Abandoned House

 There is a house not far from here that I love to visit. It's not falling down just yet. It's still got its windows and, thank God, its roof. For as the roof goes, so does the house.

 Daylilies riot along its sides in June and July, and the Virginia creeper is going for the roof, something that wouldn't happen if there were any people around to pull it down.

 

There's something so touching about seeing the old-fashioned variegated hosta hanging in there, blooming even, along with the ferns and the forbs that are marching in from the adjoining woodland. The empty rooms invite nose prints on the window (mine).

 

It has the funniest little Uncle Sam outhouse, too, and a funky screen nailed to the outside of the breezeway window.

The prettiest Tradescantia (spiderwort) still blooms along its flank.

 People don't plant that much any more.  

Its barns and outbuildings have been neglected for much longer. The farming operation probably went long before the people who lived in the house did. The outbuildings lean and stagger along the edge of the woods, waiting to be overtaken.

 and the goldenrod says here I come, I'll grow right through your siding

 and the barn says all right, I can't stop you. But I'm not afraid of you. It's the vines that frighten me.

 

 The rain and wind wears the siding of another shed down to thin plinky marimba keys, and there is rhythmic beauty in their music.

 The sun dapples some nameless material that covers a hole on a little shed, tarpaper, maybe, and inside the shed to my great surprise is nothing but an artificial Christmas tree, still strung with lights

 and for some reason this moves me deeply; it makes the former inhabitants more real to me. Maybe they had gotten too old to handle a fresh-cut tree.

Another shed's siding flares out like a skirt saying Come on in possums and 'coons, there's shelter to be had.

 and the lichens grow on Ohio sandstone on the spring house, before the vines cover it completely. I will come back again, in another season, to see what nature has wrought here, and I know it will be beautiful.

I wish this house to stand forever, but it's knowing it won't that moves me the most.