Autumn Drive

It’s autumn and the leaves on the trees are beginning to turn a bit, but mostly they are just turning brown and falling to the ground.  The dogwood in the front yard is red and there are many maple leaves on the ground already.  A few orange and red leaves here and there but mostly just brown.  It’s been a long hot summer….hmmmm, sounds like a movie title.  The only parallels between our summer of 2010 and the movie is that it was extremely hot during both and we had not rain to speak of after the first of July.  Our trees are stressed, our garden didn’t produce and I finally gave up on watering my plants due to the fact the we have well water and I was concerned about if it would hold out.  The weather has cooled now and we’ve had a little rain, very little, but still it has dampened the ground a time or two in the past week.  This past weekend we actually turned on the heat pump to warm up the house a little and knock off the dampness.  We drank lots of coffee and made soup.  When autumn came to Highland County it came with a bang.  We went from the 90s to the high 50s in just a few days.  Talk about a shock to the system.  Brrrrrr! 

On Friday, last week, I took a drive to my doc’s place to pick some meds.  It was a beautiful drive.  My doctor’s office is in the country so that gave me the opportunity to stop along the way for a few photos.  Across from her house is a little red brick school that now houses bales of hay just waiting for the winter feeding. 

This is the same building but from a different angle and turned into a black and white.

Near by is a side road lined with soybean and hay fields with this little building sitting just a few feet back.  From the front it resembles a small house, but with no windows on the one side. 

As I drove to the other side there was an entry door with this porcelain doorknob.  The latches were missing, hence the baling twine holding the door shut.

At the other end were double doors, so from that I assumed this must have been a carriage house or garage at some point in time.  Old buildings fascinate me, making my mind wonder back into the past.  I would love to know about the lives of the folks that lived and inhabited the buildings.  What were their lives like, what were their dreams for their future and the future of their families? 

Across the road from the carriage house was a hand pump sitting right in the edge of a soybean field.  At some point in time I’m sure it provided cool clear drinking water that was ‘fetched’ in a granite bucket and sat on a water bench in the kitchen of their home.  A home that no longer existed.  I can imagine in my mind of the children pumping water into a large tub that would sit in the summer sun to warm for baths.  It probably provided fresh water to their animals that supplied milk, eggs and meat to sustain them.  If I close my eyes I can see a small child swinging on the handle as he or she pumped water into a tin cup for their father when he came in from the fields.      

 As I drove through the countryside I stopped to snap pictures of the fields and animals that surround us in the country.

A corn field glistening gold against a beautiful blue sky.

Hay laying in wait of the farmer to scoop it up with the hay lift and haul it to the livestock in the middle of winter.

A cow enjoying the warm hillside of an Amish farm.

The hills beginning to turn the colors of autumn.

After snapping this picture of the hillside and turning the corner onto Cynthiana Road I met one of the Amish farmers of the community heading for market.  After all, it was Friday and that is one of their big market days.  I loved the rolling roadway behind him with the shadows of the electric poles and wires waving on it.  The road signs letting everyone know that they are entering Highland County and a reminder to us to share the roads with our Amish neighbors.

I’m headed home now for a cup of coffee and to enjoy the rest of my beautiful autumn day.  Hope you enjoyed my little journey through our countryside of Highland and Pike counties in Ohio.  It’s time to go the chicken coop.  Have a great day.

Sharon~TheEggGatherer