Wanderings and Old Homesteads

O, how I love to find a old homesite! I love to imagine who might have settled there. Where did they come from? What was the land like when they first saw it? How did they change it? How did they live here? Why did they leave?

I love to search out a place on the prairie in the spring when daffodils bloom and wave their yellow ruffles at me to show where an old house once stood.

Old fences still enclose a small dooryard and every spring flowers planted by some pioneer woman push to the sunlight and the blue sky. 

Fallen trees like this one become spots lush with moss and tangles of flowers.

 

Here purple bearded iris and yucca plants spread among the briers where a house once stood, where children played marbles in shady spots and watched for horses, wagons or farm trucks passing by.

Paperwhites  and narcissus come up from bulbs and tubers that have spread underground.

An old gate once swung from a frame here and a tree grew up through it. Mystery hidden in plain sight. I passed this gate many times before I noticed it. In the summer greenery hides it and an old cellar and cistern  sleep behind it in the undergrowth beside Cane Creek.

It causes me to wonder who lived there. Who planted Morning Glory vines on this fence?