Gardens, evening walks, and being present

post #341
        Sunday evening greetings three days after the solstice! Winter, here we come.....
       I've been enjoying everyone's gardens -- especially since I don't have one of my own this year. I'll try to feature various ones over the summer, though of course at this point they all look so deceptively clean and orderly compared to the abundance and chaos that lies ahead... Jean gave me a cucumber from her garden last time I was over at the barn being rebuilt, and, as always, I look forward to the first REAL tomatoes. I'll have to dig up, so to speak, the poem I once wrote in homage to the first drippy delicious BLT of the summer.  Melva, I am saving my photos of your early garden to pair them with ones I plan to take in a couple of weeks -- a sort of "before and during" show. As always, thank you for your weekly comments on these posts!
        I'd like to share this link to some valuable information about possums, who don't always get a fair rap, and who sometimes like to kill a chicken in the night....
       OK, now here are a few photos of the brand new first-time-laid-out garden that my daughter and my son-in-law are tending and trying their first summer being back in Kentucky. BRAVO!! 

looking from the house toward the barn

barn behind, house ahead, with wildflowers sown on the right

how tall photographers see potted herbs

another patch, another view toward the barn

       I gather that after all the rain we had Friday and Saturday -- which caused a lot of problems, actually, such as broken water lines and flooding in certain locations -- the three gardeners went wild playing in the rain and the pond, etc.  After all, a big rain without thunder and lightning is a whole different experience. And the house is on a hill so not easily flooded. In any case, I thought the boots-out-to-dry were very picturesque.
 

       
 Here is the wearer of the red boots.... and our hands measuring one another...

       
        For a balance to such exhuberance, I am also sharing a walk I took before dark last night in my current "neighborhood" -- very quiet, no cars, newly mowed fields, lovely skies. I didn't even hear a dog or see a deer.

headed up the hill from Sideway Road

passing Thelma's house

This tree row lining one of her fields feels British to me. Go figure.

more of her newly mowed hay fields along the way

  


        Here, to end, is another unexpected sky from several nights ago, along the ridge.

       Evening walks can bring on pensive musings: May we each have peace in our lives, as well as in the beauty around us, and practice problem solving to make it happen. 

barn moments, part 2 of the second visit

post #340
         I have returned from Indiana -- home today after a whole week away -- and now I get to share the rest of the photos from that overcast afternoon in Jonathan's barn.  They are partly a record, partly intriguing, and partly just visually interesting to me. 
         At the same time, I'm eager to see what progress has been made while I've been gone. 

refiguring the posts, one by one

homemade plow handles

lumber to be reused

the new side to replace the weathered side

And nearby is Annie and Jean's root cellar, with over 50 years of use.

   Two final photos for tonight, 1) a view of where some neighbors live, and 2) my granddaughter -- unsolicited -- making like a Minnie Adkins rooster outside the Kentucky Folk Art Center in Morehead, Kentucky.

        Note: When I can, I have decided to add a grandchild photo to every post, as a kind of acknowledgement of the next generation -- for whom we should be making the world better, every day.

I can't help myself: more barn photos!

post #339
     This week I went back to the barn build -- with my good camera -- when the light was not full of sun and shadow -- when no one was there (just the two dogs) -- when I could look around and see what I'd see. I will have an equal number of photos next week as well. It was so much fun! A photographer's playground!

The setting, from the curve in the road, with house and hay and the big barn, June 2017

 brand new trusses on the west side -- where the weather had totally worn them down over the years.

gate storage, for later

looking from within hrough to the garden that is beside the barn

more garden growth

Former tobacco sticks are used for a great variety of building tasks,

like garden poles and stashing.

local lumber drying

tall photographer (who is also standing on a block of wood), under barn becoming shorter, to be repurposed for stock instead of tobacco

the porch, and that wonderful maple tree and water for the dogs

 

So then back home, where evening soon arrived and was amazing. 

       Next week, more barn bits, more beauty, and my Sideway Gallery will reopen the following week!
 

recent photos of clouds, a barn rebuild, and flowers in northwestern North Carolina

post #338
       Three weeks since my photo class ended! Summer has arrived! I took a brief road trip through 4 states when a friend from Indiana, Rachel, drove to North Carolina to pick up her daughter at the Arthur Morgan School; she picked me up, too, en route [see Garden Flowers and Ice Cream!] Now that the class has been over for 3 weeks, I finally had time to stop by to check out the enormous barn redo that my neighbor Jonathan has been doing -- lowering the roof to make the barn last another several decades, replacing some rotting posts, etc. (This project is in addition to both his full time job at the Little Sandy Correctional Complex state prison and the care of his own goats and fields and family!) And, in May, there were some spectacular skies around here, though I only recorded them one time.

Flowers, first in the garden and then Mountain Laurel while walking along the road: 

Mountain Laurel

Can you tell this used to be a tobacco barn? It will now be used for live stock, including horses.

Jean's garden

-- more barn and garden photos from here soon --

 And now the sky, over time, one evening, from Sideway Gallery:

OOPS, I almost forgot the ice cream, from The Ice Cream Deck, in Burnsville, NC:

Rachel's nephew, Adrian, ate the whole thing! including the beautiful scoop of blueberry kale!

     To end, I want to share a beginning -- this morning -- the first lily from this bed of lilies outside my front door.... I do nothing, and they come up every year. In these unsettled times, this is reassuring.