Read by Michael Flamel

Shortly after we decided to stop being city mice and moved to our rural location, we quickly attempted to learn about mysteries like “septic tanks,” “deep and shallow wells,” and “What do you mean, there’s no sewer??!”

But at least our first Winter was mild, which lured us into a very false sense of security. The second Winter gave us enough snow that I regretted not having a garage. But we were close to the road, and I quickly learned to have a twenty in my pocket, wave down passing pick-up trucks equipped with plows, and ask them to clear the five or six feet of driveway between our two cars and the road, most of that work involving getting rid of the massive wall of frozen snow that the municipality had given unto us when they cleared the actual road. “Plowed in.”

We live in Pennsylvania Dutch country, and the first few times we received a neighborly plow, the drivers rolled up their windows and waved us away when we tried to pay them. Finally, I came up with, “I know YOU won’t take this, but can your drop it in the collection basket at your church for me?”

It worked. Apparently, word spread fast in our little town. From then on, every Guardian Angel with a plow would roll their window down, accept the twenty and say, “The church thanks you,” as they pulled off. I then realized that every person in the neighborhood was also aware of when we put our trash and recycling out by the road, especially aware of how quickly we retrieved those cans, the relative ages of our children and could probably estimate our electric bill with great accuracy.

Then came The Blizzard of the Century. It snowed heavy for three or four days in a row, then teased us with a couple hours of that clear blue sky you only see after a big storm, and then graced us with three or four days more.

The kids LOVED it. School was closed for over a week, and they filled the house with homemade carnival games, complete with tickets that the winners could redeem from a board covered with small toys. Our son wore a red vest and bow tie, welcomed us to “The Snowy Carnival,” and sold us tickets for the games.

Outside was even better for them. We had kept up the shoveling, enough to have a narrow path from our house to the road that was so (deep? tall?) that we grownups could barely see over the top. The kids, of course, got a fairy-tale tunnel to play in, and we all escaped cabin fever by playing outside on what were now bright, blue-sky days.

But that tunnel was the full extent of our “outside,” The snow was too deep and heavy for the township trucks to push. Finally, a V-shaped plow was sent from somewhere like Syracuse or Siberia to cut a path down the center of the road that would allow backhoes and dump trucks to cart it all off to The Snow Dump.

A lot of people thought that was “a bad Winter”. This Winter was worse. It was worse than the Winter our cars were so snow-covered that I had to use a broom handle to find them, resulting in two cars that looked like they had survived baseball-sized hail. At least, it was easy to find them in parking lots.

A couple years back, my daughter and her husband moved in, ostensively to help care for the aging relic who was still stumbling around inside. His family lived down South, and it was a very tight-knit family.

So we worked out a schedule that had them here for Thanksgiving and with his family for the Christmas holidays. All told, they would be gone about three weeks this time (which would also cover New Year’s) and I assured them it was fine. And it really was; I had no desire to travel in the Winter and had to care for a porch filled with overwintering peppers, some of which were a good 3-years-old and had become little trees. I was worn out and looking forward to the down time.

Until the day of New Year’s Eve when “worn out” became “suddenly out of breath and exhausted”. I had to sit down halfway when I walked across a room. But no way in Hades was I going to call for an ambulance on New Year’s Eve (at least not without first obtaining a funny hat, noisemaker and giant glasses that spelled out “2025”).

So I struggled through the late Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve (first time I actually saw the ball drop in years), dozed on and off fitfully until dawn and then called 911. The EMS crew arrived right away and had me stabilized—from struggling for breath to breathing comfortably—in about two minutes.

I learned something important from that EMS ride. Don’t let a friend or family member drive you to the hospital; call for an ambulance instead. Super-skilled medical treatment began as soon as they got to the house, and the hospital was waiting and prepared for us when we arrived through the ambulance-only back door. I never even saw the emergency waiting room and its cast of “Hey—watch what I can do” New Year’s Eve casualties (as interesting as that probably would have been).

Side thought: Is a crowded ER filled with self-injured revelers the worst place to wake up drunk or what?

I was taken straight to a bed in the ER, then up to a regular room, where my kids were informed and quickly prepared to return home. It wasn’t until the third or fourth day in the hospital that I remembered my overwintering peppers. Were their lights on or off? They were almost certainly not being checked on. (Gardening rule: The best thing you can for your plants is to check them every day. I’m pretty sure I was not adhering to that rule.)

Besides, I had other things occupying my attention. I been diagnosed with a severe case of pneumonia during this record-breaking season of respiratory ailments. How severe? They had sucked a liter of fluid out of the area around my lungs, and a whole bunch of radiologists crammed into my room to see the “X-rays everyone in the hospital was talking about” and muttering “wow” repeatedly.

I was warned that it would be months before I would start to feel even vaguely better as they discharged me after eight days of bad TV. My bedroom at home was prepped, oxygen was waiting, and I proceeded to sleep about 16 hours a day, watching whatever was on the classic movie channel at the odd hours I was awake. (There’s better stuff on TCM at four in the morning than you might expect.)

It was Winter, so my garden helper/assistant/intern Sean was off for awhile but came to visit. As my daughter escorted him into my room his face was ashen.

“What’s wrong?”

“Your overwintering peppers don’t look so hot.”

Oh, right! My peppers! I had peppers! (I hadn’t thought about them since that one time at the hospital.) “How bad is it?”

“You know how the forest looked around Mount St. Helens after the volcano blew? It looks like you made a little diorama of that scene for a school project.”

All told, they had been neglected for close to a month. “Would you give them some water for me?”

“Water…dead…plants.”

“Maybe some will spark back to life.”

“If there was a real spark involved, the house will burst into flame. I looked at one of the brown, barren branches a little too hard and it fell off.”

Nevertheless, an almost-regular routine of watering the dead plants began, but stopped when I was able to finally see The Haunted Forest in person. “The spider webs are a nice touch,” I said to no one in particular.

The following week, Sean came over to cart the bodies away. “We’ll need the space,” he said much too cheerfully. “Pretty soon we’ll be starting seeds out here!”

Great. More plants for me to kill. I hobbled back to my personal infirmary and immediately fell asleep.

The next thing I knew my daughter was gently rubbing my shoulder. “Sean’s about to leave but wanted to show you something first.” I sat up and Sean appeared with a container holding my absolute favorite hot pepper (Ordono: small upright fruits mature from purple through yellow, orange, and finally red. A stunning ornamental chile from Batopilas Canyon, Chihuahua, Mexico) alive!

It was obvious that Sean had just pruned off large dead portions, but half the plant was still green, holding some long-dry fruits, a couple of young purples, a fully ripened red one and—no! Could it be? A perfect little white flower!

By the time we put it outside this Spring it looked like a proper third-year pepper. All the peppers around it were new. Infants! But one strong plant had survived, and so, the circle remains unbroken. ❖