5 apples

Struggling to carry a pile of things from the backyard; 5 red delicious apples fell from my bag onto the grassy strip beside the wooden storage space under the kitchen patio. I watched them roll under the worn wooden floor board until they were out of sight and sinking into the sand. Cursing, I put the gear on the ground and got down on bended knee to retrieve the apples. But they kept disappearing under the surface of the wooden wall. Then I noticed; the garbage and detritus of 50 years had been removed. My mother must have cleaned it up; carted away the boards and bricks and old garden tools thrown in there by my father; empty oil cans and slats of weathered wood. In its place was a fresh bed of light sand; a beam of sunlight illuminated the interior; no longer dark and dank it was bright and sunny and a vivid green mint was growing at the back.