As the spring snow blanketed our small village, my sister and I spent hours drawing blueprints for the leaf houses we’d construct the following autumn.

A leaf house, if you’ve never constructed one, is an outline of a home, with maple leaves piled about 6in. high, acting as the walls.

As I recall, my outlines were basic boxes which were often missing doors between rooms, had no hallways, and whose bedrooms were adjacent to the kitchen, which seemed efficient to me, but was questioned by my sister, who had her leaf house act together. (My answer to her question of how one would get from one room to the next without a door, was, “pole vault.”)

Decades later when we’d wander together through homes under construction in her neighborhood, she could envision each minimally outlined section of plywood floor as a completed room. “This is the kitchen”, she’d say with complete confidence. “How do you know”, I’d ask. “It’s obvious.”

With that ability to visualize, you can imagine the creativity and elaborate detail of those blueprints. Her vivid imagination conjured not only a house, but furniture, accessories and a family to enjoy it all.

My favorite part was construction, being outside, raking, shaping, and sometime chasing my walls on windy days. Once the house was built, I lost interest.

Deborah, however, luxuriated in her autumn home. She’d give tours, and insisted that visitors use the door and not sit on or step over the walls. One time a neighborhood boy rode his bike through her walls. Oh, boy. She was so mad, she popped up from her leaf pillow; ran him down, dragged him off his bike and made him fix the walls, yelling at him the whole time.

If we weren’t making blueprints, we might take a couple of Mom’s white Vanity Fair, paper, dinner napkins, with their embossed flowers, and color in the flowers with markers. Or, using Dad’s typing paper – an advantage of having his office in the house, we’d fold it vertically, write our name in cursive along the fold, turn it over, hold it up to the window to trace our name on the other side, and then decorate our mirrored image monikers.

We had (and continue to have) such fun! 😎