Happy Finds Close to Home

It's been a while since I last posted; I'm not much for cold weather, and I just couldn't talk myself into the chilly wind this winter.  I stayed cooped up for months, but a case of spring fever coaxed me from my self-imposed hibernation, on what turned out to be an absolutely gorgeous day. 

One of the greatest developments since the fall?  I have this fantastic person in my life, who not only loves exploring as much as I do, but actually scouted places for us to shoot!  This girl couldn't ask for much more.  It's pretty safe to say,  I was super excited when my new assistant brought me here.

This old farm house is actually only about five minutes from my own home in Johnson County.  It's funny, the place is so close to home, yet I would have never found it on my own.  Obviously, her days are numbered. The next strong storm would most certainly flatten the structure to nothing but a sad stack of jumbo-sized pick-up sticks. 

 

Inside, we carefully picked our way through a chaos of broken boards and  collapsing roof beams, clumps of crumbled concrete and fingers of sticky briars.

There was no floor left, just the occasional rotting stud that couldn't be trusted to bear any amount of weight. 

   

The ever present, on-going struggle of Man vs. Nature raged here. The outdoors were fighting their way in, one scrawny tree branch at a time, slowly but surely taking back the land to which it once belonged.

In the midst of perpetual ruin, I was stopped in my tracks by the view from a single crooked window.  Inside this house, in her last days, we were surrounded by a dreary, soulless gray- the rotting walls and crumbling door frames had been sucked of their color long ago.  As if to prove that nature will not be denied in it's glory, this solitary window glowed with a vibrant early spring palette.


The crumbling home wasn't the only treasure to be found on this sprawling piece of land.  My partner in crime and I further explored, and not without reward. 

Cacti and barbed wire-- the original Texas swag.  We tiptoed through lonely cow pasture, mounded high with cactus and dry grass, not a single bovine in sight.  The property was desolate and silent.  

As it turned out, not just Mother Nature offered a welcome splash of color...

A long abandoned work truck sat patiently, waiting indefinitely for the next load to haul, it's bright green paint slowly submitting to the elements and rusting away.

A Time for Everything

3 For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:

2 a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;

3 a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;

4 a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

5 a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;

6 a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;

7 a time to tear, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

~ Ecclesiastes 3:1-13~