5 posts tagged “door”

I have been walking by this certain house, it is abandoned. It has two houses behind it, well a house and a concrete building. The concrete one gave me a creepy feeling, and there was a strange yucky smell too. Well, yesterday on my walk there were people working on the main house in the front. I asked if I could go in the back yard and take pictures as there seemed to be a lot of interesting stuff back there. He said yes, there was a lot of stuff back there and to have at it. So for the next hour or so I was back there. It was crazy! There was old garbage rotting back there, not like coffee grounds and junk mail garbage but things like old machinery, an early television, tires, short wave radios, speakers, metal drums, etc. Lots of rusting relics.

I walked back there and saw piles of stuff everywhere. So I take it slow, start with the garage house first and just work my way through the yard. Apples from the four apple trees squishing below my feet, stumps from newly cut bushes and trees grabbing my toes. Taking it slow, taking it all in. There is so much to see.

I must have taken close to 200 pictures (love digital!) I am getting better at framing at taking pictures. When I started taking pictures I would take 100 pictures and save maybe 25 after I cropped them down and changed the shading etc. But now, it seems I did not touch very many of these at all. I took over 300 pictures on my walk and posted almost 200 on flickr. I just feel like I don't want to miss anything. I get home and start to look through the pictures from my walk on the computer and I see details I had not seen while I was there and wished I had.

It seems I have opened a door inside of myself, I like what I have found.

While I was walking along the railroad tracks one day, balancing myself on the rail, looking at the field on the other side. You cannot see this from the road below. There was this huge open space right along the tracks, and a couple of abandoned buildings and a lot of farm equipment rusting out there too. This building I saw and tried to zoom my camera in on, I could not figure out what it was made of. So I decided the next day on my walk I was going to knock on the front door and ask if I could take some pictures in their back yard.

I knocked on the door the next day, my heart pounding, my feet creaking the old wooden porch boards. A man answered the door, he had long scraggly hair and his eyebrows were tattooed on along with tattoo eye lids. and he had an enormous smile on his face. I introduced myself and asked if he would not mind if I went and took pictures in his backyard. He asked why, I said I am teaching myself photography and his backyard is very interesting. Especially the old building. He said OH, the battery house. Is that what it is made of? Batteries? He said yes. In the early 20's and 30's it had been a battery manufacturing shop that went out of business when the depression hit. He said that they were not allowed to build on this lot until they cleaned it up, back in the day they would just dump the lead and battery acid right into the ground. Now he is stuck with millions of dollars in clean up bills. All very interesting. The batteries that make the walls of the building are not made of plastic, I think it is asbestos. I was shocked to see green beans and other veggies growing out there. A huge apple orchard too.

There was so much stuff out there just rotting into the poison soil. So here is the Battery house and a teeny bit of history. : )

Crunching leaves under my feet warm breeze on my face, sweater sleeves tied around my waist. This was my day on Monday. I walked until I found an abandoned house, houseS. There were three on the same lot. You just could not see two of them from the street. It was for sale, so I walked into the neglected yard. The smell of dust and mildew soon replaced the smell of decaying leaves and the joes store potato wedges (they always smell so much better than they taste) I kept pushing myself back into the bushes. It was a lost world, a fairy playland. Windows were broken, the walls were cracked, the paint peeling. I trespassed, I don't learn lessons well I guess. When I was in the back yard, I could not get to the other side, because of all the blackberry brambles. I went around, the back door was open. I cautiously went inside.She used to have a dog, there are leashes and a dog pen. i was snapping photo after photo, quickly. I felt like at any moment someone was going to yell at me wondering why I was there, my only answer would be Curiosity, exploration, art, and admiring the beautiful decay.Would that answer be enough? The thought vanished as I saw the garage door open, I went in. It carpeted with papers and books that have been soaking up Washington rain for the last decade. There were jars hand made preserves, pears and applesauce, jam and pickles. All waiting to be consumed, all out of a garden that used to inhabit the backyard. A straw broom almost worn down to the stitches holding it together. Broken chairs that have so many stories to tell.  I  turn to leave and I see outside of the back door not the hidden yard that is overgrown but the way it WAS. Two apple trees, neatly cropped, and two pear trees on the opposite side. A laundry line with rose patterned sheets blowing in the summer breezes, a sweet little metal gate leading to the vegetable patch where a large basket sits still. I saw what it looked like before the blackberries, before the tall grass, before the broken glass, before the wind blew the large wooden fence to the ground. I felt a pain in my chest wanting so badly to hang clothes on the line, I know that will never happen there again, picking apples for a pie, it all seemed so romantic, so beautiful and simple.

Next spring I am going to plant some fruit and veggies, put up a large laundry line.

puddles, my neighbors were probably shocked to see this 34 year old woman splashing in puddles like she was 8 years old. I did not care. The slap of the souls of my boots hitting the top of the puddle, the crackling of displaced water on the road. It was wonderful. : ) I was on my way home when I saw this womans garden, I have always admired it. She still has flowers! Lots of them! All that color on such a gray day, it felt warm like sunshine. So here are a few pictures I took today, I hope you enjoy them.