Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Commence...

I'd mentioned that I'd had the great good fortune or perhaps just dumb luck to have visited some wonderful country homes in the States and abroad. I've learned that a house in the country doesn't really have to be in the country at all but is more an attitude or state of mind than an actual location. I've seen pea-sized appartments in Manhatten that so comfortably mirrored their southern transplant's heritage and confidence that you'd swear there were tobacco fields just off the terrace... and seventeen floors down! Once on a visit to Manila I stayed the night in a Spanish colonial country home so far from the city that it was easy to imagine myself in another age and yet the formal atmosphere and over-the-top display of Spanish and Chinese antiquities made the villa feel more like a museum installation than a place to kick my boots off. A house in the country definitely has more to do with where the inhabitants are in their own lives than where the structure actually sits.
My house in the country isn't in the country at all. Of course it was in the country when it was built sometime around 1940. This part of Savannah was known for its dairy farms and so my address on Dutchtown Road. Even after the dairies vanished the couple who lived here managed a small strawberry farm. Eventually though, progress made them an offer they couldn't refuse and they sold their little place in the country. I'd always imagined it was so they could buy another little place in the country but the same encroaching civilization that drove them out brought me here.Ironically, I dare say the prospects of future encroachment will be the reason for me to look for another place, as in this stage of my life location isn't as great a concern as is privacy. For that reason alone I suppose this journal will be more about my passions and the search for another house in the country than about this particular one.  Where am I in my own life? Certainly not where I was ten or even five years ago and with any luck, the clinging vines that I once mistook for roots won't slow me down.

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The jewel is in the lotus...

The jewel is in the lotus...

maturing seed pods...


Sister Martha Delaney in the Lady Banks

A corner of my studio...

"Moses in the bulrushes" was worth a few more years on the shelf...

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Chipped, stained and cracked...
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The kitchen garden...

The kitchen garden...
New construction will eliminate the kitchen garden that's been such a joy for me and a family of fat opossums.

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Sister Martha Delaney came to me as an orphan at about 3 weeks old and showed an aptitude for climbing from the very beginning...