Category: North American gardens

The Sunday porch: Paradise Valley

Cindy at enclos*ure1 Comment

Ranch house porch, 1978, Suzi Jones, Library of CongressRanch House with Porch, Paradise Valley, Humboldt County, Nevada, July 1978, (35mm slide) by Suzi Jones, via American Folklife Center of the Library of Congress (all photos here).

The house — of adobe construction — served as the officer’s quarters of Fort Scott in the late 1860s.  In 1978, it was the main residence of Fort Scott Ranch.

Fort Scott Ranch gate, 1978, Library of Congress

There is another view here, by Howard W. Marshall.

The photos here are three of over two thousand taken or collected for the Folklife Center’s 1972-1982 ethnographic field project on the Paradise Valley area. The work became the collection*  “Bucharoos in Paradise: Ranching Culture in Northern Nevada, 1945-1982.”

Fort Scott Ranch, Paradise Valley, NV, Library of Congress
Fort Scott Ranch, by Howard W. Marshall.

There’s another photo of the ranch house and its outbuildings here.

Poll results

For the last two Sundays, I ran a little poll asking how readers look at enclos*ure — 1) on a desktop computer or Mac; 2) on an e-reader; or 3) on a smartphone? Of those who responded, 82% use a desktop and the others use an e-reader.

*It also contains sound recordings and motion picture film.

Life in gardens: May Day

Cindy at enclos*ureLeave a comment

May_pole_dance_at_Miami_University_May_Day_celebration_1914_(3190756371)
I’m a little worried that fire is going to become involved here.

The photo, “May pole dance at Miami University May Day celebration 1914 ,” is by Frank Snyder, via Frank Snyder Photograph Collection, Miami University Libraries (Oxford, Ohio) Commons on flickr.

The Maypole Dance was a common rite of spring at colleges from the late nineteenth century through the 1950s. Historian David Glassberg argues that the celebration was created (or resurrected) by turn-of-the-century progressives who bemoaned America’s lack of wholesome traditions. They believed that Puritanism had severed this country’s ties to the culture of Elizabethan England—a belief supported by a reading of Hawthorne’s short story, “The May-Pole of Merrymount.”

— Tynes Cowan, from BSC Folklore (Birmingham-Southern College)

Here in the Swabian part of Germany, many towns and villages will be celebrating the first of May like this.

The Sunday porch: Silver Lake

Cindy at enclos*ureLeave a comment

Log House, Akron, Ohio, via Miami University, flickr“Log house at Silver Lake, Akron, Ohio,” between 1905 and 1909, by Illustrated Post Card Co., via Walter Havighurst Special Collections, Miami University Libraries Commons on flickr.

.  .  . I care less and less
about the shapes of shapes because forms
change and nothing is more durable than feeling.

— Terrance Hayes, from “What it Look Like“

 

Life in gardens: front lawn pose

Cindy at enclos*ure3 Comments

Puppy posing, ca. 1900, Huron County MuseumThe photographer’s daughter, Florence Sallows, photographing her little sister, Verna, and a small dog, date unknown, by Reuben R. Sallows, via Huron County (Ontario) Museum and Historic Gaol Commons on flickr.

The Sunday porch: Lake City

Cindy at enclos*ure3 Comments

Summer porch, c.1900, by Theresa. Babb, via Camden Public Library“Fenderson cottage at Lake City on Megunticook Lake in Camden, Maine, in September 1900,” by Theresa Parker Babb, via Camden Public Library Commons on flickr.

Lake City seems to have been a neighborhood of summer homes. From the late 1880s, “a flood” of people from the eastern cities –often rich and prominent– built cottages in and around Camden, drawn by the surrounding scenery and the town’s romantic seafaring past.

. . . Waved in the west-wind’s summer sighs.

— Sir Walter Scott, from “The Lady of the Lake“