The Reindeer Keeper

There was never anything fancy about the old garden cart. In fact, most would have retired it by now. Traded it in for an up-to-date model. But that wouldn't be an easy thing to do. You don't discard something just because it's worn-because it lost its shine-especially when it has served you well for forty some years. That's how it is with the old garden cart. Somehow and at some point it became more than a cart. It became a part of the family. And as family members grew old, so did that cart. Back in its prime the garden cart served many purposes. Besides hauling weeds and shrubs and freshly picked vegetables and sand to refill a sandbox and leaves raked into piles and rocks dug out from the earth and fallen limbs whipped from trees, that garden cart hauled little children and kittens and a dog or two. Around and around a huge garden it would go-up and down a small hill-around a cluster of raspberry bushes and apple trees as giggles and laughter and barking and meo

When I was young my cousin and I would play on this braided rug made by my grandmother. It was the biggest of her braided rugs in the home she and my grandfather built once they sold the farm. Sometimes we'd spread out on all fours and try to figure out what garments owned by family members had been woven into the strips of fabric that we were playing on. Creating a braided rug-especially such a large one, was quite the undertaking. Besides preparing the braided strips, our grandmother had to clean the garments and strip them of buttons and zippers. But none of that mattered to us when we discovered those braided rugs were a great place on which to play. And when it came time to find some packs of playing cards and create our card houses, that huge braided rug was the perfect place to do it. The little grooves the rug provided gave us anchors for our creations. We'd both start by leaning two cards firmly together. After that, we were on our own in designated areas atop the