Wednesday, July 28, 2010

To Grandmother's House We Go

Mary and Aunty Evil expressed a curiosity several posts ago about our farms. So I thought I'd share a few photos taken between our house and mothers (a twenty mile or so distance). These are scattered along the roadsides. Old wooden barns, sheds and outbuildings. Nature is taking them back over. Rusted tin tops their wooden beams, vines are reclaiming the timbers... but they are, I think, beautiful. Everytime I see one, it makes me wonder who built it? What was their daily life like? 80, 90 or 100 years ago...
We live on a dirt road. Advantage: little traffic. Disadvantage: no road crew to maintain it.
It's not Tara from Gone with the Wind. This type of farm house is actually far more common than the huge, column graced homes of the movies. A wrap-around porch, chimneys on either side of the house. It gets hot here and the goal of heating/cooking would have been to let the heat escape quickly, instead of hoarding it as would be an advantage in a colder climate, where it would be more common to see a centrally placed heating source and chimney. Hallways typically run straight through the center of the house, from the front porch to the back and are called breezeways, as they let cool air flow through the house.
Cotton. Goes through cycles of popularity based on the soil. Cotton is best suited for growing in rocky, sandy soil. You can tell from our dirt roads, that we don't have rich soil. When I was younger, cotton was not THE crop that it is today and was in the 1950s when my parents were growing up. The majority of our local fields are planted in cotton today.
Another gorgeous, fading barn. If you peer in closely, you can see a modern tractor underneath the eaves. Old sheds and barns are still used to shelter tractors, hay bales, wire, etc.

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Wild


Living on a dead end dirt road entitles one to up close encounters with native flora and fauna. In the past two weeks we have seen:

eighteen wild turkeys (pictured above... I have NEVER seen more than one, maybe two at one time)

one black snake

innumerable brown rabbits

two centipedes

a dozen frogs

one turtle

two tortoises

100 cow birds

dozens of house wrens

eight squirrels

fifteen wasps (think of these in the past tense as they are no longer nesting among the eaves of our house)

millions of ants

ten lizards

one armadillo

Tuesday, July 6, 2010

Getting Started




The top picture is Rob's collection room getting a coat of primer. The second is my retreat space, already primed!

Saturday, July 3, 2010

Dream a Little Dream, II

The renovations upstairs are a GO! I spent a good deal of time diligently researching possibilities before we met with a loan person at the bank. We were pleasantly surprised to discover that we could get a better rate than we currently have and easily afford the upstairs work we dreamed of making a reality.

The framing, insulating and dry wall work is complete. AC unit in and tonight. We paint. This may mean divorce proceedings on Monday, but we figure we can muddle through and save that much money on hiring professionals to do the job. Rob's portion will be a bold blue while mine will be a soft Scandinavian color. I'm stuck between a palladian blue and queen anne pink. Both soft and mellow.

Then I will just need to save up for the fun bits.... I love this desk and will need a reading chair, something cushy and comfortable.... perfect for melting into with a good book. Art for the walls and a sweet touch here and there.

Bliss.

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