Popsicle Summer

Chapter 2

It's 2006. The day is hot and perfumed with that summery feeling of cherry popsicles and sunscreen. I recline on our stone steps in the afternoon's light, the glow turning my brown hair red-gold. The rustic look of our garden with the pastel tulips, daffodills and sunflowers along with veggies and berry bushes, contained by rusty rails on the farm is picture-perfect as though from a fairy-tale postcard. I half expected to see a 'Greetings from Neverland' sign written on the corner of the fence along with a spot for a postge stamp.

But no. It was my home, along with my cousin Polly and Cassie's green and brown slatboard house, and my grandparents two dark brown cottages. We also had 2 barns and a chicken coop, a stable and 3 pastures for the sheep and goats. 

Cassie and Polly spring over, their bare feet covered in mud and wet earth. I tip my head questioningly, my hair falling over my face in a dark curly wave. I flip the hair out of my eyes, asking 

"What on earth were you doing?" I question, my unusually green eyes locking with Cassie and Polly's clear blue ones. Cassie looks at me for a second, holding my gaze before crossing her eyes at me and dissolving into laughter. Between gasps of air she giggles, 

"Mudsliding down the ridge." I stick out my lower lip in a 'baby pout face' 

"Aww why didn't you invite me?" I mock-whine. Polly's eyes sparkle. 

"You were still asleep silly! We wanted to get the mud while it was still wet from last night's rain!" I catch her eye again, then stick out my toungue. She laughs. 

"But anyway, the Butterfly Bushes and sweetpeas are in bloom! Our butterfly garden worked!" Polly grins. 

Last year we found a website called 'Bethesda Blooms and Great Gardening' it was a website that sold flower seeds and gave cool garden ideas. Vegetable gardens, shaped gardens, and summer night gardens lush with fragrant flowers and fairy lights, perfect for an enchanted backyard glow. Cassie had found a 'Butterfly Garden' perfect for attracting butterflies in summer and spring. It was summer now and we had lovingly taken care of the bright flowers, butterfly bushes and sweet-smelling plants. We had planted at the back of the house and had outlined the pretty place with pink and white-painted stones. We had then poked in white wicker arches around the place, and made a stone path leading through the beautiful butterfly-topia. In the middle our dad had rigged a pale white fountain with benches, perfect for a magical retreat. 

The bushes had sprouted, and as we ran across the fields towards their slatboard house, my exitement grew. We had planned to store the butterflies we caught in the treehouse. Every year we have a room in our elaborate treehouse with a pink mosquito net, gauzy and fine, perfect for the fragile butterflies that would reside in it. The glass windows have bowls of sugar water and flowers perched here and there and Polly hung rainbow prisims and their light reflects and bounces around. 

As I near the pink and white garden I see fluttering wings. Everywhere. Butterflies are sucking on bushes in masses! Clumps of butterflies flit from flower to flower, their jewel bright colors mixing and mingling together. Cassie runs into the house, shoving open the ratty tape-covered screen door. She comes back outside with 2 nets. She hands one to Polly, and takes one for herself. I use my hands to grasp the flittering insects. I spot a small white butterfly with silver dots hovering by a lily. Keeping my bare feet soft and light I creep towards it, Polly and Cassie watching me make the first catch of the summer. I spring forward and grasp the butterfly in my palm. They cheer jubilantly, because a first catch means we'll have plentiful butterflies all summer long. 

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