Acair Fearann

The perils of summer in New England…..A sketch of an unfortunate boating party caught out in a thunderstorm in an August night sometime around 1880.

I rather like the turtle down at the corner!

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The sun has burned the bars of the clouds and the sky has opened in the west.

These hills, in their humble old age, are down to their last verse. In the next geologic age they will be sand in the water and the wind. When I turned into them, following the water and the sun, and no man’s map today on the back roads, there were no soaring vistas, no great edifices of man, but the oak and rock. No tourist guidebook will ever mark these hills for they are nothing special….nothing but life itself.

And perhaps this house has come to that long last verse: that point when the singer knows one song ends rising higher and the breathless pause before another begins. Perhaps within the times of those living this house will become something else than what it is in this present moment. And the only prayer for the future is that it may be as loved.

But the beauty of the life that is here in this evening will remain in God’s hand if nowhere else, the sparrow’s wings are no less glorious than the eagle’s.

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Always, subtly changing.  I am intrigued by the tennis court pines (on the left), they are still at that nice even stage of young growth as contrasted with the Norway spruces in the center. The two that stand out in the group are actually an old pine (far left) and an old spruce (right)  But, I expect within a few years that flat line will state to change, right now at barely 50 years old they are all young trees.  The Douglas Spruce that dominates the East Lawn? Barely visible, see center. For scale, the top of the chimney is just shy of 40 feet. It is a little odd to see the trees from a distance, I still think putting it all in a wind tunnel would be fascinating!

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In light of last week’s valiant attempt by a truck to back down the drive and the long string of people who firmly believe that they can to turn around on the lawn,* I am considering appropriate driveway signage. The problem is that this is the day of the GPS and the twilight of navigational common sense…

The driveway enters off the main road (the house/GPS entrance) and exits on the side road. It is a corner lot, and the drive curves through it. The ‘front’ entrance is narrow, tight for trucks, and backing down it is a recipe for expensive disasters. However, from the front entrance there is no way to tell that it goes through and doesn’t end like most modern drives in a midget garage entrance. Hence the tendency for trucks to try backing down it. What it actually does is swing down to the barnyard, which accesses the side road, and is large enough for an oil truck to turn around in.

Given that, would this make sense if posted at the front entrance or would it have delivery people claiming foul? The last line is an attempt to make the people in cars lay off on the lawn donuts.

‘No Trucks

Deliveries at Green Barn

First right on X lane

One way traffic’

Or should it be:

‘No Backing

No Turning

Exit at Green Barn on X lane’

The second might be better? The trucks will still beat up their paint job, and I’ll need to consider fixing that.

*Thou Shalt Not drive on my lawn, one of my hang-ups!

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(I’d been thinking of writing on something else)

(The garden goes along wonderfully)

Anyway, boxes! I like boxes. Not the anonymous boxes of today, mind you. I have a soft spot for the old ‘everyday’ boxes.* But I particularly like the little, decorated boxes designed to hold? Jewelry, change, whatnot, nothing at all. I was contemplating some just now** and marveling at the breadth of time and distance that they encapsulate. From some given to me: mother-of-pearl from Cairo, spalted hickory from New England, lacquer with Asian cranes from a distant Miami flea-market, the trick box with the band of inlay. But then all the others: the stamped/gilt leather of the turn of the century, that my grandmother and her mother used for jewelry, to the old, old box my many greats grandmother used. The marquetry boxes of Europe, the carved wooden boxes of southeast Asia, the lacquer/pearl boxes of Korea, the sand paintings on the boxes from Albuquerque, New Mexico, the c.1900 California date box, re-purposed for a fan collection. The dates were from a family member’s farm… The metal boxes stamped with the date and initials of a long gone wedding or christening.

The decorative arts at their finest. And is that so bad?

*We have a particularly Good collection of old hard liquor boxes, all empty mind you! Courtesy of the Cocktail era.

**Well what do you think about while getting dressed for a meeting?

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