WEEKLY WORDPRESS PHOTO CHALLENGE – REPURPOSE
We hadn’t been living here a week when I spotted the line of old farm tractors. Some of them had “For Sale” signs on them. Everyone has a weakness and mine is for old machinery. I love it. In another community, they’d probably already have been consigned to the junkyard, crushed for the metal content.
“Wow,” I said to Garry. “Wouldn’t that be cool? Kids could climb on it. We could build a garden around it.” And then, we went home.
A month later, on our tenth anniversary in September, a flatbed trailer backed down our driveway. It delivered my 1924 Fordson Tractor. We gave it a Model-A Ford steering wheel, an old license plate — though with its seized engine, it wasn’t going anywhere under its own power — and a new seat. After Owen built the garden with the rocks repurposed from the wall in the woods which repurposed from them just being big rocks in a field that was not full of trees, the tractor moved next to the garden wall. It has a new life as garden decor. A Japanese maple tree is growing directly in front of it and there’s no way to extract the tractor, so as long as we are here to protect it, the tractor will have a home on our land.
Some people have asked us why we have that piece of junk in the garden. What can I tell them? How many women are lucky enough to have a husband who’d buy his wife an antique tractor for their 10th anniversary? What a guy!
I participate in WordPress’ Weekly Photo Challenge 2017
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Categories: #gallery, #Photography, Humor
CHRISTMAS CACTUS BLOOMING – AND A NEW ONE ON BOARD 
SUNFLOWERS WHILE COLD WEATHER COMES CALLING 
THUNDER OUTSIDE AND THE SKY IS YELLOWISH WHITE 
MEDIA WAR STORIES EPISODE 15 
SERENDIPITY - SEEKING INTELLIGENT LIFE ON EARTH 
Superb photos
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Such a nice find! 🙂
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Thank you 🙂 It has become almost a symbol of our home. I love greeting it as we pull down the driveway.
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I think that is the neatest thing for a garden and it was very thoughtful of Garry.
Leslie
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I thought then and think now that it’s very cool. It is a big piece of the past that I have adopted. Every now and then, someone stops and offers to “take it off my hands” and I offer to keep it, thanks. It’s no coincidence that I have so many antiquities and antiques, or a lifetime passion for history. I wouldn’t even mind getting old if my body would just stop falling apart.
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Yes, It’s that old body thing that’s a problem.
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A magnificent piece of garden art. I have friends in the desert who have a caboose in their ‘yard’ — they use it for parties. And another friend has a retired double-decked London bus and phone booth in their ‘yard.’ They add such spice to life!
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A caboose would be TOTALLY cool. A bit big, but we might fit it in. Possibly. Oh well. I think our “adding on to our stuff” days is done. We are more into the “getting rid of stuff” period of life 🙂
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The caboose takes a lot of flat open space — the desert back yard is perfect, butI’m not sure it would fit in a hilly, wooded yard! I know what you mean about being in the “getting rid of stuff” stage of life!
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It’s all about art.., that tractor is there because it’s supposed to be there and it’s not just a piece of junk. On the other hand Garry is pretty weird buying his wife an old rusty tractor. On the other, other hand…, You gotta be a bit different yourself, to even want one. But then again, that’s what I love about my friends.., not one of them is what you’d call normal.
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What IS normal?
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Normal, what others who think they are normal tend to set as a standard.., so It’s arbitrary at best and I, for one, don’t follow any standard.
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I have noticed 🙂
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Again, Miss “Smarty Pants”
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AW Come on!! Save that tractor too !!
It IS nice. Looks like you could jump on it and rev it up right now.
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Pity we couldn’t get the engine to work. We really tried. It’s just too far gone. Fully seized. But it looks good 🙂
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‘what a guy’ is right!’ I have seen that tractor in photos you have shown of your home and wondered…..thanks for the wonderful story behind it.
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And they say men aren’t imaginative. A lot of my fellow wives were baffled at the choice, but I knew that he had been really listening and he knew what I really wanted. And it wasn’t cheap, either, lemme tellya. It was one of the most expensive gifts i’ve ever gotten … and I will have it forever. Or close to it.
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Yes, I WAS listening. The tractor seemed like a nifty idea.
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Garry–you are wonderful. A man who listens….what a concept!
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