By Audrey Kletscher Helbling

The car bumped along the hilly, narrow one-lane gravel drive, past fenced apple trees, past workers hoeing weeds under the already hot mid-morning sun, past rows of raspberry bushes.

Over a creek and then, before us, a strawberry field snuggled on all sides by trees along the Straight River bottom.

We — my husband, oldest daughter and I—had come to Straight River Farm just outside of Faribault to pick strawberries.

This has become an annual family outing, this gathering of plump red berries, this contest to see who picks the most.

As we bent low to the earth, we talked, popped juicy Jewel berries into our mouths, marveled at their size and flavor.

Laughter came easily here in this place of quiet, of sky and earth and river and berries.

All too soon we were finished, our cardboard flats heaping with the fruits of our labors.

As we loaded our boxes into the car, the sound of rushing water drew me to the river bank. Muddy water churned in a fast-moving current.

Then, movement in the grass. A tiny spotted frog leapfrogging in swift bounds through the tall stems, over a pile of logs and back toward the river.

Back in the farmyard, the ceremonial weighing of our boxes to see who would claim the honor of picking the most berries. Gentle teasing as the weigh-in progressed, with mom — that would be me — the winner, having harvested 12-plus pounds of strawberries.

With 33.2 pounds of fruit safely tucked inside the trunk, we headed home, knowing the best part of our day lay behind us. Now we had hours of work ahead—berries to wash, hull, slice, package. I had pie crust to mix and roll, pies to make.

Later that evening, as I parceled reserved fresh berries into containers for my daughter and packed her strawberry pie, I thought about how sweet this day had been. Amber had driven down from Minneapolis to be with us, to continue our family tradition of picking strawberries.

Could life get any sweeter?

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By Audrey Kletscher Helbling

B-6, O-65, I-27, …

Slowly, the announcer called off BINGO letters and numbers, repeating each once. I strained to hear the difference between a B and a G. Not that it mattered. I wasn’t playing the game.

Instead, I sat on a padded chair, on the other side of a closed curtain room divider at the Eagles Club, waiting.

As I sat there, I counted, too. One, two, three…11 red coolers with white lids stacked before me and to the right. This counting, taking in my surroundings, passed the time.

I saw several people reading, decided that was a good idea and went to my car to retrieve a book.

“We thought you got scared and left,” a front door greeter said upon my return.

“No, just getting my book,” I said, waving it at her as I walked back to the waiting area.

I sat down, read a bit, tried to concentrate but couldn’t. So I turned to the guy next to me, introduced myself. Larry and I chatted. He’s 77, a retired mechanic, Korean War vet, woodworker, consummate volunteer. He had been here earlier in the day, staffing the canteen. Now he was back, this time to donate blood.

Me too. At the last minute, I decided to accompany my husband to his appointment with the Red Cross blood drive in Faribault.

I’d never done this before, given blood. I was a bit apprehensive.

Finally, my number, my turn. Behind an enclosed curtain, I provided my personal information (do you really have to know my weight?), had my vitals checked, then answered health history questions on a laptop computer. So far, so easy.

Then the move to the table. This was the hard part. I lay there, staring at the whirling ceiling fan, the four lamps in the ceiling light fixture, the white twinkle lights strung through draped netting.

Then the grip of the blood pressure cuff on my arm, the swabbing of iodine, the prick, the letting of blood. Except for the initial surge running through my arm and the tingling in my fingers, the process was painless. Squeezing and palming a red ball alleviated both.

I wondered, though, why I was lying flat on my back and not sitting partially reclined like everyone else. So much for reading while donating.

“We do that for all first-time donors,” my blood-drawer said.

“And why do I get purple tape?” I asked as he tightly wrapped tape in an X around my bandaged arm. Maybe this, too, marked me as a first-time donor.

“To match your shirt,” he said, pointing to my purple shirt. He was kidding, of course.

“But green is my favorite color,” I teased.

He picked up a roll of green tape and wrapped a double X around my arm.

I left smiling and feeling that maybe, just maybe, I was repaying a bit for the blood transfusions my mom received in December 2007, for the blood that saved her life.  

By Audrey Kletscher Helbling

Thwunk. A heavy limb smashes into the earth. Inside my office, the floor trembles.

Later, a whoosh, as branches brush against the side of the house.

Eight feet away from my living room picture window, workers labor to cut down a large basswood in the front yard.

They arrived just hours earlier in their orange truck, rang my doorbell and disrupted my writing. A request from the crew, contracted by Xcel Energy, to trim branches.

“Could you,” I ask, “cut down the tree?”

They hesitate.

I see my opportunity. “We had two tree companies here a few years ago, and neither of them would touch the tree because of the power lines,” I say.

It is the truth.

My husband and I worried about the leaning tree every time strong winds blew in. Would this be the storm that pushed the basswood onto the power lines, into the street, onto a portion of our house?

Several years ago, a large limb crashed atop our bedroom during a night-time storm.

Now was my chance to convince these tree-cutters that completely removing the tree fit Xcel’s best interests.

They consider, then agree.

But first, a call to my husband to make sure this is OK with him. It is.

I sign the papers.

Then, the set-up, truck bucket navigated into place, ropes secured, sawing, limbs falling, discarded, to the ground.

My stomach churns when I step outside and see the pile of branches, the nearly-limbless tree, the exposed house.

Even though I had wanted this worrisome basswood gone, I feel a twinge of regret, of sadness, of guilt.

I had signed the death sentence for this basswood that I’d known for 25 years. 

“You could replace it with a spruce like your neighbors have,” one of the tree-cutters advises.

“What, so you can come and cut that down too?” I reply.

“Oh, they’re slow-growing. It’ll take 25 years for one to grow,” he says.

Twenty-five years. If I’m still here, could I make this decision again to remove a tree? I would rather not.

For now, the absent basswood and the deep tire ruts that mark our lawn, like the sides of a freshly-dug grave, are painful enough. 

When my husband set out on a treasure hunt of sorts on Saturday, I decided to join him.

This was a first for me — my first trek to an auto salvage yard. Perhaps no other words best describe this outing than, it was an adventure.

Expecting that I would find “stuff,” and I use that term loosely, worthy of photos, I grabbed my camera bag. I’m glad I did. The photo ops were endless, nearly as endless as the rows of junked vehicles.

As we walked along a tree-lined gravel road at Johnson Auto Salvage north of Faribault, I savored the perfect summer morning. This was going to be fun. A beautiful day. Walking in the quiet country with my husband. Gravel crunching beneath our feet. Birds singing.

Then the road opened up and the idyllic, picturesque scene vanished. Before us lay a vast sea of junked vehicles, more like a stormy ocean than a placid lake.

“And we’re supposed to find a hubcap for the Geo in here?” I asked Randy. “How? This is like looking for a needle in a haystack”

Then I remembered the guy back in the office saying something like “walk through the fence and go left.” Which fence? Good luck, I thought to myself.

While Randy set off in search of an elusive wheel cover, I searched for photogenic junk.

And I found it. I tend to view “stuff” a bit differently than your Average Joe, or in my case, Josie. A certain twist to metal, an open hood, missing headlights, a flat tire, a sign — all appear artistic in my eyes.

I was surprised to also discover clothing. A lace tablecloth spilled from a garbage bag in the trunk of a large, gas-guzzling car. I wondered why it was there, who drove that car.

I saw a few other treasure hunters, a.k.a. men, poking around the junk. When two walked toward me later pushing a kid’s bike loaded down with motor parts, I simply had to stop them.

“I see you found a bike,” I observed, opening the conversation.

“Oh, we’re just using it to carry our stuff,” one said.

I wondered. The bike had flat tires and didn’t look all that useful as a transport carrier.

“It’s easier than carrying everything. This stuff weighs about a hundred pounds,” he said, as if reading my mind.

“Oh,” I said, then admitted to these tattooed guys that I was on my first salvage yard adventure.

“It’s a guy thing,” the other guy said. He and his buddy search junkyards for their muscle car building hobby.

And more. “There are so many stories here,” the one said.

Yes, lots of stories, I’m sure. But no hubcaps for a 1995 Geo Prizm.

By Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 I tried to write a creative blog about the yellow irises in my backyard. I wanted to tell you about the gentle curve of the petals, about how I’ll walk outside just to see my irises and breathe in their heady scent.

 But I couldn’t find the right words.

 So I turned to the French Impressionist painter Claude Monet, who expressed his passion for flowers in paintings like “Yellow Irises.”

 “More than anything,” Monet once said, “I must have flowers, always always.”

 I understand. For I too must have flowers, always, always.