A Beauty All it's Own

In the decay lies beauty.

I invite you to look for it this week.

from 52 Photos Project 

In my neighborhood a brand new house is practically a fascination.  A newer house might be considered one built about sixty years ago.  Wooded areas and huge old trees give the landscape a rather wild, overgrown look.  This is not a neighborhood of evenly trimmed hedges and vast expanses of lawn.  Our "tree guy" lauds our mossy front yard where we cannot seem to grow much grass beneath the aged sugar maple.

Keeping ahead of the peeling, cracking, rusting, molding, rotting is a routine battle, particularly in the yard where weeds become trees while you take a beach holiday.

The fact that our "ancient" unruliness happens to also be within city limits adds another dimension to what unkempt might look like.

As long as I can admire the withering from afar, I find the possibility for a bit of history or a good story invigorating.  If dead blossoms meant someone had a vibrant garden this season, walking by makes me smile.

I stuck by my commitment to myself last evening to go out for a photo walk despite overcast skies.  I knew precisely where my first stop would be and knowing my subject was decay, I felt a little badly that I knew a good spot to source it.  

Since last Spring, I have walked by this "site" often on photography outings.  The car is always there against that fabulous peeling garage door, and in the Spring pink roses bloom around it.  I tried a few times to capture the effect without satisfaction, or to my frustration people were about, and I was ill at ease pointing my camera at the juxtaposition that may  belong to them.

I enjoyed my walk in search of the fading, however strange that sounds.  Given the losses I have had to reflect upon recently, it cleared my head and balanced me somehow to see that spent blossoms in a garden at this time of year is entirely where things should be.  Amongst them Mums enter and save us from disappointment.  

 The white peeling paint still holds interest in this first week of Autumn, even without the roses. But know that come January, a door in need of paint will match the bleakness everywhere, and I will turn away.  No one will be out then searching for the falling down, as it would feel despairing.  Instead we will be looking for warm colors in our bowls of steaming soup, or for a bright red winter berry poking out from a branch bent with snow.