Indiana Maple Gold...

Once upon a time a little Indiana girl moved during her senior year of high school.  Her very first weekend she met and fell in love with a small town Missouri boy...  Of course, they married on a crisp August afternoon...  And four years later they welcomed a baby daughter, a fairy princess actually...

When that little girl was only three years old, in long ago 1957...  The three made a visit to my Mama's relatives in Indiana.  Her precious Uncle Alta tended a grove of Indiana sugar maples, every spring coaxing a tiny batch of golden sweet syrup.  As the couple and their little daughter left this farm, my great Uncle Alta passed a little sprout, a tiny Maple sprig, planted with a little smidgen of magic, proudly transported in a rinsed out pork and bean can...  Once planted in my Mom and Dad's front yard, the sprout grew... And grew...

And once again, as it has so many years before, this little transplant from Indiana produced an Abundance of November Gold...  Sweet syrup for an Autumn morning from "back home in Indiana," nearly 57 years ago...