Other People's Stuff

I'm snooping in other people's barns on an early November six-mile run near my home. Around here, very few barns actually house animals any more. Some of them still shelter hay, but most of them are just big airy storage units for stuff that nobody wants any more. 

Which makes them crack for me, who used to haunt flea markets and tag sales back in the days when I still thought I needed stuff. Now, I drive by yard sales with a steely resolve not to be dragged in.

I'm already thinking about how much crap I have, and what I'm going to do with it all when I can't deal with it any more. A person with a lot of interests (art, music, natural history, books, science, horticulture, aquariums, batkeeping, specimen prep to name just a few) accumulates a LOT of crap in half a lifetime.

So I love to look at other people's stuff. Everything in this post is in the near barn with the silver roof, and the half a satellite deesh poking out of the carriage space. See photo above.

 Mmm. Beautiful blue Mason jar, nice limited palette composition.

A box of rags, and a robin's nest that must've fallen from a beam above. 

More jars and some gas pipeline, and some great Wyethian milkhouse light at the end of the corn crib.

A very large hole, with bedding. Could be woodchuck, probably is. But could be the work of a rat, too. Rats live pretty large for their size. 

I couldn't find any telltale hairs.

Mousestuff. Oh, don't worry. I will definitely remove the lids before microwaving.

Mice love jars. So do Carolina wrens! Oh my, what a place for a nest. Couldn't tell if the fledglings made it or not. Carolina wrens are such neat housekeepers there's rarely ever a telltale poop left behind.

This was a cool find: a whole box full of tape dispensers? Huh?

The white-footed mice have been opening hickory nuts here.

 Hickory dickory dock. The mouse ran up the tape dispenser.

The tape theme would continue upstairs. I was drawn by curiosity up the Stairway of Poop.

If you know raccoons, you know they love to poop on things. Preferably stairs, where your foot is about to go.

And at the top of stairs. Eating persimmons, I see. Me, too. Only I remove the seeds at the upper end of my alimentary tract, thank you.

At the top of the stairs, a sort of living room, one Vermeer would have liked to paint, if he liked junky interiors. An elegant wing chair, full of some kind of video games. Shazzam! I'd been hoping they were eight-track tapes. That would have been amusing, to go through the titles. But video games mean nothing to me. It's like looking at runes.

Absolutely love the lighting here. Yum.

Yes, I find these scenes compellingly creepy. Especially when I get the feeling people have been, um, doing stuff up here, amidst the animal droppings.

 A little privacy, please. Why would you need a curtain in the upstairs of a barn...? To try on clothes? Oh, never mind. Ishta. Uffda.

The mind does go places. Sometimes comes a bit unhinged.

The runes never speak.

Outside, the beeches whisper of Lothlorien, of a cleaner, more wholesome place, a place where I belong. And on I trot.