No matter the season or the weather, Monday is laundry day in Ohio’s Amish country. That’s a given, since the Amish take seriously the scriptural admonition to do no work on the Sabbath. Other than necessary farm chores, the Amish do not “work” on Sunday. Consequently, it’s normal to see freshly washed clothes flapping on a laundry line every Monday. Given the size of their families, averaging about five children, laundry is done other days as well. But you can always count on seeing laundry lines on Monday all around Amish country.
As is evident in this photo, the Amish have become quite adept at stringing the wash so that it does not interfere with children, animals and implements can move freely around the yard. In this case, a sturdy line was affixed to a pulley high on the barn siding. The line connects to a similar pulley on the wall of the outbuilding. This makes it very convenient to hang the laundry without having to endure the wintry elements of a typical northeast Ohio winter. The pulley moves so that clothes are hung one garment at a time.
The pastel pieces of laundry really stand out against the solid red background of the barn. “Wash day” is my Photo of the Week.
My wife and I drove for four hours in a steady to light rain from our home in Ohio on our way to Virginia’s Shenandoah’s Valley. We never saw the sun. We passed through Judy Gap, West Virginia, a low spot in the razorback ridge of the nearly vertical Tuscarora quartzite outcropping, and started up yet another mountain pass. As we rounded a curve, this country chapel stood, basking in the bright sunshine that had broken through the heavy cloud cover.
The contrast between the little church’s illuminated white paint, silver roof, and the dark clouds in the background made this week’s Photo of the Week selection easy. “Country chapel” is it.
The red bricks of this abandoned one room school a few miles from my home stood in sharp contrast to the season’s first snowfall. Long since closed, this little red brick school once served as the incubator for future lawyers, farmers, housewives, teachers and business owners.
The outhouse on the right also played an important part in the school’s history. Right after World War II, the students gathered in the morning for class, but their usually prompt teacher wasn’t in the building. After several minutes, the oldest student, an eighth grader, went looking for the teacher, and found him sitting in the privy dead.
I always think of that story when I pass by the old Beechvale School. “Little red schoolhouse” is my Photo of the Week.
I dream a lot, vivid, colorful, goofy dreams. I often remember details of what I dream, too, including people and places.
Recently, I dreamt that my wife and I were in Florida, Sarasota to be exact. It was a very real and an unusually long, Rip Van Winkle type dream.
I must have lapsed into an uncharacteristically deep sleep. This dream seemed to last a week. At my age, sleeping through the night without waking at least once is rare.
But there I was, snapping photographs at my niece’s picture perfect wedding. The setting was on a lush lawn that separated an old money estate from the placid gulf waters.
At the open-air reception, we enjoyed tasty hors d’oeuvres, and a scrumptious, multi-course meal. A crescent moon hung at the end of a string of soft white party lights that illuminated the revelry.
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Just like that, the scene switched to the Celery Fields, a popular spot for birders to view beautiful tropical bird species. There I was standing on a platform practically in the middle of the marsh watching colorful species I’d longed to see.
Purple Gallinules, Wood Storks, Ospreys, and Roseate Spoonbills appeared. I saw more shorebirds, hawks, ducks, and even alligators. Only the scene changed again, and I was back at a lovely house where we apparently were staying.
Everything happened so quickly, yet the details were so clear, and the weather so marvelous, I didn’t want to leave. I hoped I never woke up from this surreal fantasy.
As dreams do, one location meddled into another. My wife and I were enjoying a wonderful lunch with my sister and her husband. Eating outdoors in ideal weather conditions just makes the food taste all that much better, even in dreams.
No trip to Sarasota, real or imagined, is complete without tickling your toes in the warm waters lapping onto picturesque Siesta Key Beach. This had to be a dream because the shorebirds out numbered the people on the normally crowded sugary white sands.
Still on the beach, the scene swiftly switched from the hot overhead sun to a magical sunset with golden rays streaming from behind clouds. Was I in heaven?
No, Pinecraft, the little Amish and Mennonite community in Sarasota. I’d been in the alley before between the Tourist Church and the post office, where the buses deliver the snowbirds from the north. Only the parking lot was empty. No Amish or Mennonite souls could be found.
Now I was in a jungle. Ferns, palms, massive trees with sweeping limbs, and crazy roots, and gorgeous flowers surrounded me. Walkways graced by cooling but strangely shaped canopies beckoned me.
In a blink, there was the bay again, teeming with birds, jumping fish, and boats of all sizes. Everything, sky, water, boats, was awash in some shade of blue, with gleaming white and silver buildings as the backdrop.
It must have been that fright and the harsh elements that jerked me back to reality. All I know is that when I lapsed into my deep sleep, our stunning back yard sugar maple was at its peak color. When I woke up, not a leaf was left.
It looked like another dreary fall day in Holmes County, Ohio. The forecast called for more rain, and chilly temperatures.
I sat sullenly eating my bowl of cereal. To the west, dark storm clouds gathered.
Suddenly things brightened up outside. The sun had broken through the morning haze, and in an instant, the world was full of light. I ran for my camera.
My eyes moved to the horizon a mile northwest of us. A white farmhouse glowed in the low, sharp-angled sun rays. The oaks and maples around the house radiated their peak colors.
Then I noticed Fryburg, the little crossroads that features a cemetery, a white clapboard church building, and a white house. The sun highlighted its deciduous trees, too.
The farmstead behind our house was equally illuminated. I snapped a picture from our back porch. I looked northeast and saw the top of another neighbor’s sugar maple wonderfully lit. I got that one, too.
The closer the storm clouds came, the greater the contrasts. I zoomed in on two maples split by a faded farm gate leading to a pasture high on the hill behind our house.
I thought I was done taking pictures, until I realized I had only just begun. A brilliant, short, stubby rainbow connected the approaching storm clouds with the golden earth below.
I had been so focused on the pretty details all around me that I had failed to see the obvious, a much more beautiful big picture. In my haste to capture specific images, I had overlooked the stunning scene in its entirety.
The complete setting was like a jigsaw puzzle of a lovely landscape. I had been photographing individual pieces of a much prettier picture. Once I saw the countryside as a whole, however, I clicked away, occasionally zooming in on the rainbow itself.
I couldn’t believe how short, wide and brilliant the rainbow was. Just as it began to grow into that familiar arch, the rainbow disappeared altogether. Clouds interfered with the sun’s rays, reducing the refracting light through the raindrops that create the sky’s promise.
Later I went to a local business, and took my camera to share my photos with the staff there. Before I could say anything, one person after the other asked me if I had seen the rainbow.
“Wasn’t it amazing?” I asked. When they began to share what they had seen, it didn’t resemble mine at all. For them, the rainbow was to the left, thin, and arching high into the sky. My short, fat rainbow was to the right of the storm.
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Their perspective on the rainbow was much different than mine. Yet, we had viewed the exact same thing.
Isn’t that the way with the world though? What we think is absolute and certain turns out not to be that way. All it takes is trustworthy input on the subject from a different perspective.
The two angles of viewing the same grandeur were legitimate, true, and exhilarating. As spectacular as my view was of the rainbow, those captured from a different angle were equally stunning.
Neither perspective was right or wrong. They just were, and both were amazing. What an important life lesson we had learned.
I was overjoyed to see the rainbow from my vantage point. To see the same scene from another’s perspective made it even more spectacular.
Photography keeps you on your toes. It enables you to always be on the lookout for that unexpected moment in time that will change in an instant. It forces you to focus on what’s right in front of you when you really intended to capture something else.
Such was my situation on the evening of Oct. 23, when we could view the beginning of a partial solar eclipse just before sunset. An Amish friend of mine, who is a real stargazer, invited me to watch the partial eclipse with him. I picked him up at his home near Charm, Ohio, and we drove a half mile up to the top of a ridge where a long limestone driveway wound down to an Amish farm. Three strands of barbed wire fence kept the livestock in the pasture west of the drive.
While we waited for the eclipse to begin, we tried to stay warm even though the sun shone brightly. Our ridge top viewing spot also exposed us to a persistent and chilly northwest wind. It was the combination of the sun’s slanting rays and the invisible wind that illuminated an amazing phenomenon. The sun exposed hundreds, if not thousands, of spider web strings that blew horizontally away from the barbed wire. Stitched to their barbed wire anchors, the strings glowed like silver thread in the setting sun.
I began clicking away. However, my first few shots were too close to the fence. The webs stretched out so far that they looked like scratches across the digital photo. I stepped to the left, and lowered the camera to capture my Photo of the Week, “Blowing in the wind.”
Low, thick rain clouds dampened any chance for a pastel sunrise. Overnight, a steady rain silently soothed the dry Ohio countryside.
The precipitation continued on the backside of a cold front that had passed before dawn. No one in the family restaurant when I met a friend for breakfast grumbled about the morning’s sogginess.
The polka dotted landscapes complemented the already picturesque scenery. You would think that red, yellow, crimson and orange spots on green and brown foregrounds would color clash with the soft leafy linear swaths of the rainbow backgrounds. But they didn’t.
One needn’t go out into the mushy elements to inhale the dampened beauty. Leaves cascaded diagonally outside eight-paned rectangles creating natural kaleidoscopes. Out of sight far beyond the windows, a Pileated Woodpecker squawked.
The precipitation regrouped, however, and quickly closed ranks, healing the cracks in the overcast. The quenching rainfall continued off and on the rest of the day.
Strong southerly breezes kept the temperatures tolerable, enough so that windows still stood partially opened to catch what could be the last of autumn’s real warmth. Even when the air chilled in early afternoon and clouds continued the gloominess, fall’s vivid colors boldly splashed bright beauty.
The entire situation seemed improbable, if not impossible. The grayness continued, but the colors radiated as if the dullness invigorated them. Decorative pumpkins glowed more orange. Burgundy mums became potted beacons, like so many buoys, and we were nowhere near a harbor.
Acres of field corn, once rolling waves in emerald oceans, now stood brittle dry and tan, mimicking sandy beaches awaiting high tide. It didn’t rain that much.
Commerce bustled. White-breasted Nuthatches scurried headfirst down a sugar maple’s crackled trunk, hopped to the feeder, and back to the tree satisfied. Blue Jay acorn wars ensued with flashes of blue and clarion victory calls amplified by the dampness.
Nightfall came even sooner than it should have. The persistent cloud deck manufactured more rain. With colder days too soon ahead, any farmer will tell you that it is much better to have the ground well moistened before it freezes.
With no prior killing frosts before this day, I didn’t want to even think that way. But I knew the farmers were right. The rains were welcomed.
It was only one day out of many such fall days. Yet the wet weather, the peeks of sunshine, the brilliant colors, and the lushness of the yards and pastures for this late in the season became a compilation of the cyclical suite we call autumn.
My choice would have been a wind still day filled with fluffy clouds sailing through cobalt skies, a bike ride in short sleeves or a walk in the woods, binoculars and camera in tow. Fortunately, the weather is not yet under human control.
Like my farmer friends love to say, “We’ll take what comes.” It’s what we did, and I was more than grateful to be able to do so.
We wouldn’t have missed this birthday bash for the world. As Maren’s grandparents, we were among the chosen few to attend her fifth birthday party.
Like we needed an excuse to visit. Nana and I would gladly traverse the 350 miles across eight mountain passes between our home and our daughter’s in Virginia’s always-lovely Shenandoah Valley to attend this special event.
Unfortunately, a dubious hitchhiker volunteered to accompany us on our trip. The nice Virginia weather changed to the stuff we had left in Ohio not long after our arrival in the valley.
We weren’t going to let a little discomforting inclemency spoil our celebrative spirits, however. The blue-eyed towhead Maren would turn five regardless of the climatological elements.
The party was just what Maren ordered. You would think a five-year-old girl who loves pink would go glitzy when given the chance to help plan her own party. But no, Maren only wanted family, plus a few close neighbors.
That is exactly what she got. She was the youngest in the cozy crowd.
Surrounded by her parents, her two ornery older brothers, and her MawMaw and Nana and Poppy, a festive evening of fun began with the opening of gifts and cards. What does a preschool girl get for her birthday? Why, jewelry of course, and books, and the one gift Maren hoped to receive, a Lego Dolphin Cruise liner.
The wet weather did postpone the only outside activity planned. The breaking of the piñata had to wait until the next morning.
While the kids went to a room to assemble the multitude of plastic pieces to create the boat, the table was set, and dinner prepared. Dessert was a delicious and preciously decorated cake done by a family friend. Of course, multicolored sprinkles, including pink, speckled the creamy white icing.
A candle in the shape of the number five topped the tiered, sparkly cake. A lone, perfect flame danced atop the crooked candle until one strong puff from the five-year-old snuffed it out.
Maren and her parents posed for a photo, and then it was back to the dry dock for the kids to complete the boat building. With three young engineers, the cruise ship was assembled in record time, encouraged on by teenage neighbors. The youngsters were all smiles when the last piece snapped into place.
Since Maren loves watermelon, she took it upon herself to wrangle a deal that had her receiving a portion of the ripe melons. Being a good sport, the tenant, majoring in peace studies, put her lessons into practice.
As the crops grew, however, nothing more was said about sharing the watermelons. Apparently, Maren was more satisfied with sealing the deal than cashing in on it.
Maren may have forgotten about the compact, but the tenant hadn’t. The last gift presented to Maren was a miniature watermelon saved just for her.
The watermelon gift was a cool idea that warmed the congenial birthday gathering all the more. Unless it was a stowaway, I don’t think the fruity cargo made the maiden voyage of the Dolphin, however.
When I learned that Holmes County, Ohio ranked third in the world on National Geographic’s list of best places to view fall leaves, I smiled broader than a white oak leaf. I was overjoyed for the national notoriety of our picturesque county.
I’m not sure what criteria they used to rank the global locales to gain such stature. I’d like to think that there was more to it than seasonally colorful leafage.
I hoped our fertile fields and comely homesteads, our quaintness and inherent hospitality helped. It’s hard to resist chestnut horses and black buggies driven by friendly, plainly dressed passengers passing sun-drenched woodlots flashing all of autumn’s bright, warm colors.
The area’s fall beauty is ubiquitous. From Glenmont to Winesburg, from Walnut Creek to Lakeville, from Limpytown to Lake Buckhorn, the autumn vistas are amazing.
Then my grateful grin narrowed to a willow leaf’s width. I winced just thinking about our already clogged roads during the fall.
I was glad our bucolic area had received such a high recommendation from such a reputable source. But I found the potential consequences of that distinction a bit intimidating. How in the world would our infrastructure handle the onslaught of additional leaf lookers that were sure to appear?
Though pretty year-round, there’s no arguing that fall is prime time when it comes to the natural beauty here. A bonus is that the scenery is always changing given our varying topography and variable weather. It can be sunny in the highlands, and socked in with soupy fog in the lowlands.
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In minutes that scenario most likely will change with the wind or the warming of the atmosphere or both. One minute you can barely see your hand in front of your face, and the next the sun is illuminating superb settings.
There’s beauty around every turn no matter where you are exploring, and in Holmes County curves and hills abound. You can circumnavigate the area every day and watch the scenes transform.
Having lived here all of my adult life, I’m likely prejudiced about the splendor of the local landscapes. Given this recognition, forget about the four corners of the world. The four corners of Holmes County are all you need to satisfy your desire for leafy vistas.
There are just too many good spots to view leaves to even think about making a personal list to share. Instead, just grab a map, drive in any direction and look. You’ll see what I mean. You can’t get lost either. All roads lead to somewhere.
A word of caution is in order, however. Our narrow, curvy roads are heavily traveled, with few places to safely pull off for photos. You may have to just take it all in as you go, and only stop where it is safe to do so.
There is an exception to that rule, however. The Holmes County Trail runs diagonally through the heart of the county for 15 miles from Killbuck to Fredericksburg. The photogenic panoramas and outdoor exercise will equally invigorate you.
The trail is for bicyclists, pedestrians, joggers, and horse and buggies only. No motorized vehicles are permitted, which makes for a safer, quieter trek to observe fall’s colors. The trail can be accessed in several locations, too, with vehicle parking provided.
I don’t recall what the first two locations were on National Geographic’s list. I just know that in the fall Holmes County is a giant, multihued maple leaf for all to admire.
I usually carry my camera with me wherever I go. Yesterday was no exception. I was on my way to a meeting when I passed through Walnut Creek, one of the oldest settlements in Holmes County, Ohio. The morning sun was straining to filter through on-rushing clouds, part of a cold front bringing in some welcomed rain.
When I stopped to take a photo of one scene, I saw this one, the mirror reflection of this nicely kept farm, known as the Jonas Stutzman farm. An official historical marker notes that Stutzman was the first white settler in the eastern section of the county, arriving from Somerset County, Pennsylvania in 1809.
The details in this photo, coupled with the farmstead’s history, made “Morning reflections” my Photo of the Week.
Roadkill Crossing 
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