The plums are in bloom now. The park was designed by volunteers as a pretty park, a park for quiet contemplation, a small picnic, a place to read a book or sit a while and watch the birds, a place to have a small gathering of Girl Scouts or Boy Scouts or a birthday party, or a spot to stop to have your lunch on a bench or in the grass. There is a small central lawn surrounded by trees and shrubs and flowering things, with a pathway that makes a loop back in between and among the plants. 
We asked for donations in exchange for any sentiment you wanted on a small plaque. Between the designing of the park in the fall of 1995, and the planting, on Arbor Day 1996, my father died, and friends bought plum trees in his honor. He always gathered wild plums in the fall from the shelter belts between the grids of farm fields and made ‘plum brandy’, by some process of stuffing wild plums into bottles and covering them with some sort of alcohol. The concoction lived in the highest cabinets in our kitchen and came down for a toast when certain friends were over or for medicinal purposes in winter when flu or bad colds plagued him. 
Plum trees were a good choice to honor him. There was a dulcimer player with a song about the lasting nature of gardens at that 1996 Arbor Day event and many children with shovels helping plant the trees. I try to remember to go there, to the little park, every spring when the plums are in bloom, and stroll the paths and sit for a while on the benches, maybe pull a weed or two. And to remember all the fine volunteers that helped design the park and buy the plants and plant the plants and spread the mulch and pull hundreds of thistles the first couple years and buy more plants and plant them and weed around them and divide the perennials to fill in the gaps and rescue the paths from the aggressive ones. And to remember my dad and his love of taking a drive in the countryside and a walk along the fencerows or across a pasture, where we could get him to tell us a story or two about some little or great thing from long ago or just last week. The plums are blooming now.
We asked for donations in exchange for any sentiment you wanted on a small plaque. Between the designing of the park in the fall of 1995, and the planting, on Arbor Day 1996, my father died, and friends bought plum trees in his honor. He always gathered wild plums in the fall from the shelter belts between the grids of farm fields and made ‘plum brandy’, by some process of stuffing wild plums into bottles and covering them with some sort of alcohol. The concoction lived in the highest cabinets in our kitchen and came down for a toast when certain friends were over or for medicinal purposes in winter when flu or bad colds plagued him. 
Plum trees were a good choice to honor him. There was a dulcimer player with a song about the lasting nature of gardens at that 1996 Arbor Day event and many children with shovels helping plant the trees. I try to remember to go there, to the little park, every spring when the plums are in bloom, and stroll the paths and sit for a while on the benches, maybe pull a weed or two. And to remember all the fine volunteers that helped design the park and buy the plants and plant the plants and spread the mulch and pull hundreds of thistles the first couple years and buy more plants and plant them and weed around them and divide the perennials to fill in the gaps and rescue the paths from the aggressive ones. And to remember my dad and his love of taking a drive in the countryside and a walk along the fencerows or across a pasture, where we could get him to tell us a story or two about some little or great thing from long ago or just last week. The plums are blooming now. 
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