d lift his foot up, the imprint would be in the dew. I would stretch my short legs as far as they could go just to walk in his foot steps.

I can see him now, sitting on that old metal green chair without a back to it. He’d sit there with Jayme (an old tom cat that would follow dad every where) lying at his feet and whittle on sticks or pick through his ginseng.

He loved the simple things in life.




Poppy, he was the same way. If it wasn’t raining he was outside planting marigolds, working in the garden, filling up bird feeders or mowing the grass.

He was always outside fiddling with something.

When it came to Poppy though, I remember a few years before he passed away, I went up to the garden to pick some green beans. He followed me up there and we sat side by side on half gallon buckets picking those beans in silence.

When he did speak, he told me all about his garden that year, and about trying to keep the coons out of the corn. After picking the beans, he took me down through the rows of tomatoes showing me which ones where the best to pick.

We walked back down to the little house and sat on the porch drinking a jar of Granny’s canned tomato juice.

I miss moments like those. Being with two people that I cherished most in my life growing up.

Now they have both gone on home.

I think of them everyday when I walk outside especially in the spring. They are both still very much alive in my memories. When I see the daffodils blooms for the first time I think of those who have gone on. From the darkness of the wintery forest floor comes this little yellow bloom that gives hope that the worst of the winter has passed. 

Column was published March 12, 2009 in the Citizen Voice & Times