On Friday I grabbed my camera and walked next door to my parents' house to take some pictures as the sun was going down. There's so much over there to photograph: the barn, the pump house, the wood burning furnace, the graveyard of Volkswagens, the silo, the stray bowling ball outside the pump house, the windmill, the dead air boat, etc.
This is the doorway to the pump house. Those bushel baskets are ancient and were once used by my grandfather to transport daffodils from the field to the barn. We the pickers would take our bunches of flowers and put them in these baskets. A bunch consisted of a certain number--12? 15? I can't remember - of flowers bound by a rubber band. A tractor pulling a wagon would come along and pick up all the baskets. At the barn those baskets would be submerged in buckets of water while they waited to be packed in cardboard boxes for destinations unknown.
These very same baskets are also used for crabs. Speaking of which, crab pot season started this past Tuesday. What this means is that the guy down the creek from us who sets pots will go out every single morning and every single evening, no matter what, to set and check his pots. He's as reliable as the sun rising in the morning and setting in the evening.
I could write quite a bit about crab pots, but seeing as this is supposed to be a Silent Sunday, I ought to stop talking right about now.
If not sooner.
8 comments:
Ah, a wonderful photo! Thanks cbw! Your grandfather growing daffodils reminded me that my Dad started off farming growing gladiolis...Dame Edna Everedge would have been pleased!
I don't remember much about the flowers, I must have been too small at the time...but I do remember a lot abut cutting sprouting potatoes, planting, growing, shifting irrigation pipes, picking washing and bagging potatoes. Not to mention taking them to market in the city in the middle of the night. I quite enjoyed helping! I bet Dad was pleased! Not that he ever made any money..we were always poor, and he finally went bankrupt! mmm...but that was a whole other story!
We had thosed bushel baskets too. I don't know what we ever did with them, but they sat stacked like that.
Have a wonderful Sunday. Did your daughter's soccer team win?
Annie - That is fascinating about your father, especially the potato growing. That's hard work, if I recall (my mother grew some a long time ago, and all I remember is dirt underneath the fingernails for days on end).
Grandma J - Those baskets are very versatile and are also used to haul fruit and vegetables. Daughter's soccer team DID win, and Daughter scored a goal. She also played goalie for the first time (the entire first half) and blocked 3 shots (the other team didn't score at all).
Have a great Sunday.
Where were the ducks? Already zipped in their tent? Now I want a crabcake.
A good friend of my family's is probably one of those crabbers you see. He's been doing it for years. God bless em, those guys work their tails off to bring home their payload. And may I add how delicious that payload is?
This is a terrific shot, its such a good composition it cries out for a story
MPM - We'll have to get you some crab cakes when you're here in July. (I believe the ducks were in fact already zipped up for the night. Sigh.)
KADouglas - I'll bet you're right. The crabbing community is a small one and dwindling more and more, sadly.
Daryl- Thank you. There are plenty of stories about this pump house and the nearby barn. A while back my mother told about how she once teetered above this pump house on a very unreliable ladder as she attempted to return a baby racoon to its mother who lives in the windmill above this. Thankfully she lived to tell the tale...
Admit it: you are a world-class photographer and you've been lying to all of us about your, *ahem*, lack of skills. You select from among dozens of the same shot, bracketed for the perfect balance of contrast and brightness. Then you stay up all night slaving away over PhotoShop, tweaking the shot to perfection.
Right? Because don't tell me these are straight-out-of-the-camera. I've seen those and they look NOTHING like your pictures.
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