Barn Wabi-Sabi

Maybe on our next walk we'll ford the creek and poke around this gorgeous barn. We had miles to go, so we forged on.

The next barn was close to the road, and we dove into the detail on its old sides.


I'm not sure what this material originally was--rubberized cloth? but it had aged into a fascinating, fungal texture.

Oh, I loved this sign. You can't make a sign like this. Time has to make it. Time, and some yahoos to shoot it for you.


There were some Herefords just across the fork. Chet was all a-tremble, but at almost five years old, he knows better than to go after them.

No leash necessary, just a warning word. Good boy, Chet. Keep moving.

Mether, someday I may go round those cattle up when you are not looking. But now you are looking. And you are right. I am not a cattle dog. I am a chiptymunk dog. Until someday when you are not looking.

A field daisy defies the frost. I can't remember seeing a fall with so many blooming daisies.

Are you coming, Mether? Or are you going to crouch down by the flollers all day?


Yes, Chet Baker, but I have a few more flollers to crouch by. These milkweed pods will do nicely.



It is tricky keeping the horizon straight when you're crouching. Or maybe I'm drunk on rural beauty. Or maybe it's that these barns are all off true by more than a few degrees. Everybody's staggering here.

Not least me and Shila, at the end of the five or six miles. But there's more to come. We're only a quarter of the way up the road.

For those who are still wondering, wabi-sabi is a Japanese concept of beauty through age, weathering, imperfection, impermanence. It is a scarred and twisted bonsai, a wise and knowing face, a beat-up ballerina's foot, an old Ohio barn.

The Best Things in Life...

photo by Shila Wilson

As I think about this blog, it seems to me that much of its mission statement is holding true, even four years later. "I hope to show what happens when you make room in your life, every day, for the things that bring you joy. Strange--most of them are free."

Walking is free. Autumn is free. It's free to take a dog along; it's free to sit down and eat lunch under a pale lemon sun, free to take hundreds of photographs and sift through them. All these things take is time. But the joy that comes from one good hike in fall...priceless.

Shila and I couldn't wait to find out how bad the road got beyond where I almost got the Subaru stuck. We wanted to know whether we could have gotten through had I not dropped a wheel over a precipice. We were not to be disappointed.

I'll organize the post as the walk unfolded, so you feel as if you were along with us.

Chet Baker was stoked about the squirtle and chiptymunk possibilities. He got bizzy right off the bat. (Note his trim waistline. Subnote: I take better care of my dog than I do myself. Mmm, Almond Joy.)


Shila and I were stoked about the decrepit outbuilding possibilities.

Being in a progressive state of decrepitude myself, I am fascinated by the process of decay as manifested in old barns and outbuildings. I love to imagine what's under their roofs. I love to wonder if there is some wonderful glassware or tools or one-lung engines. My dad didn't wonder--he waded right in and started throwing tin and boards aside. He carried a crowbar in the car for just such things. I got that gene, fer sure.

Traces of man were everywhere. But there were no men. Here's a mossy ladder, leading up the side of an oil storage tank that's probably been abandoned for 20 years.

Dean's Fork rushed by, making little waterfalls, with shadders of minnows darting. Streams are called forks around here.


Two barns stood sentinel in a pasture still used by cattle. The late autumn tapestry made a beautiful backdrop.

Shila moved on ahead, the walking stick a wise bringalong in case we came upon any territorial dogs. (We didn't).


I wonder if this barn was made of chestnut, the dominant forest species before the blight. Many were, and it has wonderful longevity. Whatever the wood, the width of the boards merits a second and third glance. Beautiful.


Beautiful! She's leaning back into the hillside, taking a well-earned rest.

Now, that is one I'd like to poke around in.

We watched the road as we walked, noticing that it got a little worse the farther we went.


We looked back upon the barns, loving the scene, loving the silence.

A Room Crammed with Summer

The Rex begonia "Looking Glass," from Ohio's own Glasshouse Works. Well, I got a plant there about five years ago, and this is probably its great-great-great-great-great grandchild.


It's only 9' across, maybe 12' high, not a lot bigger than a phone booth, but there is no other 9 x 12' space on the planet that brings me as much happiness as the Garden Pod.

I am a sentimental sort and seeing my plant friends die with the frost undoes me, even as I know I cannot haul them all inside for the winter. They wouldn't like it, I wouldn't like it, and the bugs would love it. If you scrutinize the photo above, you will see that I made an exception for the huge pot of Fuchsia "Gartenmeister Bonstedt" on the greenhouse floor. I just could not let it die. Later on in the winter, when it's loaded with whitefly, I'll leave it out in the snow for the polar bears, and nurture the two cuttings, already blooming, I've got going. But for now, it's got a home. This was the only plant I found for sale in 2008, and I found it many miles from my home near Dayton, and carried it over in the greenhouse. I didn't find it in '09, which mystifies me, since it is, in my and the hummingbirds' opinion, the best fuchsia in the universe. I have just finished a painting of it, in fact.

So I take cuttings in August and sometimes I take cuttings in October if the first August batch didn't root. My garden friend Nancy turned me on to vermiculite as a cutting medium and boy, what a difference. Vermiculite is free of the myriad molds and bacteria that plague potting soil, so cuttings have a fighting chance of throwing out roots before they rot. Everything I tried to root in the last October cutting harvest succeeded! Uh oh. I am definitely going to run out of room this winter. Here's one of the geranium cutting groups:
Who needs a 10-foot high red mandevilla, loaded with aphids, when you can start a little cutting like this one?
How dear of it to bloom. The nondescript looking plant in the white pot below it is the world's tiniest fuchsia, which just burst into teeny pink bloom today. Its flowers are no longer than a grain of rice, but perfect and sweet. It is a fussy plant that likes the greenhouse best. It threatens and threatens to die all summer long, as fuchsias will, and burgeons as soon as it gets in the moist heat of the Pod.

Abutilon megapotamicum, a mallow from Africa that I love. All my cuttings rooted, uh oh. Big plant. Better be giving some away.

Geranium "Bolton," developed in a town next door to sister Barbara's in Massachusetts.
One of two variegated bougainvilleas, zany plants that sulk outdoors all summer (not hot enough!) and bloom like crazy all winter in the greenhouse. Just when I need them most!
A new hibiscus, one I saw at the grocery store late this summer and snapped up like a horticultural crocodile. Now I need a big ol' hibiscus like a hole in the head but that COLOR. Please. Tangerine. Never seen it before, hadda have it. I do love my mallows.

It makes me smile and holler. Meanwhile, Mary Alice the hibiscus tree is taller than I am, with a 2" thick trunk, and she's in the living room. A cutting of Mary Alice is blooming for the first time today in the greenhouse. Nancy rooted it for me, in case Mary Alice goes south. And so it goes, on and on. Plants are banks of precious DNA, which you can split off and propagate and downsize and start over indefinitely. That's one of the reasons I find gardening so satisfying.

It's probably illegal to propagate this brand-spanking new tangerine hibiscus. No kidding, plant growers are patenting everything as they bring it out. Pah. I am a notorious scofflaw where plant propagation is concerned. Come and get me, lock me up. A plant this good should be spread around.

Time to water! Gotta go! Nothing like a warm, humid greenhouse on a dreary winter day. If you've even been thinking about getting yourself one, just do it. And you, too, can face the first frost without dread, and cackle when you open the door on your little room crammed full of summer.

Halloween in Marietta, Part 2

I stood slack-jawed at the adorability: A baby skunk, doling out candy for the revelers, and almost bringing me to tears for the echoes of toddler Phoebe she conjured up.
Her mother confessed, "I keep weeping, she's so sweet, and she takes it all so seriously, making sure everyone gets a piece of candy."


I had to use flash on her, just to try to capture those apple cheeks. But oh, I love shooting without flash, and seeing what happens.
The images got progressively spookier as it got darker.
something about the blur makes Liam look like a toddler...going back in time, as Phoebe morphs into the real Hobbes, or Krazy Kat...
They meet up with their wonderful Granny and GeePop, who always put on the dog for trick-or-treaters, with the scarily realistic and locally famous Witch of Warren Street taking over for Elsa as GeePop plays spooky arpeggios on the organ just inside the parlor.
A zomb0-lantern
My favorite jack-o-lantern of the night. His wife says he always carves the same one, every year, and she's tired of it. I'm not! I made sure he knew that I thought it was brilliant. It's so...hopeless.

Our jack-o-lanterns at home. Liam's design, Bill's pig, and Phoebe and my zombie hamster.
Counting out the loot with cousin Gus.

Now that's scary!

I'll leave you with some of my favorite captures from Halloween night.
You had to go up on this porch and get your candy corn. There was nobody there, just the house's eyes staring out at you. Eeeee!

I loved this cat on this porch, and I caught Liam in the porch light.

And then something really weird happened, and Liam became something Other, something slumping off Goon Island.

It was a magical night. And it smelled so delicious.

Halloween '09

Oh, it was a lovely evening, after all. It was as if the saints all smiled at once, parted the clouds, stopped the rain, and let the children play.


Calvin and Hobbes, ready to go!

Halloween's weather did not bode well for us. It poured all morning, never got out of the 50's, and the forecast was dire: rain, with a low of 38. Yow. Phoebe with a scratchy throat and full sinuses, Liam with a fervent desire not to ruin his costume with a coat...a mom's dilemma. We multilayered long underwear beneath the costumes, packed umbrellas, and went. And the rain stopped and it stayed about 60 degrees, and it was luverly.

First, to suit up and get to the elementary school Halloween party, which was small and thus much more sufferable than usual, thanks probably to porcine flu thinning the ranks of little revelers.

Electrician's tape came in handy this year in our costume-making efforts. There is always tape involved, since I am nobody's seamstress. I was worried that Liam would find his Calvin "costume" too prosaic, but some hair wax and a sign on his chest helped. He never complained. He just wanted it to be true. He IS Calvin, in his mind.
Jessi and MacKenzie were crayolas.

Daddy kept having to re-do Calvin's spikes. Ow ow ow!
Phoebe's sisterly tenderness toward her younger brother, which extends to teaming up with him for Halloween, and attending his elementary school party and competing in the costume contest, never fails to melt our hearts.
They didn't win anything but our hearts. I kind of doubt the judges knew who Calvin and Hobbes are, but c'est la vie. It didn't hurt their feelings, and that's what matters.


We drive the kids into town to trick-or-treat, since there are so few homes out our way. I always forget until the moment we get out of the car that Marietta smells absolutely amazing on Halloween. The sweet gums and sycamores that line the streets have an intoxicating, spicy scent that is more intense when the fallen leaves get wet. I go into an instant state of rapture and stay that way as the evening comes on. Between the scent of wet leaves and the feast of visual images of trick-or-treaters and front porches and jack-o-lanterns lit in the night, I am in heaven.
Two little bugs compare their wings.
Sophi and Oona, our treasured little girlfriends.

Eyob and Abel, surprised by the flash, and trying to figure out what in tarnation is going on all around them.
The warm light of porches, the friendly smiles, the ghoulish masks...
The folks who go all out...
A tiger's stripes, melting into buttermilk.

I will continue tomorrow. I'm overloading on visual and olfactory memories, not to mention Almond Joys.