Afternoons at the Farm with Dad

I went to the Farm today and spent the afternoon with Dad & Roxi. Here are some of his latest paintings, I don't know why my camera didn't get the color quite right, must have had the wrong setting. He keeps getting better. Brandi & I went to the gallery crawl last night and were unimpressed with most of the paintings. Bran pointed out that we are spoiled by Dad & Connie's paintings. Connie is his girlfriend and an artist and they paint together and live apart; the perfect arrangement!

As soon as I got there he read to me an article about a man who is a gun lover and he & his long time friend had two .44 specials customised together so they have matching guns. It made me think of those "Best Friends" gold hearts you can get that are scored down the middle to be snapped in half so each friend can wear their half of the heart, commemorating the bestfrinedship! So romantic.
I love being read to. Before I left he read excerpts from a wonderful book about a writer who loves Tolstoy...but I will wait to read it myself before I try to give the book report here.

We walked out near the back of the property; I marveled at how much the landscape has changed. There's no point in mourning the changes, so I find ways to accept them and appreciate the new scenery. Here is a view I hope will never change, a dog swimming in the big pond! This is a spot where Dad has built a beaver blind to hunt the adorable furry brown bastards who conspire to destroy the pond. They come back every year, and Dad would be disappointed if they didn't.

Roxi loves the water and gets thoroughly filthy every trip to the Farm, as she should. She gets covered in the brown/green muck that lines the bottom of the pond and fosters countless bacteria and critters of all types. Even though it kind of stinks I love the smell. It smells like netting and playing and swimming and brings a flood of memories; adventures with dogs, horses and my sister .

Later, back in Charlotte I bring the dog in the shower with me and we wash the mud out, watching the little river of pond water trickle down the drain, smuggling Farm microbes into the City water system.Take that city sewer!

I have to make fun for myself here in town, away from pleasures of the country. How is it that I live in Charlotte and not out in the country? Well, it won't be forever...

Subtle evidence of nature can be found here as well as out at the Farm if you just look where you are going. I found these tiny feathers while walking the dog this week. The little gray downy feather is so cute! I love miniature things and I think it begs to adorn the skull of one of these plastic skeletons that I can't get enough of. I found this tiny "pram" at a thrift store and painted over the "country home blue" with a more appropriate black. Those old baby carriages give me the ultimate creeps! They look like they are going to eat the baby to me; I don't trust them...

I'm going to position this skeleton to be pushing the baby carriage, they are in perfect proportion to each other. I think it might be too creepy to put a baby skeleton in the carriage, so maybe it will just contain some little treasures like acorns and feathers; the skeleton pushing around these collected valuables like a deranged bag lady. Either that or I will paint a tiny acorn like a baby skull and wrap it up in the shape of a swaddled bundle of joy to lay snug in the carriage...we shall see.

It was a gorgeous October Saturday and I still have Sunday to look forward to!

I wonder what tomorrow will bring?

Ahh...

Roxi's first ride in the Green Truck! I don't know how, but it was. Yesterday we went to Home Depot; being Tuesday I didn't even write because it was Tuesday!
I love driving this truck! I shouldn't even post a picture of it with the instrument panel so rusty. I'll just add painting that to a long to do list...

Here are Roxi & Scrub on the living room floor...

Scrub is mostly an outdoor cat but he comes in through the kitty door when Mixie isn't around to beat him up. He is a sweet boy and a wonderful father to his two sons. I had him neutered before they were born and maybe that's why he would play with them, watch them and clean them himself. He is no dead beat Dad!

He's very patient and tolerant. When Roxi manhandles him, he just purrs; he seems to enjoy any kind of attention. He is so friendly that some of the neighbors let him into their houses and he just hangs out with them.

Today was a beautiful end of September day! I got up early, got to drive the truck, go to work, do some woodworking, walk the dog and now I'm entertaining the idea of doing a little crafting. My creative juices have not been flowing lately...even when I try to just jump in and make myself start. Nothing. Zilch.

Hmm, lots of projects I should be working on but came seem to get anywhere with them creatively. Maybe just work on something easy & light like the monogram sign I got to paint for my friend Heather who is newly married. I'm going to include things in it I know she loves like sparrows, shamrocks, the color green and a "K" for her married name Ketcham...

I will post the results if they are worthy...

Monday morning

I am trying to catch up with pictures from this weekend. There are so many visual delights and memories out at the Farm, it's a lot of ground to cover.

This is a tiny old family plot that sits by the side of the road between the asphalt and the crops, soybeans right now I think.

When I was little I would beg Dad to stop the Red truck on the way out to Steve's so I could hop out and push the weeds aside to read the markers. If memory serves me, they were all from around the Civil War a.k.a. the War of Northern Aggression. There were some tiny miniature ones for babies. Babies, not that that doesn't still happen today but certainly not in the numbers suffered throughout history. Walk through any old cemetery and you'll find numerous headstones with markers that have dates with beginnings and endings too close together; anywhere from a few precious years apart to the same day.

I have always had an affinity for old cemeteries. Mom says I get it from her grandmother, Granny Jeffcoat. I love them because they are beautiful, they have historical and sociological significance and I love all the different headstones and monuments. What's not to like? I also love reading all the names. It's nice for someone who died so long ago to have their name on someone's lips all these years later. I sit or stand and ponder; who was he, what was her family like, what did they love most about their life?
My dream house is an old white clapboard farm house with a tin roof, big Cedars all around, rolling hilly pastures (for the horses and the white mule) and back behind the house, a short horse ride away a small family plot surrounded by an iron fence with a big gate. That's my version of Heaven on Earth.



Within the pump house's miniature environment is this "sign". An old Miller Lite can. Of course it's the official beer of the Farm and probably came from our fridge, but I still wonder what it's doing in there. I miss when the cans looked like this; now they're all blue and modern looking.

Two shots of the smaller fenced in area to the left of the house. Dad planted the pines and a few cedars and oaks when I was little. Now look how they've grown! I didn't like the "boring" neat geometric rowshe planted them in when I was a kid. Now I love looking down a neat row of the tall pines; they are very park-like. I read once that settlers always planted orchards of fruit bearing trees where ever they could. All of that fighting nature and all its inherent disasters, trying to tame the wilderness; they would have really enjoyed having a space where nature was neat and orderly, where they put it.

These trees are all where Dad put them twenty something years ago.

Of course my camera batteries died by the time I got to the Visualite, so I stole this picture from a friend's post on facebook (or as call it Crackbook).

Here is me and Aaron Jacks. He and his wife went all out in 70s dress. Aaron's copious chest hair finally paid off in this polyester shirt!

I had a great time watching Jay, Dave, Aaron, both Bobs and various others goofing off just like they did when we were in high school. And they are good at it too. I miss all of them. I miss being 19 and having my whole adult life ahead of me, not knowing where it will take me...

I could hardly get to sleep with all the memories a storm in my brain. I won't even try to scrape that surface here, wouldn't know where to start.

The night made me very nostalgic and sentimental for my old friends and the old days. And they certainly weren't all that long ago! Why does it feel so distant?

Where the Hell did the last five years go? And it's only going to go by faster as time speeds up each year.

So I better get started making the most of it!

Farm Sunday

Mimi and Ellie, two peas in a pod...

Today I went for a very short slap dash visit out to the farm. It was the equal opposite Fall day from yesterday; cool, dry, sunny with a nice light breeze.

The girls got out Sugar Boy for a quick spin. Usually they jockey for position in taking turns riding Sugar, but today to the Victor went the spoils and that Victor was Ellie! You go girl!
She took a couple of spills a while back and cooled off on her horse riding. Her interests veered off into pellet gun shooting and various other kid weapons, which is good and "a part of this complete childhood". But we are all pleased to see her back in the correct unsaddled bareback position! Hooray! You know "Those ol' Sorry Pearson's" eschew saddles and other frivolous horse accoutrements. You don't need none of that.
Both girls are confident competent horsewomen, as one would expect. Ellie is in many ways more like me; gentle, quiet (sometimes) and patient while Cassie is just like Brandi...but more so(if it can be imagined); fearless, busy, restless, forceful. To say that Brandi bends things to her will is a bit of an understatement.
Once while watching her "persuade" her steed one uncle said of the uncooperative horse (I think it was Charger) "uh oh, that's his ass". Boy how!
We did not "learn" how to ride but took the same approach as with all our other talents, we did it "intuitively". You pretty much just stay on and when you learn horse body language it all comes together. It was easy.
Here is Ellie with her badge of honor; Ring Around the Butt. It's proof of one's saddle free coolness, showing off your horsewoman chops. It's also a sure sign that you've done at least one truly joyful thing today.

Dad tolerates me bringing Roxi out to the Farm even though she disrupts his cats. Thanks Dad! It seems cruel to go out there and leave a dog here in town, she loves it out there and is always so tired when we get home that I have to drag her out of the car she's so whooped.

When she and her Brother Angus get together, their intelligence drops off a bit. They're just having fun! I call them Dumb and Dumber.

When they are ten will they still carry on like this?

While the girls were with Sugar, the grown ups were on the porch and the dogs were frolicking I wandered around hunting for pictures.

Here is the first pump house of three on the Farm. It's cinder block with a deteriorating roof which you can see out of here...

When I was little I liked going inside to bask in the unusual sensation of being in a tiny building that was just my size. It's so cute!

It reminded me of the feeling I got whenever I visited the Grandparent Pearsons in Columbus and walked into the 1950s playhouse my granddad built for my Aunt Charme. He is an engineer and an architect and he built her the cutest miniature playhouse complete with tiny staircase leading up to a sort of attic/loft! Going in was a time warp for all the senses. If I ever smell that aroma again it will probably make me cry, the way remembered smells can do.

There was an old tiny piano that sounded as high pitched as it was undersized; I can still remember tickling the ivories whenever I entered! If there is anything at all that makes noise kids have to bang on it, it's a law of nature. There were mini dishes and even a real sink, a wee stainless steel thing. Everything you needed to play house was there. Oh and I just remembered one of the best parts-a porch light by the front door that really worked! That reminds me there was also an attic light that came on with a tug of the pull string. Those details made it very special; those were the kinds of things most people would have left out, but Wilbur Buckner Pearson knows what's good!

Oh how I wish I had a picture of it. If I could go anywhere in the Universe right now, it would be then and there, just for a minute. Just to smell that musty smell, hear the way sounds echoed in those close walls and look out the dusty kitchen window. I would turn on the porch light, play a quick "Mary Had A Little Lamb" on the piano and climb up those diminutive stairs to pull the light cord on and off, on and off while Granddad whistled a tune outside watering his palms.

I could always go back inside if it got too hot and marvel at all the cool tiny kitchen gadgets in a kitchen drawer or sit at Grandmother Pearson's vanity and clip her vintage costume jewelry to my ears and anywhere else on my clothes or hair.

Another favorite of visits there had to be enjoyed during the quiet privacy of grown up Nap time. I loved to tip toe into the living room and carefully, slowly pull open the door on the replica of Napoleon's carriage Granddad made. It was forbidden, but I could not resist my compulsion to open that doorway into the enchanted miniature environment he had created. Inside were richly upholstered button tucked velvet seats! The whole thing was no more than perhaps 10" high.

Their house was enchanted and seemed to permanently exist in the 50s, which made it an even better treat.

Now hopefully I can drift off into the dreaming world, become the dreamer and walk around in that time and space that lives in my mind. I can feel all the textures, inhale all the aromas, hear all the hypnotic sounds (old ceiling fan in Dad and Wilbur's room) and become infused in all the sensory delights of Military Rd.