I’ve posted a number of photos here and I thought I’d shift things a bit and post some photos of objects from what I think of as our museum. It’s not a museum really, it’s more like a library with objects that have stories. Unfortunately the photos are from posts I made in 2010 on a commercial site and reposted on our website and if I start talking about things it’s easy to Google. So there will be very little text.

What I can write about is the fact that the items shown occupy points of time within which economies were changing. For some of the objects, those made in a particular region in England, a change had taken place at the end of the seventeenth century from a focus on armour making to one devoted to precision tools and devices. Another change was taking place from localized family production units to factory production. The intermediary stage was the factor who went to a pub on Saturday and met makers of tools, purchased the tools, and provided raw materials for production of more tools.

The hacksaw frame and table vise were produced this way, in an 18th century style but made in the 19th century. The sugar nippers were probably made elsewhere in England, again in an 18th century style but probably dating around 1850.

The pastry wheel (or pie crimper) and plane are American. We purchased the pastry wheel at a midwestern auction in the 1980s. It has a walnut handle, forged and lathe turned wrought iron wheel holder, and a brass wheel, and dates around 1850. The plane was made in Massachusetts around 1800 and has the typical relieved wedge of that era and region.

This is sort of based on a conversation I had with my partner a few nights ago.

What started it was my finding a file on the computer I’d forgotten I’d had. A newspaper article, an obituary, for a woman who I love who died in 2006. I write love because it never was in the past tense and she’s still important to me for many reasons.

That evening my partner and I were talking about her and her house a thousand miles away, a 1940s Spanish colonial style with an interior walkway/hall with floor to ceiling windows looking out onto the garden. We have plants from that garden growing here.

We were talking and I was going on about how there’s a catalog of graphic triggers for me – women’s fashion, like bold patterns or the colors red and black, or simple things like lipstick. Back in the ‘70s she was the only woman I was close to who wore lipstick. This woman’s costume when dressing up included crimson lipstick to go along with a crisp white blouse, long black skirt, boots, and a Spanish-style black hat. She was beautiful. When I come across 1940s photos of Slim Keith, there are some which are spot on with my memories of this woman.

And then my mind took a lurch and I started to talk about another woman. She was the friend of a third woman who had been the victim of a grisly rape and murder in the 1980s. The other woman had been a witness for the prosecution. We were friends then lovers in the ‘70s and are friends now.

Anyway, I was in the library of the small town my partner and I lived in back then, almost 30 years ago. I was browsing through the library’s new books and while I don’t normally read true crime there was a book which caught my attention. It turned out to be about the murder and trial and amongst the photos was one of this other woman I knew. I hadn’t realized how hot she was or how beautiful until I saw that photo and I told my partner this. How I hadn’t realized. My partner knows the woman and smiled. Yes, she’s beautiful and hot.

And then I told my partner how I hadn’t realized how beautiful she was/is until about 1980. And then I’m having to explain myself. How when we first met I felt like I was enfolded in her. I wasn’t an observer. I’d had no time to go through the process of discriminating and objectifying.

What I’m writing isn’t going to say anything important, except there are people who are important to me for various reasons and everything’s fuzy because even back then there were so many interlocking strands and digressions. It’s even more so now. I touch the leaves of the daughters of the plant she gave us, the first woman, and I remember her house and the crimson lipstick.

I remember her saying to me, “You like pretty girls, don’t you?” And giving that special smile.

The second woman, she had her lips tattooed so her lipstick is permanent.

Our garden is the only large opening in the woods on our property. Trees tower along the edges, mostly hickories and remnants of the pine forest that replaced an abandoned field.

This is looking east from the road that passes between the garden and our home. The northern edge of the garden is visible through the trees.

Late summer was extremely dry and leaves started to fall early for some trees, poplars and maples especially. A few weeks ago there was a short sprinkle that came and went within 10 minutes. I looked out the window and on one of our porches the wet leaves and their patterns were eye catching. So I took a couple of photos.

It’s spring and along with the woods getting ready to burst into green there have been wind storms. The worst so far felled several trees across roads on our property.

This was the largest, a red oak across the road to the Sheep Rocks. This photo was taken from the main road, southeast of our home, where the road to the Sheep Rocks meets the main road.

The oak was what Kelsey calls a Goddess Tree — trees that have two main branches from a short thick trunk. The largest branch is about 24 inches in diameter.

Past the tree looking down the road to the Sheep Rocks. It was in this area years ago we came across some deer nesting. According to our neighbor they now nest up on the hill to the right.

And since it is spring, trees are in the woods getting ready to leaf out.