Shortly after my parents moved from Pennsylvania to a remote rural area of Ohio near the Kentucky border， they began noticing dark areas of grass in the shape of circles. I saw one myself once when I visited them and teased that it looked as though a UFO had landed there. It would fade away and another would appear somewhere else some time later. One time a friend visited them and they showed them the odd circles of dark grass. The friend told them they are fairy rings. My mother went to the library to see what she could find on fairy rings and learned that folklore tells that if you stand in the center of a fairy ring at midnight during a full moon and make a wish， it will come true.

Some time later， a new fairy ring appeared just a few yards from her house. (All the others had been out in the pasture.) There would be a full moon in a few days so she decided to see if the folklore tale was true. During the day she put a bucket in the middle of the ring so she could easily find the center at midnight. The night of the full moon she went to the bucket at midnight and made a wish. Within just a few short months her wish came true.

My parents had bought this property (140 acres surrounded on three sides by state game lands) and built a new home there so it pretty much depleted all of their savings. There was still so much that they dreamed of having there， but would not be able to do on my father’s pension. My mother’s wish was simply to have all the things they wanted for the property. One of those things was roads to the remote areas. Another was to have a garage and a third dream was to have a small lake on the property.

Soon afterward， a company contacted them that was interested in some of the lumber on their property. They would pay for what they forested and promised not to rape the land that my parents loved so much. In order to get to the more remote areas for the trees they wanted to take they had to put in roads. (Wish #1!)

One day my mother was talking to one of the owners of the company. He was telling my mother what beautiful property she had and what potential it had. He seemed to have developed a special fondness for my tiny 78 year old mother， and talked to her quite often during the month or so that they were there. My mother told him about her dream of a lake and he told her they had the equipment to do it and they would do it for her for no charge. They dug a deep and wide area out behind the first meadow and diverted water from a creek into it. My brother stocked it with fish and turtles abound. (Wish #2!)

With the money they made from the sale of the trees they put up a three-stall garage. (Wish #3!)

Some people may say that those things would have occurred anyway even if my mother hadn’t gone out into the yard at midnight during a full moon to make a wish. I guess we will never know. But another occurrence after that only strengthened my belief in fairies. Maybe sometime I will tell you a story of the fairy pictures.