Good Morning, Springboro! A Barn on a Rainy Day

A short drive in nearly any direction from Springboro takes you into farmland. Fields of wheat, corn, and soybeans stretch between wooded borders and narrow streams. Turning from one road onto another, you glimpse the heartwarming scenery that only the country can supply. Beyond fence corners stand barns tucked amid lush greenery. Horses whinny and gallop playfully. Goldfinches, redwing blackbirds, and indigo buntings are only a few of the vibrant birds flitting among the brambles of the roadside.

A Barn on a Rainy Day Near Springboro, Ohio

Original Watercolor Painting by Robert T. Rhode

The region where Springboro stands was settled long ago—so far back in time that many of the oldest lanes have vanished, replaced by newer highways in slightly different locations. It is common to see a string of homes and outbuildings some distance from today’s road. A rural byway once served them that has since been rerouted or cut off. Now a rather long driveway leads back to them. This tradition of repurposing the landscape has produced the enchantment of discovering isolated barns nowhere near a highway. In the summer, you have to know where to look for them. Half covered in vines and surrounded by brush, they bear testimony to an earlier time when cattle roamed the meadows and a dusty path brought the occasional buggy and news from town.

My original watercolor painting this week features one such barn. It watches over a small field of new corn. The spring and summer have been wet, and the corn was planted late. The stand has been partly drowned out. Showers are soaking the landscape, and the sky is a study of blustery gray clouds. The vista opens from a gap in the trees and thick undergrowth close to where two roads form a T. Look in the right direction at the right instant, or you will miss the view, which roadside thickets and tangled creepers soon shut out.

Within two or three miles along the same road, I could have selected half a dozen scenes as subjects for paintings. For an artist, Springboro’s agricultural surroundings offer unlimited possibilities. Few places in my experience have such happy arrangements of artistic elements. Angles and arcs conspire to please the aesthetically inclined eye. It is as if the Master Painter had been in an especially blithe mood when creating the Springboro corner of the world. Even rainy days in July are hardly sad; rather, they hold forth the promise of harvests to come in only a few months.

If you would like to purchase one of my paintings from this blog series, send me a message through my website at roberttrhode.org or via Facebook.

Good Morning, Springboro! An Abandoned Farmstead

My original watercolor painting for this week depicts an abandoned farmstead in April. Surrounded by a tangle of shade trees and shrubs, the neglected house floats like an island in a sea of land soon to be tilled. Nature seems to know that, before long, a tractor will begin preparing the ground for planting soybeans and that she must work quickly, decorating the soil surface with purple deadnettle, the flowers of which form pink bands across the field. The scene is to be as colorful and pleasing as it can be before the beans are introduced to freshly turned earth. Warm breezes from the southwest toss the newly leafed tops of trees toward the northeast.

Abandoned Farmstead Near Springboro, Ohio

Original Watercolor Painting by Robert T. Rhode

 

The house may be empty, but, at this time of the year, it seems cheerfully occupied. Have the spirits of distant generations of family members returned to play games, sing songs, and care for one another amid the rolling pastures they once looked upon with eyes like yours and mine? It certainly appears so! In springtime, the house does not exude the lonely atmosphere of winter.

Bright clouds modulate the light on their steady passage overhead. Everything is expressed in tones of promise for a happy summer, just around the corner.

Springboro retains its small-town aura while hosting numerous subdivisions, all of which are nestled within a vast quilt of farms, woods, and creeks. A short drive from the village brings you to joyfully winding roads that lead up and down over low hills. Delightful views wait around the bends in the byways.

Had the Brontë sisters lived outside Springboro, tourists would come from countries far away to see where the authors had lived, and the travelers would not be disappointed, finding that, by pointing their cameras in any direction, they could frame memorable landscapes. Perhaps it is as well that Emily, Anne, and Charlotte did not pen Wuthering Heights, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, and Jane Eyre here; in the absence of droves of tourists, you can go wherever you want without the inconvenience that they occasion. By all rights, though, the alluring scenery of Springboro should have been immortalized in literature as it is most assuredly deserving of such honor.

So you are free to spend April afternoons driving along country routes that entertain your eye with successions of picturesque prospects. As Springboro is celebrating its bicentennial, this would be an excellent time to appreciate the locale by exploring the districts that surround the historic downtown.

If you would like to purchase one of my paintings from this blog series, send me a message through my website at roberttrhode.org or via Facebook.

Good Morning, Springboro! The Giant Sycamore

Springboro, Ohio, is two hundred years old. This blog installment is the first of six that will feature my original watercolor paintings depicting scenes in the vicinity of Springboro. If you would like to purchase one of the paintings, send me a message through my website at roberttrhode.org or via Facebook. The art measures 5″ by 7″ and consists of Cotman Water Colours by Winsor & Newton on acid-free Montval watercolor paper.

Giant Sycamore Near Springboro, Ohio

Original Watercolor Painting by Robert T. Rhode

 

Not far from the charming downtown is a gigantic sycamore tree. My mother always urged me to create a painting of a sycamore, and I have finally gotten around to honoring her request that was made so many years ago. The patterns and colors of the bark fascinated my mother, and she loved the curves of the heavy limbs.

One day, I had parked to appreciate the majesty of the giant sycamore, and, from across the street, a resident called to me, “That tree is over two hundred years old.” Imagine that! A tree older than Springboro itself! A tree that was already growing in that location before the Quakers had come to build blacksmith shops, houses, and mills to form a community! The resident said he had lived nearby for fifty years and that, when he first moved to that location, he had conversed with a woman who was approaching a century; the woman had told him that her father had said that the tree was standing there when he was a boy.

I wonder what the tree could tell us if it could talk. In a way, it does talk: that is, it expresses itself through the artistic arcs of its branches and the dappled canopy of its leaves. The immense trunk amazes me! Despite the colossal size of the sycamore, the tree comforts me. Even though I am a writer, an explanation of what I just wrote will not be easily conveyed. Something in the softly varied tones of the bark, in the leaves spread like broad hands, and in the steadfast posture of the tree lends a feeling of security. The sycamore is parental. It gathers its happy children beneath its branches.

The township has provided a table or two for picnics in the shade of the mammoth tree, and, when driving past, I have noted people enjoying lunch beneath the towering sycamore.

Creeks are favorite spots for sycamores to become established, and (Sure enough!) Clear Creek runs its sparkling course just behind the picnic area.

The patriarchal sycamore may well have been growing near Clear Creek during the American Revolution. Miami or Shawnee people may have camped beneath it. The tree could easily have been standing there when Ohio became a state in 1803 and was almost certainly in place when the War of 1812 began. Thinking of how many sunrises this living tree has witnessed dwarfs my imagination. It has stood serenely in one spot for so many days, while I have darted hither and yon in my hectic life. By comparison to the tree, I am a firefly flashing across the landscape for relatively few summer nights.

Peace is the message of the sycamore, which yet celebrates the rolling seasons. The tree stands as a tranquil philosopher—as nature itself, proving day by day a good way to live.