Sunday, March 22, 2009

root cellar?

I went looking for spring this afternoon, and I found it.


 I walked down to the creek to see if the daffodils at the old house were blooming yet, and they are.

 I also took advantage of the blackberries not having woken up yet (nor the snakes, I hoped) to walk back into the tangle and look at the stone structure that is probably a root cellar.  
This is what's left of the house foundation.


There aren't any shelves or shelf ledges in there, but that doesn't prove anything. I'm wondering if it could have been a spring house, because the floor was muddy when all the ground elsewhere is dry and hard, but if so there isn't an outlet. 
Here's the back view from the "road."


Looking in the door.




Then I went on down to the creek and found daffodils down there, too, which I didn't remember. 

On the way back I put the camera away and picked a lot. Spring really got here. I'm encouraging it to hurry north. 

5 comments:

  1. Hooray for spring!

    Loved the photos. Oh, but now I can't get the sound of Bullwinkle (from the cartoon) saying "Behold the Lovely Daffodil" out of my head. (I'm very suggestible).

    I with you, let's figure out a way to send some of that spring north, especially to our Canadian friends!

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  2. Oh, thank you for posting these pictures! Love the daffodils. There's still about 2 feet of snow on everything around here.

    That stone structure is 'way cool'.... (sorry, couldn't resist!) It isn't a very large space, though, is it? And is it totally above-ground? When I think of root cellar, I always think it should be underground.... Yours does look like a spring house - somewhere to keep things cool in the heat of summer. Up here, we use a root cellar to keep things from freezing in the depths of winter.

    And thanks for your warm thoughts - wonder how long they'll will take to get here?

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  3. I'm going back sometime soon when I'm Absolutely Sure the snakes are asleep--doesn't all that rock look like a snake condo?--and do some body measurements, but I can tell it's tall enough for me (5'6") to stand up in, and about three feet by six. Bigger than most refrigerators for sure. Root cellars in this climate serve both to keep things cool in summer and frost-free in winter. (I should say "served", shouldn't I, now that almost everybody has electricity?)

    Most of the root cellars I've been in have had two or three steps down from ground level and the side either built up with dirt or insulated with straw every winter. This one was built up from ground level, but the sides are bermed up to four feet except for the door, and I imagine the rest was sodded over. The house has been gone for over forty years, so that's plenty of time for a sod roof to disappear. The wonder it that the whole stone structure is intact with animals free to scramble over it all those years.

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  4. Root cellars had the same purpose here in the summer - the temperature was pretty constant year-round; cool in summer, frost-free in winter.

    And yes, yes it does look like a snake condo; and a spider haven! - I probably wouldn't go in there on a dare!

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  5. Thanks for the photos, Solarity! I love the daffodils, and the root cellar brings back memories. We used to have one when I was a child on the farm, only ours was just dirt, and lumber. Most of it has caved in now. The stone structure makes you want to go inside and take a look!

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