IMAGES OF HOME

Images left over in the hundreds snapped around house and yard as Fall draws on. This lamp casts a rosy glow day and night in the living room corner where lots of the plants and crystals live.

Luck Bush through the sitting room window---it grew even redder as the days went on, and is now a paling pink, as the leaves fall.

Books beneath the little park bench in the sitting-room corner. They're mostly gardening books, for it's so wonderful just to reach out and take whatever my hand reaches, delving into the beautiful flowerbeds and lawns and estates of people who are dedicated to gardening. I love the small books, as well, with their histories and habits of bulb and seed and shoot, and all the delights and rewards of cultivating the beautiful bounty.

A great pile of the books are about Scotland, for it had called to me all of my life. I don't know if it's my Scots ancestors, scrabbling a mutton-neep existence from those rugged Highlands for centuries, bathless and warring and smeared with woad, or perhaps Sir Walter's great Waverleys, Summer-read up the same big tree as Nancy Drew and Tarzan, or just some primal gene which understands the grim and the beautiful, the warrior and the poet, of those rocky crags and heather-covered hills, with the razed-and-pilfered Hadrian-stone festooned like beads shining white as bone round croft and field. I longed for it, and now I've been.

I made my visit in 2003, stepping down from the bus with my shoes in my hand, and bare feet to honor the history, respect the soil. I absorbed all the air and aura and REAL of it I could manage in those few days, and re-live it now and again from my little chair beside that tower of books.

A gourd from the Amish Market---I loved her, for she was the very image of a shy goose. She's sat on the couch, on a dresser, on the coffeetable, and in front of this mirror casting coy glances at her own reflection. Now she's cozying up to the popcorn balls---maybe she's hungry. I hope she dries well, for I'd really like her to stay with us.

The coffee-table, arranged from bits and pieces around the room by Sweetpea, over a doily crocheted in the Fifties by her Great-Great Mammaw J. That woman could go to the little drugstore, hide out beside the rack of magazines, study the picture on the cover of Workbasket, and come home and MAKE the thing before supper. I have no such skills.

Lavender from the garden, drying beside the Autumn swag of leaves across the door between Caro's kitchen and sitting room.

Across the door, and a peek at some of Caro's Hall teapots. Dozens on the shelf run round the wall.

The lamp again---side-by with all sorts of crystally things, from Swarovski to glass plinths to prisms. That "diamond" down in the leaves is the one that everyone picks up to look at.

And could you tell what mineral THIS might be?

"Thy bounty shines in autumn unconfined
And spreads a common feast for all that live."-

James Thomson