Journey To The Center  

I’ve been changing things around in the gardens over the past few years. Earlier on, I used to mow a large area o lawn in both the front and back yards. At some point, I decided to stop treating the yard as lawns and turn more of the front yard into a lane and parking spot. Part of this had to do with necessity. When I first came here, I didn’t stay over the winter. Once I began living here over winter, I discovered that the grassy lane turned into a soft, sticky mud pit as the snow melted in spring. I was getting the van stuck every time I tried to get turned around. That spring, I got a load of gravel and made a parking area which has worked out very well – but it did eat up about a third of the front lawn. Meanwhile, I had planted more rhododendrons in the front yard and they are all getting bigger — there are 8 of them and 3 sizeable rose bushes, along with the “rondhaus” fire wood stacks and the storage trailer. I planted a few native trees here and there — and guess what — no lawn and only a small garden patch remains!

So… well… I’ve been growing garlic and other vegetables out in the back garden for several years, but find it all just too much to deal with. The reality is that I am just one person working alone here and I’m at an age where I have to pick and choose what I want to do. The house still needs plenty of work, which ties up my summers. After some consideration, I’ve decided that I don’t need to be growing vegetables anymore. There are all kinds of local gardens selling fresh produce for a good part of the year. I’d rather just put in a garlic patch with my favourite varieties — so that’s moved up into the front vegetable patch with the strawberries. Now the back garden will be used as a nursery area for native trees and plants between the seedling stage, and the stage where they seem robust enough to go out into the woods without the need for much maintenance. Trees that I’m growing out are American Chestnut, American Sycamore, native White Oak, Bur Oak, Redbud, Shagbark Hickory, Butternut, Black Walnut, Hazelnut, Witchhazel, Hackberry, and Slippery Elm. It’s all just an experiment and who knows how they will do, although some early trees – the Shagbark Hickory – are doing very well so far. Anyhow, that’s what’s going on around here. The back yard is really no longer a yard in much of a sense. Pretty wild back there, but that’s fine with me. Here are some photos of the garlic patch and the “map” for this year’s patch.

This will be the third to last post about my autumn 2010 travels between eastern Canada and southeast Arizona. For those who are following my journey and wondering where I am right now, I left Arizona on April 1st, and arrived in eastern Ontario on the evening of April 9th. I spent the better part of nine days driving from my starting point in Arizona, through New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York state, to an end point just north of the Canadian border. Quite a number of these states were new to me. I particularly enjoyed my brief stays in New Mexico and Oklahoma. I hope to return to camp in Oklahoma for a few days – perhaps next April.

Gas was costly on this trip, although total mileage was much less than my usual route. As the weather was reasonably warm most of the way, I was able to camp on all eight nights. Campsite fees worked out to about $110 in total. They were very reasonable in the west, and increasingly expensive as I moved east. Sage and Sabrina managed the trip just fine, but I ended it feeling quite tired and stressed. From about Arkansas onward, I found the freeways busy and the parks much more developed than I prefer. Luckily, there weren’t too many other campers, or things would have seemed a lot worse.

I’m glad to have the journey out of the way. Now I’ll try to rest up, take care of some business, buy a few tools and materials, pick up my canoe from friends who have stored it for me for over two years, and head east to work on the old house in Nova Scotia that I acquired about a year ago. I took a lot of photos along my spring route. Once the last of the autumn journey posts is up, I’ll work on a couple of pieces about the high points of this spring’s travels.

By the second week in November (2010), I was moving southward through Utah, on my way to visit Chaco Canyon in New Mexico. The weather was getting cooler and it was only a matter of time until I would have to deal with snow. Before leaving Moab, I spent a morning driving up and down a few canyons to visit petroglyph sites. Later that day, I headed south, returning to camp at Sand Island near Bluff. However, there was one last stop to make along the way — a side trip to see Newspaper Rock in Indian Creek Canyon.

The panel is described as being about 200 square feet, located on an expanse of sandstone which is partly sheltered by a rock overhang. Almost every inch is covered with petroglyphs varying in age from decades to about 2,000 years old. There are many figures of animals, but also geometric shapes, a good many “footprints” and also a number of human type forms.

Of all the images on the panel, the above is my favorite. To me, it resembles some of the petroglyph depictions of the manitou type spirit creatures found up in Ontario.

I studied and shot a number of photos of the panel, then readied to leave. From here, I would drive back out to the interstate and south through Monticello, Blanding, and on to the campground near Bluff. Once again, there were very few campers at that location. We spent a quiet evening camped in the same site we had occupied a week or so earlier.

The cottonwood yet retainedg their bright yellow autumn leaves, but would soon begin to lose them to the winter winds. The tree down below was actually photographed at Moonflower Canyon near Moab. I thought it a particularly beautiful example of a cottonwood in autumn. Click on all of the above photos for larger views.