The Lilac and the Apple

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Have you ever come across some blossoming fruit trees or lilac bushes in a field or the woods and realized it was the remnants of an old homestead from days gone by? This is one of my favorite old homesteads along Highway 126, and I love visiting at different times of year to see what is growing there. I especially love going there in the fall when the apples are ripe! In honor of the first day of May, here is one of my favorite folk songs by Kate Wolf that she wrote about an old homestead that she happened upon in the Sierra Nevada foothills of California.

"A Lilac bush and an Apple tree

Were standing in the woods,

Out on the hill above the town,

Where once a farmhouse stood.

In the winter the leaves are bare

And no one sees the signs

Of a house that stood and a garden that grew

And life in another time.

One Spring when the buds came bursting forth

And grass grew on the land,

The Lilac spoke to the Apple tree

As only an old friend can.

Do you think, said the Lilac, this might be the year

When someone will build here once more?

Here by the cellar, still open and deep,

There's room for new walls and a floor.

Oh, no, said the Apple, there are so few

Who come here on the mountain this way,

And when they do, they don't often see

Why we're growing here, so far away.

A long time ago we were planted by hands

That worked in the mines and the mills,

When the country was young and the people who came

Built their homes in the hills.

But now there are cities, the roads have come,

And no one lives here today.

And the only signs of the farms in the hills

Are the things not carried away.

Broken dishes, piles of boards,

A tin plate, an old leather shoe.

And an Apple tree still bending down,

And a Lilac where a garden once grew."

-Kate Wolf

Happy May Day!