Spring is in the air… and in our crisp cotton percale sheets
Winters are long here in the Green Mountains of Vermont, and the arrival of spring can never come soon enough. We eagerly await the first sounds of the season and the bright burst of flowers that let us know warmer temperatures are on their way.
When we were boys, one unmistakable sign that spring was finally here was when our mother would change out our flannel winter sheets with cool, crisp summer sheets. She would wash the new sheets in the back room of our house and then hang them through a tiny window on a line that stretched high above the ground to a tall maple tree. The sheets would dry in the fresh air and become filled with the sweet scent of spring.
It’s hard enough to get young boys who love to run wild to go to sleep, and even harder when their sheets smell like the spring meadows. With the sound of peepers (small tree frogs) filling the night air and all three of us boys tucked snugly into our beds, we finally were still. Time itself stands still in that memory; for those were some of the happiest times of our lives.
Now, as we grow older, we’re grateful to have memories that allow us to realize how the simple experiences in life can have such strong connections. At The Vermont Country Store, we hope to offer you goods and wares, and a shopping experience that will do just the same for you.
Happy Spring!
Eliot Orton
for the Orton Family,
Proprietors of The Vermont Country Store
My Mom in Virginia also hung the sheets outside on the line to dry. I remember carefully hanging them on the line and taking them down in the late afternoon. Singing the entire time.
Fabric softener smells nice but nothing can compare to the fresh outdoor scent of line dried sheets! Thanks for the memory.
I remember getting on my bike for the first time after cold, dreary winters; wearing new brightly colored spring dresses to school; playing jacks on the sidewalk by our front porch; putting on my dime store roller skates and gliding down the sidewalk; seeing the first tulips pop up in our garden; looking for illusive four-leaf clovers in the backyard; going to the city park, getting bumped on the seesaw, dizzy on on the merry-go-round, crossing the jungle jim, climbing the slide, and swinging as high as I could; playing hopscotch with my friends on a chalk-drawn grid; having an open window in my bedroom at night; chasing hopping frogs; seeing sheets billowing from the clothesline in the breezy sunshine, and racing in between the long lines; playing outside after supper till it was dusk, as the sun began to set, and then coming in for a bath before bedtime; splashing through a spring rain in galoshes and raincoat, under an umbrella…
Hello from the South! My mother and my grandmothers would their sheets out in the spring air. They were wonderful! Still to this day I can’t wait to crawl into bed with clean, crisp sheets. i no longer hang my laundry on the clothesline but I do all I can do to mimic the feeling of days gone by. Childhood in the was awesome!!