Photography doesn’t require great equipment: the cheapest and simplest cameras can capture an image. Nor does it require great skill: just point and click. Whether the results are great art or not, any photo may become a cherished reminder. (Or a sad one.)
Long ago,
it must be.
I have a photograph.
Preserve your memories.
There all that’s left you.
— Bookends by Paul Simon
When we moved into our house over twenty years ago, we soon discovered the western exposure of the back patio made it uninhabitable on summer afternoons. So, one week, while Merri was out-of-town for the wedding of friends, I decided to build an arbor spanning much of the patio. My dad was a great carpenter by hobby (farm boy become engineer). I’m not so skilled, but this was to be my masterpiece. As it happened, I’d given up coffee some weeks earlier and experienced a drop of at least 10 IQ points. I knew I could not perform adequate carpentry without coffee. And, so, I had a cuppa and started drawing my plans and making a shopping list. I think I used the convertible to haul the extra long boards and lattice. I still use the power saw and drill I bought for the project.
photo by Merri Rudd (goggles, grass, and hair now gone)
After the first big wind, I found my neighbor looking over our common wall, himself a more-skilled carpenter. “Still standing,” he noted, perhaps a little surprised. A carpenter friend suggested ways to shore it up and advice on wood preservative treatment, neither of which I heeded. As it was, it lasted two decades.
We got married under that arbor among friends. Eventually, wisteria grew to cover half the arbor. One year in five, magnificent flowers hung through the slats. (More often, a late freeze ruined the buds.) When the wisteria leafed out, half the patio was dappled with cool, green shade.
Time passes. All solutions are temporary. A few years ago, I dismantled half of the aged arbor. In the process, I knocked a board loose that I was standing under (some things even coffee can’t help). The board bounced off my skull and through a window. (Not the first time my hard head saved me when my soft brain didn’t.) We got a new and better window, but never really replaced the lost shade. Although we continued to enjoy the remaining half of the arbor, it was increasingly a hazard to sit under, as it leaned more in several directions.
This year, I bought a canvas topped gazebo which threatens to fly in the ceaseless wind. I bought a second one to stand sans canvas under the old arbor as scaffolding to buy it a little more time. Only a month, as it turned out. When the wind – this damn wind (listen to the poem, Unhinged) – returned yet again, I heard a dreadful sound. Expecting that the new gazebo might have flown onto the roof, I discovered the remnant arbor had blown over, taking the “scaffolding” with it, in the best direction possible. Nothing lasts forever. Take photos while you can.
