It’s a glorious day to be Refind Creations when I get to drive in the pouring buckets of rain to get some barn windows from a barn built in the late 1800s!
After two days of back and forth messaging with a sweet lady we finally connected and made a plan for me to head out on my lunch hour about ten miles north. Such a beautiful drive into Whatcom County where acres of land surround old and new farms, berry farms, flower nurseries, silos and cows.
She told me to meet her at the big white hay barn. As if I know which one that might be. I pulled into a homestead with this giant barn filled with brand new windows. If I was storing hay I think that’s where I’d put it. She comes out in the downpour well dressed for such delightful conditions in her rubber boots and rain slicker. The high winds push blonde wisps over her cheeks. And she has a huge smile and a kindness I think only farmers exude.
I step out into the muck trying to hold my baggy scrub pants above my tennis shoes and she tells me to back up to the hay barn. Apparently the other white barn that looks like where you might feed baby cows – or an old milk parlor. I told her I wouldn’t know a hay barn from a hole in the ground.
A barn is a barn to me. Beautiful, rustic, full of old stories and lives gone before us. A work of Art. A labor of love. A necessary part of a farmer life.
She shakes my hand as I again attempt to hold my pant legs out of the mud and the wind whips my hood off so my bangs get drenched and stick to my forehead.
She shows me the different sizes and I pick four that will be great for a project I have in mind. They are filthy and layered in years of dusty cobwebs that I find disturbing but she’s wearing gloves and gets them into my trunk safely.
I tell her I passed the house on the way there where I got piles of dahlias just a few months ago and that soon her windows will merge with her neighbors dahlia petals into my art. She likes that concept a lot and I’m glad.
I head back to work feeling blessed to drive out and meet her and to know I have four windows on history to Refind. It’s a beautiful day!
Windows to the past. How many days spent taking in light as the farmer mucked. How many sunrises reflected from their panes? How many sunsets let the last drops of sunlight in on her? How many windowpanes replaced after a nor’easter blew? How many hours and days and years of hard work, memories, sweat, and worry passed by the windows of the hundred year old barn leaving bittersweet idyllic treasures of times gone by?
Petals as Paint- designed by nature. Refind by me!
©Belindabotzong2018
