Thursday Thoughts – Along the Old Country Road

There is something special with old country roads…Every autumn we walk some kilometers along this country road, and I guess you might recognize parts of it, even if it changes over the years. But, that is one of the reasons why I like to photographs this walk every year.

This part of our neighbouring village was always an agricultural area with many small farms.

Today farming is mostly a business for big farms with much land and large machines to work it.

This house is a typical old farmstead, but I am not sure anyone lives here anymore. It looks abandoned – even though you can see furniture and lamps if you look in the windows. There are even withered house plants in some of them, and a sign with the owner’s name. It looks like the owners just walked out the door left it that way.

Old wagons and tractors are left at the road side or in an abandoned garden.

I feel sad looking at it, because farmers work hard every day, every hour on their land – but as they grow old, they reach a point where they cannot manage it any longer. Being a farmer is a lifestyle, and that must be hard to give up.

There must be a few farmers still working though, because there is cattle in the small fields and meadows.

Aren’t they beautiful, making bypassers feel the harmony and the beauty of the landscape! I wonder what their story is…

Lens-Artists Challenge #185 – Change

Until he extends his circle of compassion to include all living things, man will not himself find peace.

– Albert Schweitzer

This week, we’re delighted to welcome John Steiner as a new member of our Lens-Artists team. For his topic, he asks us an interesting question: What does change mean to you? John has some clever answers worth visiting!

The opener shows the change we all are waiting for now – at least here in the northern hemisphere. But it will not arrive for another two months…

Change is inevitable, and I believe Charles Darwin says it best: ”It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who will best manage change.” But survival comes at a hard cost too. I have chosen changes from my own life. A mixed bag of joy and sorrow – Life is.

I love photography, even though it sometimes has to rest for a while – now much due to covid times… This photo is from a dam close by, always an autumn hiking treat. With different possibilities in computer programs, you can play around and get almost any change you want. Photosketcher used here. It is nice when you are in control yourself, isn’t it?

My hiking interest is huge – I have to visit the forest every day for dogwalks and fresh air that will keep me breathing and happy. Some favourite paths are gone, but other areas have become new favourites, and new trees will be planted where the old ones once stood.

In the autumn 2020 we finally decided for a glass house. The old stump from the big birch tree had to go – and make room for so many other plants. I have never regretted building the glass house, because all my special plants will easier survive winter. (And you might get some nice pictures of them too…)

Lastly, some changes are not wished for at all, but belongs to our closest circle of life. I lost my dear mother in 2020, and I lost sweet Totti. Little Milo has now grown up to be my handsome number 1 companion.

Many thanks to Amy for her ”Travels Have Taught Me” challenge, where we learned a great deal from your travel lessons! Next week, we’ll be looking forward to Sofia Alves’ challenge topic. Be sure to visit her beautiful blog!

Thursday Thoughts – Deliciously Delicate

Looking through my pictures from the last month…I found some really delicate autumn images. I guess these soft colours are not much connected to autumn… at least not to us in the northern hemisphere. But, as winter is knocking on our door, a faint spring feeling cannot be wrong. I hope you enjoy.

Thursday Thoughts – Little Things…

Like leaves…and dew drops

And even smaller things from me at Frank’s Beach Walk – Details, while he is musing and walking. Welcome to join us.

Thursday Thoughts – The last forest beauty

An autumn walk in my own forest today. Milo is overjoyed as colder weather has arrived with near frost temperatures. I will have to be grateful for those colourful days and look back now and then on my images through the daily grey.

No spring nor summer beauty hath such grace as I have seen in one autumnal face.
― John Donne

There is a stillness in the air, and I hear only the water and some finches. A Robin’s ticking warning in the background.

I enjoy the spring more than the autumn now. One does, I think, as one gets older.
― Virginia Woolf

The path I always walk suddenly looks like spring in the morning sun. Wishful thinking… there are 6 more months to wait for its arrival.

I cannot endure to waste anything so precious as autumnal sunshine by staying in the house.
― Nathaniel Hawthorne,

When I get closer to the meadows, I see the sun shining out there, spreading its generous rays into the darker forest.

And all the lives we ever lived and all the lives to be are full of trees and changing leaves… -Virginia Woolf

Nowadays it has become more difficult for me to look up towards the canopy as I have a slipped disc in my neck. So, generally I wait until the path is favouring a look at the sky. And then it is amazing…

Autumn is the hush before winter. – French proverb

The last kilometer of the track passes a much-fotographed shed where the hunters used to have their gear and their breakfast. Last year the left window cover was broken, so a somewhat one-eyed old friend is now sleepily looking at me.

Autumn knows a mother’s heart. It gives and then lets go. – Anonymous

A homely stump, filled with little ones – just out of a fairy tale. John Bauer?

The final hundred meters of the track now, and you can see Milo and my husband as tiny dots near the end of the path.

Thank you again for walking with me. This might be the last really beautiful walk this year – unless we get early snow or hoarfrost.