lumber

A Peculiar(?) Menagerie

Early in our four decades-plus of marriage, Mrs. Barn learned that whenever I was browsing through the card catalog of my 3,000+ record albums, I was in a mood.  Could be a mood of contemplation, sometimes a mood of problem solving, occasionally (or not so occasionally) a mood of being just plain old cranked up about something.  But, she knew to let it run its course.

As I grew older (and perhaps [?] more mature) I could be found browsing my bookshelves instead or just working my way through my collections of vouchered wood samples.  (Sorting the card catalog for my vinyl records was pointless in an age of CDs as the records were placed [and remain] in deep storage.  I recently bought a new cartridge for the turntable and may just dust off the record collection.  But, I digress.)

To this day I find a peculiar comfort in shuffling my version of playing cards, using the fascinating beauty of this natural resource as inspiration for creativity.

To the best of my knowledge these are all vouchered specimens, or at least ostensibly scientifically identified, and the oldest collection dates back maybe 75 years.