The Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation recently posted a link on their Facebook feed to an article in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution about efforts to photograph old barns.  I realized that I've always taken the barns that are dotted around the countryside for granted -- not paying attention to their charm nor to the history they contain.
     So here is a picture of my barn.  I can remember, when I was a very little girl, going with my grandmother to the barn to collect eggs from the chickens housed there.
     I really don't remember much more.  The barn has been a presence at my grandparents' house all my life.  My main reaction has been fear of actually going in the barn because of the possibility of snakes.  So I have a barn cat named Bunny whose job is to kill the field mice so there won't be any food for the snakes and, therefore, no reason for them to hang around.  I only hope Bunny is doing his job.

National Barn Alliance website: http://barnalliance.org/

     For years I would read English novels (mysteries, mainly) and there were always these characters who lived in the country in rambling old piles of homes.  I thought it sounded romantic and idyllic -- and I had a vision of myself in wellies, tromping along the land, driving a Land Rover into town, leading a civilized life.
     Then I inherited a rambling old pile on 9 acres of land in a Georgia town of less than 1,000 people.  Reality met my fantasy.  And it's not quite what I expected, especially after various stints in Atlanta, Dallas, and Houston, where everything is available, 24 hours a day.  It's pleasant here, but there's a disconnect between life-in-the-country of my imagination and life as it actually exists.
     I was reminded of this when I read an article in the online edition of Garden & Gun about Tate Taylor, director of The Help.  Mr. Taylor lives in a 19th century home on 70 acres north of Natchez, Mississippi.  As I read about Mr. Taylor and his home, I felt the familiar longing for my imagined life in England or 19th century Virginia or the islands off the South Carolina coast -- places in my head where everything, again in my head, is perfect.  As I was yearning for this imagined life, I had a snap-out-of-it moment.  I'm not a Hollywood director, but Mr. Taylor's "perfect" home life IS my life.