When I went to pick up a prescription at my local CVS pharmacy last week, I happened to notice their 'will call' assortment of bins. I got a chuckle out of the one pictured above. :) Suites my laissez-faire attitude for today. Grin.
Just because I like to occasionally show the world around me in my daily life, here are some more photos of the area around my Mom's farm in southeastern Ohio. I took most of these standing in various parts of the front yard. :)
For those of you who might not recognize them, these are a type of goldenrod in flower. Many, many people are allergic to the pollen of these pretty wildflowers - the origin of 'hay fever' season. :) Theoretically the township area that Mom's farm is contained within is supposed to mow the verge of the local roads to keep these 'weeds' down ... but as you can see it definitely has not happened this year.
Can you see the rolled hay bales stored in the shade of the trees across the road?
Can you see the small white house in the far right horizon? That is the nearest neighbor. :)
Here is another view to the slight east of the one just above ... we are facing north here.
Farther to the east yet, showing a soybean field and the open shed door.
I liked the textural contrast between the weathered wood of the door, the rusty metal prop holding it open, and the weed tangle just beyond. :)
The mailbox has a (now empty) bird's nest in it - my brothers let it stay until the babies fledged and flew away. There were shell remnants in the nest itself but my camera found it hard to photo the dark inside. Time to tidy up. :)
My dad's John Deere tractor, parked at the verge of the soybean field.
I don't know how to estimate acreage by sight, but it is a pretty big soybean field. :)
Dad's combine, parked a few feet beyond the tractor. Not in use this season, as is plain by the weed embellishments. :)
This is a close up photo of the soybean crop. The farmers let the beans ripen in the field until they harvest the crop. If they harvest when the beans are too green, they get docked $$ at the sales point for too high a moisture content.
This is an interesting (to me:) little shed that was once the farm's chicken coop. I had never seen one built on a triangular plan like this - all the coops I've seen up close have been pretty much square or rectangular. Wonder what kind of ethnic background these farmers had and where this building tradition came from?
This is the 'hill' directly to the south of my Mom's house. You can't see it in this photo but there is a creek (a tributary of the Scioto River) that runs along the front edge of this hill (just below that yellowed field in the mid-distance). This hill has a large natural gas bubble below it and there is a well on the farm that taps into the gas. The farm thus has its own energy source.
My Dad planned to use the hill itself for grazing pasturage (right now, in the absence of animals, it just grows hay). Among the trees at the hill crest is a small wildlife pond Dad built where wood ducks and herons nest.
This is the 'father' tree (mate to the 'mother' tree I showed in my last post) growing in the front yard of the farm house. It makes good shade for visitor's cars and my middle brother's collection of cars-in-waiting.
Aren't these beautiful colors? These are the bean seeds my aunt gave me from the scarlet runner beans in her garden when I visited them on the way home. I have seven or eight of these - nice fat seeds that I think I might try to plant next spring and train up some kind of arbor for pure decoration (I expect the local wildlife will steal most of the crop:).
My Dad was really excited about rescuing so-called 'heirloom' varieties of vegetable plants. Tomatoes, beans of several kinds, onions, garlic, etc. I _think_ he shared most of what he found (at flea markets, farmer's markets, from old relatives, etc) with the federal government seed repository charged with saving antique varieties (need to keep that germplasm safe!).
This past week was September birthday week - my husband and my son have birthdays in September (as well as a nephew and brother ... and anniversaries for at least two couples in my kinship group:). For his birthday dinner, my sweetheart chose Mexican .. the tiled pattern above was installed around the kitchen of the resturant we visited. I think it would make a really nice quilt design (and, in fact, probably already has:).
Hugh and I went out on Friday for our weekly day together. We ate lunch at Ledo's (third time there - we like the food I guess:) ... and then went around to Wilde Lake to walk. Years ago (pre-children), when Skip and I first moved to Columbia, we lived on the north side of Wilde Lake Village, in apartments about two blocks from the lake itself. This is a man-made lake with an earthern berm dam and walking paths around for people to enjoy. I had never been on this south side of the Lake.
When we were at the Robinson nature center a while ago, Hugh and I picked up a little booklet listing each of the county parks. There is a marker installed in each park that you can rub off onto the page for that place's map as a kind of memory of your visit. We took our booklet along on Friday so we could 'capture' Wilde Lake park (too bad we weren't smart enough to take a pencil, too - the pen I had in my pocket did only a so-so job of rubbing off the embossment:).
When I first heard we were going to live in Wilde Lake Village, I thought of Oscar Wilde. Apparently the lake/village is actuallly named for someone that was a Maryland local instead. (Guess I should have some local-history curiosity and look up who that man was?:).
I think we walked about a mile all together. There were lots of tree markers along the walking path which was fun - was teaching my son how to identify the trees (as well as refreshing my own memory) as we strolled.
Here is a view across Wilde Lake at some townhouses on the other bank. Wilde Lake Village was the first area built in Columbia (a planned community that now has ten villages, I think, after 40 or so years) and there are a lot of 'builder's model' type of houses here. I have always liked the architecture of this particular development. :) I've never actually been inside one of them ... but I expect they are quite pricey since they are lakefront properties. :)
That square floating 'island' in the middle is a shelter intended for the use of the nesting ducks and swans. Wilde Lake has a swan sanctuary on it (don't remember what kind of swans at this moment - trumpeters? whistlers?). There were quite a number of sunning turtles out that day, too.
I like the displays that clumped grasses make - this one was right at the water's edge. Must have seen five or six different types of tall grass on our walk (but only photoed this one:).
This small stone wall is part of a larger barn - I _think_ it is a rebuilt horse barn, now used to house boats and maintenance equipment for the park. I found the textural contrast between the round boulder and the formed stone wall interesting. And I wondered why there might be a big rock right in front of what looks like a door. :) That kind of stone building is typical of this area and you see it used in a lot of historic structures.
I don't know why, but complex signposts like this one always get my attention. :) Interesting that the old green street signs are being replaced with blue ones. I like the change! :)
T
This past Thursday at my 'traditional' quilt guild's weekly meeting, I picked up the first block in our new round robin exchange to work on. I'm supposed to make another block the same size with a pattern of my choice, using some of that pretty floral print underneath the starting block. I really like the print, so I expect to enjoy the assignment. As usual, I have to discipline myself to choose a pattern and not dither over what I _could_ do until the last minute. :) I only have two weeks until the next swap so I have to get with it. :)
Foot up when resting, ample magazines and new books to read ... get busy, get busy!
:) Linda
