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Here and There…Now and Then |
Barbed Wire
It’s gotten cold again and it was raining off and on today but I went out anyway. I took a few pictures of birds but Dorothy and I both like this better than the bird pictures, so this is today’s entry. There’s a picture of a woodpecker in Extras.
ERN
It was a chilly day today but I went for a short walk in the woods, nevertheless. Spending all day at my desk is all well and good. It does, after all, pay the bills. But for my own physical, mental, and emotional well being it’s not a bad idea to go outdoors now and then. Cathy has been looking at a couple USGS topographic maps from 1945 that I printed out for her. They cover Rockville and the area to the east and she was interested in the fact that Avery used to go through to Baltimore Road. I knew part of that already because the road that comes out next to Rockville Cemetery is Avery Road. Today I walked down from the Croydon Creek Nature Center on what remains of that stretch of Avery. I came across this piece of rusted metal in the woods and thought it might make a nice photo. It’s from an IntERNational Harvester truck of some sort.
Rusty Chain
Outside my office, between the parking lot and the woods, there are a half dozen wooden picnic tables, stacked one on top of the other. They are chained together, presumably to keep any of them from wondering off (as it were). The chain is a little the worse for being out in the weather all the time. I didn’t really test it of course, and for all I know it’s still strong enough to stand up to average abuse. Nevertheless, it looks a bit weakened and a strong piece of iron inserted between the sides of a link and twisted might snap the chain quite easily.
Horseshoe and Spikes
At the top of our driveway Cathy had a few potted plants. Well, I say a few but there are quite a lot, really. It’s actually a nice garden and since we aren’t going to be putting our car in the garage in any case, it doesn’t really matter that it’s blocking them out. On occasion I’ve had to move a few plants just to get something large in or out but generally there’s enough of a path for that. In addition to the plants there are a few “ornaments” of one kind or another. I don’t recall where this horseshoe came from, or the iron spikes, for that matter. I particularly like their color when they are wet from the rain.
Bolt Cutters
I mentioned that Iris and Seth bought a house. There is a shed in the back yard and the sellers left it empty and with the doors unfastened, but with a locked padlock on the door. It would have been nice for them to take the lock off or leave a key for it, but perhaps they had lost the key and couldn’t be bothered to do anything about it. I took my bolt cutter and chopped it off this week and thought I’d post a photo of this handy tool. It’s the sort of thing you only need once in a while but it sure is handy when that time comes. This pair has seen some heavy use and the cutters are nicked pretty badly but when cutting things like padlocks (and bolts, of course), pretty isn’t generally a consideration. It came from my grandfather’s and I worked for him two summers when I was in high school. We did the bulk of the maintenance of the small rental properties he ran in his retirement. I learned a lot those two summers and as much as I didn’t enjoy crawling under a house in the mud to find a plumbing leak, I learned a lot that’s been useful to me in later life.
Rusty Gears
Cathy and I went for a walk at the Montgomery County Agricultural History Farm Park today. There’s an area with old farming machinery on either side of the road and I took a few photos there. I’ve always liked machinery and sometimes think mechanical engineering would have been a good career choice for me. If I had been a better student when I was a student, it might have been possible, even. There’s not much use playing the What If game, though, I suppose.
Note, I generally try to post photographs at least reasonably close to when thy were taken. In mid January I ran out of space on one of my hard drives and it’s taken me until mid April to get the new one installed (laziness, mostly). It’s finally up and running and I’ll see what I can do about getting caught up. Thanks for your patience.